Recover and rip a damaged dvd from a videocamera

In March when we went to Val Thorens with UCPA the guide filmed us a lot and then we got the DVD but it was damaged and it wasn’t finalized. So I did an attempt to save some parts of the video and here is what I did and used.

First it was not easy to get a good ISO or extract the vob-files from the disc. I tried several tools:

  • dvdisaster could extract an iso from the dvd but I did not find a good tool to extract the vob-files since the iso was damaged it was not possible to open or mount as a normal ISO. Though it seems that if you have a registered version of ISOBuster it should be possible because I saw it could find the files from the damaged ISO.
  • CDRoller manages both to read the disc and extract damaged vob-files though you need to register to actual be able to save the files.

But now I had either an ISO or a couple of damaged VOB files. I noticed VLC was the best player to use to play the damaged VOB file and it showed quickly that it was not so much damaged.

Another great tool to quickly check all that could be able to recover was to use VobEdit and the preview function in there, but I was not able to use VobEdit to extract any mpgs or so from the VOB file. It showed much more video than VLC and it was basically all that I could later extract.

DGIndex which is part of DGMPGDec generates both a d2v or m2v and ac3 file.  So need to use ac3tool to make it into wav file and then TMPGEnc to make it into a mpg file.

Another tools that could extract a corrected VOB-file from the corrupted VOB-file was Vobrator.

Either if you go via an mpg file or a corrected VOB file you can then use Auto Gordian Knot to convert it into a DivX avi-file.

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