How to salvage unfinalized JVC-recorded DVDs
 

Guys...

was finalizing a DVD (recorded in Video Mode, not VR) and there was an error.

Well, the smart guy (not me of course) would have finalized the disc prior to deleting the shows on it from the hard drive.

I believe the only reason this worked is because part of the menuing had been built during the finalization as it "crashed" at about the 95% done point.

Anyway, wanted to save the shows, and here's how I did it:

1) Opened ISOBuster
2) Put the DVD that failed to finalize in a DVD drive
3) ISOBuster recognized the disc as having 17 sectors (pretty sure it was 17 anyway) in the left hand window. The number of sectors probably depends on how full the DVD is.
4) Highlighted sector 1
5) Right-clicked and selected to ensure all files were readable
6) Step 5 expanded sector 1 to include two sub icons (ISO and UDF).
7) The ISO icon had a VIDEO_TS subfolder, and the VIDEO_TS subfolder had all the files inside it.
8) The only extractable files are the VOB files, not the menu files as they were corrupted. Simply highlight the proper files and extract them.

Done.

Cheers...Tom

problem is

2) Put the DVD that failed to finalize in a DVD drive

Would all drives accept any unfinalized disc??
From my experience, my drives fail to recognize that there's even a disc in the drive.

Another way to fix this is dupe it using a dvd player and recorder if you have them connected. I have had to do this with an occasional disk. I have had situations where I have been re-authoring disks with new menus and an episode would not rip with any software, nor would it play all the way through with any player for the PC, BUT put it in a set-top player and it played fine. SO using my dvd recorder and an -RW disk duped it and it ripped fine.

i ddidn't think and unfinalised disc can be recognised.

The only way i can think of is to dub back to hdd and then to a new disc. Or try finalising in another unit.

If it failed during the finalization stage you can do as Tom said. if the disc goes bad before starting finalization well then you are either stuck dubbing it back to DVD, HDD or VHS

I have had both happen, it has to error DURING the finalizing part to be accesible in a DVD-ROM because the information needed has already been written (hence why Tom "says only reason this worked is because part of the menuing had been built during the finalization as it "crashed" at about the 95% done point.")

You can also try another JVC (maybe even a Panasonic). Go one further and try to clone the "bad" RW disc onto another RW disc and see if the new disc will finalize properly.

I tried cloning the drive, but it simply duplicated all the problems. I also tried "closing the session" in Nero and that also didn't work.

AS Mark said above, the disc is not recognizable unless the finalization is complete, at least not in my JVC. Maybe another recorder would recognize it, as LS mentioned, but couldn't try that as I don't have another one.

My regular computer DVD drives wouldn't recognize the disc until I loaded ISOBuster. ISOBuster was able to recognize the disc in all of my drives.

Cheers...Tom