Please Help: Trouble Playing older DVD-R discs (Zenith XBR716 - DVD recorder/VCR combo)

This thread is about the Zenith XBR716 - DVD recorder/VCR combo. Click here to see full specs

About six years ago I transferred my VHS tape collection to DVD-R discs using a Zenith VHS/DVD recorder. The discs are in good shape but haven't been used for at least 4 years.

I recently had some time to get out those old DVDs to sort out what we should keep and what to discard.

I discovered that my newer DVD players (a Bose and a Phillips player) could not even load the discs, much less play them. On my computer I get one of two errors when I try to load them:

Blank Disc or
Not accessible. Incorrect function.

My computer was purchased new 6 months ago and is working fine.
Windows XP Home SP3
2 WD 500GB hard drives
3 GB RAM
AMD 3Ghz CPU
GeForce 9800 GTX 1GB video
Viewsonic 20" monitor
2 ATAPI iHAS120 SATA150 DVD +-RW, CD-RW drives

I used two brands of DVD-R discs for the original recordings: CompUSA and Fujifilm discs. These finalized discs still play on the original Zenith recorder, but apparently no where else.

I do not have Nero on this particular computer, but I do have Roxio Easy Media Creator 9. Using Roxio I was able to copy an image of a Fuji disc to the hard drive, and then burned it to a new Verbatim DVD-R. It still would not play on either Bose or Phillips players, and I still got the same error message when playing it on the computer.

I'm at a loss as to how to access these discs so that I can view them on something other than this one specific Zenith recorder, which frankly I'm surprised was still in working condition.

@ charliewb,

Welcome to the Forum.

From your description of your problem I believe your problem is that your VHS Movie Collection archived CompUSA/Fujifilm DVD-R Media Disk have over time deteriorated and now contain cyclic redundancy check (CRC) errors. This reflectivity degradation problem is sometimes referred to as DVD Rot. A Google Search (http://www.google.com) will reveal detailed information on this topic.

It appears that although you thought your VHS Movie Collection was archived to high quality error free DVD-R Media the DVD-R Media you used has proven to be poor quality problematic Media.

Suggest ensuring that the DVD Media you archive your VHS Movie Collection is only known proven high quality error free DVD Media that consistently produces quality error free results such as Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim Media. Suggest obtaining the highly regarded Taiyo Yuden DVD Media from Rima.Com (http://rima.com) for your VHS Movie Collection archiving project.

Suggest testing your ALL of your VHS Movie Collection archived DVD-R Media with a diagnostic software utility program similar to N e r o CD DVD Speed (http://www.cdspeed2000.com/files/NeroCDSpeed_47716.zip) and/or DVDInfo (http://www.dvdinfopro.com) and ensure that these DVD-R Media Disk do not contain ANY cyclic redundancy check (CRC) errors. A quality error free Burned DVD±R Media Disk should not have ANY cyclic redundancy check (CRC) errors.

If you find that your VHS Movie Collection archived DVD-R Media Disk contain ‘some’ cyclic redundancy check (CRC) errors the ISOPuzzel (http://www.geocities.com/marsoupilamis/DocEnglish.htm) software utility program might be helpful in your efforts of retrieving your data from these DVD-R Media Disk so that you will be able to Re-Burn to known proven high quality DVD Media.

The ImgBurn (http://www.imgburn.com) software program is an excellent Burning software program and should prove to helpful in you task of Re-Burning your VHS Movie Collection to known proven high quality DVD Media.

Also suggest before Re-Burning your VHS Movie Collection to known proven high quality DVD Media that you ensure your DVD Burner has the newest most current up to date Firmware.

Also you might considerer swapping out one of your current DVD Burners with a good “DVD Reader” such as a Lite-On DVD-ROM to Read these problematic CompUSA/Fujifilm DVD-R Media Disk.

Regards,
bjkg

do the discs play on the computer?

Thanks, bjkg. Your input should help me a great deal and I will start checking all of my discs. I was already considering getting an external DVD reader so I appreciate the suggestion of a Lite-on since I wasn't sure what brand to get.

