Team,

I'm a long term member here but not a Big poster (I read a lot of posts first before saying anything ). I can't seem to find an answer to this issue.

A Buddy at work has two DVD Movies that someone else gave him which were burned to DVD-Rs. I don't think they are even released here in Canada yet so I don't have a clue where they came from. From DVDINFOPRO:

Media Information
Disc Regions are 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
Media code/Manufacturer ID PRINCO
Format Type UDF 1.02
Volume Name FAHRENHEIT911
Application id
Implementation id AuthoringWare Co. USA
Recording Date/Time (mm/dd/yyyy) 9/ 4/2004 3:08:03
Format Capacity 4.16GB(4.47GB)
Book Type DVD-R
Media Type DVD-R
Media Id Code Speed 1.0x 1385KBps
Available Write Descriptor CLV 4.0x 5540KBps
Available Write Descriptor CLV 2.0x 2770KBps
Available Write Descriptor CLV 1.0x 1385KBps
Write Strategy Speed 4.0x 5540KBps
2x Speed OPC beta 10
2x Speed OPC power 13
2x Write Strategy field 1 13 77 77 80
2x Write Strategy field 2 88 80 00 00 00 00
4x Speed OPC beta 01
4x Speed OPC power 1B
4x Write Strategy field 1 0C 0F 0A 08
4x Write Strategy field 2 97 08 0F 0C
4x Write Strategy field 3 80 00 00 00
4x Speed OPC beta multi-pulse 00
4x Speed OPC power multi-pulse 00
4x Write Strategy field 4 00 00 00 00
4x Write Strategy field 5 00 00 00 00 00 00
4x Write Strategy field 6 00 00 00 00 00
Data area starting sector 30000h
Data area end sector 214B9Fh
Linear Density 0.267um/bit
Track Density 0.74um/track
Number of Layers 1

Team,

I tried to edit the above to make it more concise but got locked out after 30 minutes....sorry Here is the rest of the Story...

My freind tried, his head IT Guy tried as well and both failed to make a copy of these disks using CloneDVD - AnyDVD and DVDDecrypter (Sorry I dont' know which version ). They tried virtually any DVD copying software they could find. They said they couldn't even copy the files off the disk using Windows

I didn't initially bother to try to use CloneDVD as my logic was these DVDs are already DVD5s and don't need any transcoding or compression. So I tried the Make Image Wizard in Alcohol 120% and it worked the first time on both disks. (AnyDVD was in the background. Later I tried it without AnyDVD running and it too worked to make the image. I burned both DVDs using the Burn Image Wizard in Alcohol - I know it's Lazy but I try to work on the KISS Principle - Keep It Simple Stupid)

But then I wanted to learn what's going on so I tried with CloneDVD - AnyDVD (Versions 2.4.3.1 and 3.9.2.1 repectively) but it failed. I got an error message (when selecting either the main movie or all files) Stating: Missing VOB File(s) named VTS_03*.VOB. I don't know where to go from here.

My Box is a P4 2.8 Ghz, with 1 Gig of PC3200 Dual Channel DDR RAM, running WinXP Pro SP2 from Dual Arrays (one SATA, one IDE 133 - 400 Gig in total) on an Asus P4P800 Deluxe Motherboard. The Optical Drives are a Plextor PX 708A and a LG DVD / CDROM Combo. I'm certain it's not a hardware issue as this Box is quite capable.

Do you think there is some type of protection here as I'm leaning that way ? I remember reading somewhere there was a few schemes that required Tweaking CloneDVD somehow but I can't remember where I read them If you have any ideas I'd like to here from you. Thanks for your help.

Don't think so. I believe these discs are simply broken / badly mastered with some broken Software. In this case it was probably wise to use a 1:1 copier like Alcohol or CloneCD 5 to make the copy.

Maybe CloneDVD's third option - "write existing data" would have worked as well, as this option will not "remaster" the source disc.

Oli,

Thanks for responding. I too would have suspected a Bad image but the DVDs play flawlessly on my Home PC (both optical devices), and my 2 stand alone DVD players (an SCE and a Pioneer).

I guess I'll just have to wait and see if I stumble across this again.