Hello,

I'm new here having looked up the topic online and found this website. I am helping a friend with an issue with a recording he took on a Sony minidisc camcorder where he inadvertently switched from video mode to VR mode during shooting and his standalone DVD player won't support the VR format. He took it to a camera shop and they told him they could fix it, but they weren't able to convert the VR part of the recording back to video.

What he wants to know is if it's possible to get the VR recording converted to video so he can watch the DVD in his standalone rather than through his camera or computer. There has to be some program or some trick to changing the format from VR back to video, right? In today's age with all this technology, there should be something that can fix this no problem.

Unfortunately, my technical expertise is limited, so I ask anyone here for assistance. If you know anything about what I'm referring to, please help.

Cheers.

There are some PC video editing applications which support VR mode, but if it's a -VR disc then it will have to be finalised ('closed') before any other device or program will read it.

Ulead DVD Movie Factory handles -VR or +VR and there's a month's free trial to see if it works. BTW I'm assuming that by "minidisc" you mean 8cm diameter DVD.

I'll transfer this to the Video Edit section of CD Freaks, where you may get more specialist help...

Edit: Done.

So when you say some PC applications will support VR mode, does that mean those same applications can change the recording format from VR to video? How about Ulead?

A lot depends on how it was recorded by the cam. If several starts and stops were made during recording, then you will need a DVD authoring program that fully supports VR, and import the entire disc. If only one recording "session" was done, that simplifies things.

1st step will be to put the disc on a PC and see if it can be read. There should be 3 files on the disc. The VRO file is the actual video. Worst case will be to use the cam to feed the video to a recorder or PC in real time.