Urgent Help!! Backing up Mini DVD-RW discs

DoubleCheese

DoubleCheese

DoubleCheese

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26 Jun 2005
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Hi all, this is a little long winded but please read on!

A friend of mine has a Canon camcorder that she's used to make family videos with. The camcorder records on to the small DVD discs and she has been using DVD-RW discs.
The camcorder has a couple of recording modes and some of the discs will playback on regular DVD players and the others won't, only on a PC. She wants to make copies of all of them on to normal DVD's for her parents.

I offered to try and help. My Win XP machine doesn't read any of the discs. She has a laptop running Vista HP, so I thought my Win 7 machine would read the discs. I poped one in and Win Media Player didn't play it. So I tried to eject the disc and.....got a Windows message saying it was preparing the disc to be used on other machines!!!:eek: It seems to have erased the disc! There were no windows asking what to do with the disc, no Autorun or anything.

So, is it possible to recover the video at all? And is the only way to capture the video off the disc by playing it back on the camcorder and using the video out to capture on my graphics card? There is no USB or Firewire output off the camcorder.

I'm so gutted! Help!
 
Haven't heard of something like that before, but it sounds like the camcorder is sometimes not finalising the disc, leaving it open to be used again. If the disc is not finalised, it can't be read by a DVD player.

Is this disc you have accidentally erased actually empty? Because when it says preparing to be used on other machines, that is usually it doing the finalising process.
 
I've just read the manual for the camcorder and you are right, she didn't finalise the discs. So they have to go back in the camcorder for finalising. After that how/what software should I use to make DVD's?
I put the disc back in my Win 7 PC and it said it was a blank disc, so I guess I've managed to erase the last 4 months of her recordings....I feel sick!

Is there any software that can recover the data off the disc?
 
Try this piece of software, and see if it recognises any recoverable files. You will have to pay in order to actually use the software to recover the file, and I'm just recommending it from reading another opinion, but it's worth a try.

In order to make the DVD's, it will depend on how the camcorder makes the disc. If it is a fully finalised DVD then it will be quite hard to edit on the PC, as you will need to rip the disc then convert it into AVI or another useable format. Check whether the camcorder came with any software, or if it's possible to download the video straight from the camcorder onto the PC.
 
Thanks for the tip, will look it up and give it a go.

I don't really want to edit the video other than make copies for her parents that they can play on their home DVD.
 
tbh when the discs are finalised they should play back on a dvd player or at least be able to be read by any pc with a dvd drive. if you need to edit them, windows movie maker should be on your xp box, if not, download it from microsoft....
 
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