Maddy 🏳️‍⚧️ - ADHD-powered Feb 27
This is a general invitation to chat (async, likely) or otherwise connect if you have an interest in disc dumping/preservation of CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, UHD Blu-Ray, and/or game console discs, want to get into it, and you aren't sure where to start, what to do, or what to use.

It's something I've been doing for a long time, and it's something I'm very passionate about. I'm happy to help newbies get their efforts off the ground if they want assistance.

I wouldn't say I'm any sort of authority or 'expert', but I've done this for so long that I'm aware of many quirks and 'gotchas' that come with it, and I'm happy to share my knowledge and experience! ​​

Feel free to boost, if you'd like! ​​
Show threadnarylisFeb 28
@maddy just here to say thank you for doing this. as someone who has had to build up a similar knowledge base on quer own (ask me about the time i almost ended up digging into the linux usb cd driver before concluding that usb controllers are probably a fuck and therefore it was not worth it) i can safely say that figuring out how to get accurate preservation rips of optical discs is a hellish multi-year experience for the uninitiated
Show threadMaddy 🏳️‍⚧️ - ADHD-powered Feb 28
@[email protected] Hey, no problem! I’d love to help make the process and experience less daunting one way or another if I can! ​​

I’ve had to re-dump so many discs over and over until we got to the point where tools are these days, like redumper, as you mentioned.

I actually have to go back and re-dump my Xbox/360 collection ‘cause they’re all in Xbox Backup Creator’s default iXtreme-compatible format, rather than redump style. I think I have more games for 360 than anything else, so I’m super not looking forward to the time consumption of that effort. ​​
Show threadnarylisMar 6
@maddy well, i might have a couple new ones for The List just days after saying hi: for one thing, i *think* i might have a encountered a nearly silent error reading a second layer from a dvd ca. 2009 with makemkv, but i still need to try mounting and poking at the iso it generated from this disc/drive combo to be sure. (still trying to confirm what's going on with this odd rip tho, so the final diagnosis of the weirdness i'm seeing is still subject to change pending a final poke with a plextor)
Show threadnarylisMar 6
@maddy correction: it’s not a dual-layer problem, but it’s definitely a case where makemkv’s “dvd structure protection removal method” option does the wrong thing and either removes good cells from either end of the titles in question or concludes there’s too many fake cells and ignores the titles entirely as a result depending on the option selected (none of them workaround the issue alas). vobcopy chokes and ends up seeking to non-existent sectors so there’s probably *some* truth to the matter that some of the nav information is broken.

accessing and concatenating the raw vobs on the iso works at least, even if that’s a matter of crossing one’s fingers and hoping that the titlesets match the expected titles while looking for a way to shim chapters back in after the fact.

what a pain!
Show threadnarylisMar 7
@maddy okay, you're gonna love this one: if i'm interpreting my results correctly, all of makemkv's existing structure protection removal methods seem to deal poorly with a reset of the pts coincident with incrementing to a new vob id at a cell *skipped* by sequential entry points through the program tables. the 2008 12-disc network release of the 1970s benny hills annuals is a truly strange place. thankfully 2017 me was thinking ahead and made a specific tool that got me something halfway usable out of the disks, but i don't trust 2017 me enough not to want to double check their work at this point.
Show threadMaddy 🏳️‍⚧️ - ADHD-powered Mar 7
@[email protected] Oh, that all sounds so strange O.o
Are you dumping the disc with Redumper, or are you accessing it with MakeMKV directly? Sometimes I find I have better luck poking at an ISO, but I've also seen MakeMKV decode DVDs really strangely.

I personally don't spend much time with DVDs, so unfortunately, I don't really know of anything else that's good for converting them to something like MKV. Maybe Handbrake would do it? I think they have a passthrough mode for audio and video codecs.
Show threadnarylis
@maddy i haven't tried poking at the discs with redumper yet. so far i've tried using makemkv to try to dump the titles directly, and then trying to access a backup image made by makemkv itself. i also tried the ancient tool that is vobcopy in an attempt to see if that could at least pull the titles off without remuxing into matroska, but that seemed to mangle the titles for some reason i haven't been able to put my finger on.

fortunately, as i said, i wrote some custom tooling back in 2017 before i'd finally acquiesced to using makemkv to grab my dvds (and, more importantly, my blu-rays) which used libdvdread directly to navigate and dump video content from a dvd as part of a larger project to try to recreate dvd menus as itunes extras packages, and for some reason *that* tooling worked fine once i fixed nine years' worth of stale code, at which point i identified a probable cause for makemkv's strange behavior. it might be annoyingly high-touch, but i'm happy i've managed to get *something* working at least.

now i just have to figure out why this *other* set of dvds of a chinese opera that i tried to rip right afterwards seem to be split weirdly by makemkv.
Mar 7 at 6:41pmWeb
Show threadnarylisMar 7
@maddy (phew. that one seems a bit more of a straight forward situation where the discs rely on the dvd structure to automatically jump to another title to continue the main program. annoying, but nothing mkvmerge can't fix)