Fixing DVD/VOB video errors/hiccups: insight&advice needed

[dr1]

Hi guys,



A LITTLE INTRO:

My niche of choice is jazz (& -fusion) concert videos, I have collected around 450 concerts over the years, just about all of them burnt to DVD-video.

Now DVD unfortunately is not a perfect medium: some discs would play badly (with less or more sound/video hiccups) on some specific DVD players (as DVD's do), in a few occasions some beer might have spilled over a disc (which, I can testify, vastly reduces their lifespan), having multiple folders full of more and more DVD's proves not to be really handy in the long term.

Worst of all some of the older DVD's start to produce errors even when untouched by any foreign substances (such as beer): you simply cannot really count on a DVD-R to last over 10 years (most will, but some won't, and as they get older more and more will turn coaster).. this is downright HORROR for a collector of course!!!

So: I decided to rip all my DVD's into one big external drive... took a little effort but I'm *extremely* happy with that choice: all my concerts in one place, incredibly easy to find what I'm looking for, incredibly easy to replace recordings when upgrades come around, incredibly easy to make a full backup of my complete collection to other HD's. Only downside is that you need a computer to play them back on a TV but hey, computers are everywhere these days right, most people I know still have a DVD player but don't really use them anymore, also (lack of) DVD playback options makes it feel totally inferior to modern players such as VLC which let you control playback in pretty much any way you can possibly think of. IMHO DVD is old tech waiting to die. But...



THE ACTUAL ISSUE AND WHAT I DID:

Some DVD's that I ripped to HD, play back with hiccups when I run them through VLC. This surprised me at first - whenever I encountered this behaviour in a DVD player I was sure it would be an optical/mechanical issue. These DVD's usually have no visible damage (no scratches or anything), so perhaps the errors were created when burning them in the first place? In any case, the hiccups are now in the VOB files on HD.

So, the first way I tried to fix this is convert them losslessly: I use XMedia Recode to convert them to mpeg(2) using 'Copy' mode for both video and audio since, as far as I know, this will ensure the lossless transfer. Strangely enough this fixes most of the hiccups!

However, it does not fix ALL the problems: a very tiny amount of the hiccups remain. Since it was only a small portion of my collection that produced hiccups in the first place, this problem of remaining hiccups is of agreeable size to me. Still of course I will re-download these shows whenever possible (unfortunately old shows are re-posted only very sporadically but hey, that's also why we collect, right ;-)



MY QUESTIONS:

I want to understand these hiccups... a few questions for the experted out there:

1. Where do they come from? Are they likely to be the result from initial DVD burn errors or to have grown over time?

2. How is it possible that lossless conversion to a single mpeg2 file (which is imo basically nothing but a change of file container) fixes a lot of these hiccups?

3. Any tips for fixing the few hiccups that remain even after the mpeg2 conversion?



Any other ideas on how to deal with my collection durably are welcome!
Thanks a lot for your insights my music loving friends!!!

dr1.

[jabulon]

Have you tried using another media player (instead of VLC)?

[dr1]

Originally Posted by jabulon

Have you tried using another media player (instead of VLC)?

Ah yes, I realize now my post was a bit VLC-centric.. Whenever I encounter a glitch/hiccup I also tried both WMP and MPC. Same hiccups there! And same disappeared hiccups after mpeg2 conversion.

[Silver Stallion DVDs]

Try this media player: GOM Media Player

http://player.gomlab.com/eng/download/

[pawel]

I would first check what is a source of error:
1. DVD disk deterioration, check with one of these tools.

2. Demuxing process of the original video. Assuming that your DVDs are in standard definition, the best freeware software for demuxing them is ProjectX - choose version which doesn't require Java to be installed. ProjectX generates full log from the process, so you may check at what time and what kind of errors are.

[Unidecker]

mpc-hc owns the fuck out of vlc and plays anything you toss at it...

[dr1]

Originally Posted by pawel

I would first check what is a source of error:
1. DVD disk deterioration, check with one of these tools.

2. Demuxing process of the original video. Assuming that your DVDs are in standard definition, the best freeware software for demuxing them is ProjectX - choose version which doesn't require Java to be installed. ProjectX generates full log from the process, so you may check at what time and what kind of errors are.

Thanks a lot pawel, very helpful!