Anyone know how I'd go about copying a professional DVD?

Is there a reason you can't just contact the original supplier and request replacements ?

I wouldn't feel comfortable really. She did it as a freebie, we were only supposed to get one DVD and she sent us three. Plus, for all I know, the parental units have done something odd to the DVDs...

Is it a slideshow?

We use Pro Show Gold for our wedding DVD slideshows and I once tried to copy the DVD and couldn't get it to work. We always have to burn additional copies via the pro show software itself.

Have the DVD's worked previously?

TG

Most professional videographers will copy-protect their DVds so they can't be copied... if it was one of my customers, even if it was a freebie, I'd rather you asked me for extra copies if there was a problem. I only found out some new discs I had been using wouldn't work on some DVD players because the original couple got back in touch and I was more than happy to replace them even though they were done for free in exchange for using their wedding as a demo ? it can't hurt to ask?

I know when we got our wedding DVD the DVDer told us he had left it so we could make as many copies as we wanted... so I assume they could have been protected in a way which meant we couldn't. Did your person tell you they ahd been left copiable?

Not helpful probably sorry!

No, it's not a slideshow, it's a proper film of the ceremony, drinks reception and speeches.

I know the one we gave to PIL worked as we all watched it together. They then took it to Australia last month when they visited relatives. It worked for one aunt, but when they went to the second one something went wrong. I don't know exactly what as H spoke to his mum about it, but we thought it may be something to do with region codes as they were in Australia. But then yesterday Mum sent me a text saying she'd lent her copy to my Dad's sister and something had gone wrong with it during the ceremony. This made me wonder if actually there was something wrong with PIL copy as well, rather than it just being a region thing. I don't know if Mum has played her copy before lending it to my aunt. She watched PIL copy with us when we gave it to them.

Naturally, Mum is devastated. This is the only video footage we have of Dad.

Thanks ebee and jaz, just seen your responses. She didn't say whether she'd copy protected them or not. I think I'll ask PIL to try theirs again and get Mum to try hers in her DVD player, just to be sure it is the DVDs and not just a region thing for PIL and my aunt's player with Mum's. If they still don't work, I'll get in touch with the videographer.

?

If you have a spare 4 gigabytes on your hard drive (you probably won't need that much), try creating a directory ('Wedding DVD' or some such) and copying the DVD files across.

Then eject the original DVD, load up a software player, and point it in the direction of the VIDEO_TS folder in the Wedding DVD directory.

If it plays, then the disc almost certainly isn't copy-protected, and can be copied by anyone with a DVD burner.

Thanks Mr JK, I'll give that a try.

Copying 12 items (3.90GB)

Time remaining: About 5 hours and 34 minutes

?

Oh, and if it works, and you can spare the drive space, you might as well keep the copy as a safety backup - I have a dedicated hard drive for this kind of thing.

It shouldn't take anything like that long! Minutes, certainly (possibly tens of minutes), but not hours.

Is your PC trying to play the DVD at the same time? If so, shut down your software DVD player - if you simultaneously play and copy, the PC tries to access two different points on the disc at the same time, which slows things down massively.

No, not playing it. It went down to 15 minutes, but has now gone up to 27244 DAYS!!! ?

Are there any scratches or marks on the DVD? Sounds like it's having problems reading a segment of the disc.

Well, it's done. I know have two folders, VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS. Inside VIDEO_TS I have this:

Not sure what to do now to see if it will play.

Eject the original disc, then load up your PC's DVD playing software. It should hopefully have an option to open a file (as opposed to playing a disc), in which case you point it in the direction of the VIDEO_TS folder. You shouldn't need to select anything inside it: it should know what to do from then on.

Hmmm... doesn't seem to be working. Dell MediaDirect doesn't do anything. Windows Media Player wants me to select one of the files inside the folder, although it's only offering me five of them.

Ah, hang on! Selected all five and it started playing. Wonder if it's all there... I'll get back to you. Thanks Mr JK.

It's not all there. ? The menu appears to play fine. The music plays. Clicking 'Play Movie' starts it at the start. From scene selection there are 6 chapters which you can select. The first two chapters ('waiting for the bride' and 'ceremony') are fine. The third chapter ('signing the register') starts, but freezes part way through, and the other three chapters when you select them just start the whole thing from scratch.

Hmm. I wonder if they've used a cheap recordable DVD that has deteriorated over time, meaning you're not able to read a 'clean' set of data.

I guess that's possible baron. It's got a printed label on it, but the clear bit in the middle by the hole says "TDK DVD+R EXTRA FINE MATT 1-16x". I've no idea if that's good or bad!

Is it possible it's got really hot somewhere? We had a pile of recordable DVDs on a window sill in the back bedroom a while ago, and it made them freeze at certain points, IIRC. Mr JK will remember.

I don't know about the ones we gave PIL and Mum. Ours is still playing in the DVD player, it's just the copy on the hard drive that isn't playing right.

If the data copied across OK, and the file sizes are identical, it's probably fine - if the data has been corrupted, the PC shouldn't be able to read it when playing or copying. Anyway, TDK is a thoroughly reputable name - that's the brand I generally use myself.

My guess is that the data is fine (are fine?) but there's some kind of copy protection on the disc. There are ways and means of getting round it, but I don't know how to do it on a PC.

Sounds like a couple of issues to me.

DVD+R disks are not supported by many older (and sometimes high end) players -particularly Sony. Cheap media disks are often susceptible to "dvd rot" where the dye deteriorates over a period of time. Both issues can cause freezing.

Do the professionals the courtesy of informing that there is a playback problem so that they have the option of replacing them.

In the meantime, in your case I would use software (DVDDecrypter v3.5.4) to rip the files to Hard drive as an .ISO file (this puts all the internal files from the VIDEO_TS folder into one image file, and would probably take about 6 minutes for your size of file) then burn it back as an ISO to a better quality Ritek dye DVD-R blank disk. Decrypter does away with any protection and also makes the disk multi-region. This will at least preserve the contents and allow you to play the disk on the maximum number of players. The whole thing can be done in 1/4 of an hour so I dont think that you would be putting your friend out by asking for replacements.

If you're worried about the picture on the disk, buy white pritable media and ask a mate with a disk printer to add an image to the surface. My Epson does this in about 30 seconds so its a doddle to do.