It's interesting that my old Zenith recorder can still read these discs, while the newer models can't.

I pass along what I find out as I test the discs a try to salvage the content.

thanks again,
charlie

For zerocool - the discs will not play on the computer. I was able to copy an image of a disc to the computer, but when burned to a new disc the new disc couldn't be read either.

charlie,
are you sure you have finalised your DVD-R discs? The problem you're talking about looks like the discs are not finalised. You can check again in your standalone recorder, so that you can finalise them.

Another thought: since you are able to get an image of the DVD disc, try to mount it with a virtual DVD drive, such as Daemon Tools. Then you can check if the mounted image is playable to your PC. If so, then you can be sure your video data are saved. Then it is a matter of what media and burning program to use to burn them again...

I hope these will help you. I have such a collection of precious DVDs from former tapes and I can understand your situation. Just a piece of advice: always burn your valuable content to more than one DVDs! The more, the better. Better be "hysteric" than sorry

Well, now I feel foolish. The two DVDs that I was using for testing were not finalized. Why I have no idea, since I would have sworn that I finalized all of them - but that was 6 years ago, so . . .

Once I finalized them on the Zenith they appear to be working fine. Thanks yyy.

I still intend to do the testing already recommended, making sure that they are all working, and making backups on higher quality discs.

The real test is whether I will be able to import the DVD content to the computer. That is in progress right now.

Oh, and in case folks want to know where to get a user manual for the Nero CDspeed program it can be found on the Nero Website. Nero DiscSpeed 4 in the Nero 8 product matches the program and can be downloaded here:

http://www.nero.com/enu/support-nero8-manuals.html

I don't know if I'm out of the woods yet, but it is looking much better and I have learned a lot!

thanks and I will report on further progress.

No need to be! It happens to all of us

You're welcome. Glad to help. Please let us know if you finally succeeded to backup them all.

@ charliewb,

The ‘Better’ N e r o CD DVD Speed User Manual is Forum Member geno888 “CD-DVD Speed - A user guide” (http://club.cdfreaks.com/f96/cd-dvd-...-guide-192563/) than the ‘Manual’ at the Nero Web Site.

Glad to learn that you have your problem sorted out.

It is unusual that a ‘non-finalized’ DVD-R Media Disk would ‘Play’ in your stand-alone desktop recorder but fail to be recognized in your computer Optical Drive. Usually non-finalized DVD-R Media Disk will not be recognized in stand-alone desktop player but will ‘Play’ in computer Optical Drive.

Regards,
bjkg

I had the same doubt. congratulations.

Update - I've gone through and finalized all of the Fujifilm discs, which gave me no problems and play just fine now on the newer players.

The CompUSA discs are less reliable and can take several attempts before the Zenith will read them . Once the Zenith recognizes them, though, I can finalize them and they'll then play fine. Still working through these.

I've started copying disc image files to the hard drive to make backups. I also wanted to add a menu and chapter marks and have long used Pinnacle Studio for video editing. I have the latest version, and it has worked very nicely for all of my home DV movies.

However, full length movies have proven to be a problem. To use Pinnacle I have to copy the disc into an MPEG file in order to insert menus and chapters. The original MPEG file plays without errors on the computer. However, the output of the Make movie, whether it's to a DVD or to a file (including an avi file), the audio starts to get out of sync with the video, which gets worse and worse further down the timeline. I've even done a Make uising only the MPEG file (no menus, etc) and converted it to avi and the resulting file has the audio sync problem.

Pinnacle support wasn't much help, stating that it was likely a problem with the original file due to lost video frames that added up over time cause the audio to get out of sync. No solution was offered.

Nero CD speed reported no disc errors.

The Express Burn program suggested to copy the disc only seems to copy an ISO image file, which Studio can't use.

I'm thinking of making shorter avi files and then combining them, hoping that might reduce the out of sync problem.

Any suggestions?