I have looked over the "If you're experiencing rip errors, please read here first" thread. It's LONG and I did some scanning, but this is a bit more than just, "How to fix." I want to understand what's going on and why.
We live in the boonies, with crappy internet service and limited bandwidth. I let my wife stream some of the shows she likes because she enjoys it more than I do. I watch eBay, Amazon, and other places, for low prices on DVDs and BDs of TV shows. So when I'm watching something or we're watching something together, it's often a DVD "Complete set" of a TV series. I'm finding that it's almost impossible to order a TV show with more than 2 seasons and have all the DVDs rip easily. There seems to be at least one DVD or BD in each set that's got problems. Often I look and can see issues on the media. Many times, though, these discs play just fine in a player. It's only when ripping that they're an issue.
I get that I can clean it with a soft cloth and so on, but often that's not enough to make it work in a drive, even if it works in a player. I remember, at some point, reading a comment in a thread that players work differently. They read the file and if they encounter an error, they skip over it and keep going, and that often that can be done without an error perceptible to the human eye. I get that.
When I'm using MakeMKV, I know I can increase the number for how many read errors to allow, but it looks like that's just a "retry" count. If it's at 6, then MakeMKV will just retry reading that data 6 times. If it's a bad DVD, then that's it.
Does MakeMKV have any way to allow for errors? For instance, there's a tiny scratch and it's not impacting much data. Is there a way to tell MakeMKV to skip errors of a certain length? If not, why can't ripping a disc work like playing it in a player, where errors are skipped?
Trying to understand one error issue
Re: Trying to understand one error issue
MakeMKV's goal is to make an exact and correct copy of the data on a DVD or blu-ray or UHD. Those discs have checksum data that MakeMKV uses to verify it is working as intended. You're correct that most players skip over errors and keep going, even if it means your show gets mangled for a moment while you're watching.
I am not aware of way to get MakeMKV to ignore errors the way a player does.
This is why lots of discussion on this forum is about cleaning a disc so your optical drive can read it. It is also why lots of folks have more than one optical drive they use for ripping. Different optical drives will sometimes behave differently, especially with discs that are difficult to read. Personally, I have two drives. If a disc fails in one drive it will often (but not always) work just fine in my other drive. I don't even take the time to clean a disc until it has failed in both of my drives.
This is also why when folks buy a new disc they should rip it right away. If the disc proves unrippable, most retailers have return window in which the disc can be exchanged for a different copy.
As a side note, Netflix still rents discs by mail for a monthly fee.
Finally, you're correct that MakeMKV has a retry count and not a 'allow this many errors' limit.
I am not aware of way to get MakeMKV to ignore errors the way a player does.
This is why lots of discussion on this forum is about cleaning a disc so your optical drive can read it. It is also why lots of folks have more than one optical drive they use for ripping. Different optical drives will sometimes behave differently, especially with discs that are difficult to read. Personally, I have two drives. If a disc fails in one drive it will often (but not always) work just fine in my other drive. I don't even take the time to clean a disc until it has failed in both of my drives.
This is also why when folks buy a new disc they should rip it right away. If the disc proves unrippable, most retailers have return window in which the disc can be exchanged for a different copy.
As a side note, Netflix still rents discs by mail for a monthly fee.
Finally, you're correct that MakeMKV has a retry count and not a 'allow this many errors' limit.