"forever" mode with no messages

[patches23]

Makemkv has been working fine on Ubuntu with an external USB DVD drive. One disc out of a series of 9 DVDs goes into a "forever" mode. What seems to be something like an endless loop. When I finally quit it had been running for almost 2 hours with very little progress and an estimated time to complete of 74 hours. Thinking it might be a damaged DVD, I borrowed the same DVD in the series from a friend. Same thing. Every other DVD in the series is fine. DVDisaster does the same thing, goes into forever mode with no messages. Is there any way to get out of this endless loop or at least see what's going on?

[patches23]

And to add to the mystery, I played the first few minutes on VLC, it played fine. Jumped around to various spots and played from there, fine. Is there something about an Ubuntu library or something that is known to react this way in certain situations? Is there anything I can do about it? Should I just rip in VLC to an MP4 to have a backup?

[Coopervid]

And to add to the mystery, I played the first few minutes on VLC, it played fine. Jumped around to various spots and played from there, fine. Is there something about an Ubuntu library or something that is known to react this way in certain situations? Is there anything I can do about it? Should I just rip in VLC to an MP4 to have a backup?

Clean your laser lens.

[16442496]

You can try to make iso image with gddrescue.

sudo apt install gddrescue

Next you can run lsblk to find your drive. Normaly it is /dev/sr0

To make iso image from disc:

ddrescue /dev/sr0 dvd.iso dvd.log -b 2048 -n -v

If dvd is copy protect, then you need also libdvd-pkg and lsdvd packages to open protection.

[patches23]

The same thing appears to be happening running ddrescue after about a half hour. I'd like to past a screenshot here but don't know how so I'll retype it. (In 2025 I can't paste an image?) Assumes a zero unless I post it.

I don't see how it could be a dirty laser lens, this DVD player is relatively new, other DVDs are fine with Makemkv, and this one plays with VLC. I ordered a laser lens cleaner DVD anyway. Does this process ever start slow then speed up as it progresses? Or is it time to give up on this DVD?

ipos: 19464 kb
opos: 19464 kb
non-tried: 8246 MB
rescued: 19464 kb
pct rescued: 0.23%

current rate: 4228 B/s
average rage: 9457 B/s
error rate: 0 B/s
run time: 34m 18s
remaining time: 4d 3h 19m

[16442496]

Gddrescue should read much faster if disc and drive are ok.
And i don't se any read errors, bad-sector or bad areas on your post.

Here is output post from disc with no copy protect.

Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
ipos: 399704 kB, non-trimmed: 0 B, current rate: 7733 kB/s
opos: 399704 kB, non-scraped: 0 B, average rate: 7686 kB/s
non-tried: 4018 MB, bad-sector: 0 B, error rate: 0 B/s
rescued: 399704 kB, bad areas: 0, run time: 52s
pct rescued: 9.04%, read errors: 0, remaining time: 8m
time since last successful read: 0s
Copying non-tried blocks... Pass 1 (forwards)^C
Interrupted by user

You can stop reading by pressing Ctrl+C
and try different read modes if those reads better.
No need to remove allready copied files, it continues where it left.

Other two modes i use sometimes are:

ddrescue /dev/sr0 dvd.iso dvd.log -d -r3 -v

ddrescue /dev/sr0 dvd.iso dvd.log -d -r3 -R -v

[patches23]

Thank you all. I found an inexpensive replacement DVD for just that one disc in the series on ebay. I will give it a try and see if there is a problem with a third try on the same DVD. I just backed up another DVD and that player is working fine. Don't know what's going on.