Home Recorded DVDS

[Kathie3709]

Hi, all!

First time posting, but long-time MKV user. In fact, I purchased the registration key a few years ago. My question is that I have tons of home recorded DVDs from back in the day when I recorded from the TV to my DVD recorder. Most of them are in DVD-RW format. Also most of them are more than 8 years old - I stopped recording when I started streaming from Netflix - 2009 or so. My intention is to make them into MKVs for my Plex library.

I am having a very hard time copying the aforementioned disks. My desktop computer, with a DVD drive is two-years old and I have a older laptop that also contains a DVD drive. Either the drives will not open the home-recorded disks or I get multiple errors that ends up being failures. Yes, I have cleaned the disks.

Today, I attempted to make MKVS out of the disks from a desktop computer that I purchased in 2009 or so. My husband uses it as a gaming computer. Lol and behold, I was able to make MKVS out of some of the disks. When trying these particular disks on the other computer drives, it wouldn't work.

Can someone guide me in the right direction to copy the disks to my newer desktop..it would be much more convenient. Plus my husband wouldn't have to wait for me to use that PC for gaming.

Thank you! And sorry about the rambling question.

FYI: My store-bought disks make MKVs effortlessly from the newer desktop.

[Woodstock]

The first question is, were the disks "finalized" by the writer? If not, key information for reading them may be missing.

That said, DVD-RW is not as stable as DVD-R, and is "not recommended" for archival use. There are several articles out there about this.

I would first see if the disk is completely readable - just try copying the files off the disk to a free area on your hard drive. If you get errors doing that, MakeMKV isn't going to have much chance.

[Kathie3709]

Thank you for your reply to my question. Yes I did finalize each recording. What is strange to me is that my old PC will transfer to MKV just fine, but the newer PC will not. I'm anxious to get rid of these physical disks and completely have everything copied to my Plex library. I'm wondering if I should buy an external drive to try the transfer or if I should just give up and bother my husband to use the old computer. First world problems, I guess.

FYI: Most of these disks are classic movies recorded from TV. If certain ones cannot be possibly be copied, I will buy the ones I want on ITunes. By the way, the disks play great on my player.

[Woodstock]

If you have a drive that can read the disks, that would be the one to do the ripping with. I have found that Bluray drives have problems with some DVDs. I have multiple DVD drives available for when the BD drives can't quite read the disk. Sometimes, I have to drag out the old Sony external I got when USB2 had just come out.

MakeMKV will run on pretty minimal hardware - if it can run a 32- or 64-bit version of Windows, it is likely MakeMKV can run on it.

[Kathie3709]

UPDATE: Thank you, Woodstock, for your kind help. I think its figured out....the drive on my PC could not read DVD-R or DVD-RW disks. I went to Best Buy today and picked up a LG External drive and the disks are copying like wildfire! Those titles that are non-readable, I understand - but not every title! I am so happy...now I can get rid of the physical disks.

Thank you again!

[eugenia]

How do I know if a disc is "completely" readable, as opposed to partially readable?

[Woodstock]

If you get no errors when copying with Windows Explorer (or Finder, or the cp command in Linux), then the disk is "completely readable". Read errors, depending upon where they occur, can prevent MakeMKV from properly interpreting the disk.

Commercial DVDs can be copied this way, too, but the results are still encrypted.