I don't like to use my DVDs because they'll inevitably get scratched, so I tend to make copies. However, I seem to have left this too late with a particular set of disks, which appear to be damaged.
I first use "Burn On CD & DVD" to unlock the drive, then copy the files to the hard drive and use "Alive DVD Ripper" to convert to DivX, then "WinDVD Creator" to burn to DVD. Probably not the most elegant process, but it works. Except now.
Trying to copy the disc's contents, I get the fairly common cyclic redundancy check error. At this point I usually admit defeat, but this time I decided to use some software called "AnyReader 2.5" to read the disc. It claims to be able to ignore CRCs and just copy the data anyway, or alternatively just fill the erronous data with zeros, whichever the user chooses. Which it does so over a painstaking 9 hours per DVD.
Anyway, no matter what copying settings I use, the resulting files cause both Alive DVD Ripper and VLC Player to crash.
Ideally, I'd like to know of some software which can actually copy damaged DVDs. But, failing that, could someone please explain to me what the VLC software does which enables it to play these discs without a hitch? Every piece of copying software claims they are riddled with scratches and problems, yet VLC plays them absolutely fine. I've noticed this in the past too -- discs which won't play in my DVD player seem to play fine through VLC.
And since VLC seems to be so good at 'guessing' what's behind the damaged data, why can't someone write some copying software which uses the same process?
