“They curdle like milk”: WB DVDs from 2006–2008 are rotting away in their cases - Ars Technica
Submitted 1 month ago by Thomas2024@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
vegeta@lemmy.world 1 month ago
ddash@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
There are so many high quality rips out there. Bothering to tip these yourself makes not much sense, unless its very obscure stuff.
nyan@lemmy.cafe 1 month ago
It’s the letter of the law: media shifting is legal in some places where downloading a copy from an unofficial site is not. Also, there are people out there who would not have the first idea where to look for an existing rip.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
…unless its very obscure stuff.
That’s primarily why you’d be ripping stuff. There is so much stuff only available on VHS and DVD.
alcoholic_chipmunk@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Most rips tend to apply some compression. Ripping them yourself will generally give you a better result unless you also intend to compress them.
BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world 1 month ago
What about Linux? I’m a recent conver that was used to makemkv
alcoholic_chipmunk@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Makemkv supports linux, works great on linux to. forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=224
greybeard@lemmy.one 1 month ago
I’m a fan of ARM. github.com/…/automatic-ripping-machine
I run it in a podman container, passing my BluRay drive though. It rips automatically, and attempts to even lookup the metadata for the disk to file it properly. It’s not perfect, but it does work quite well. The only issue I have with it is it does a poor job on TV shows, but I’ve found nothing better, so it is good enough for me.
doodledup@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I gave up encoding with handbrake. It looks much worse after the fact 99% of the time, no matter which settings I use.
SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’m not sure what you were trying, but this works for me:
Never use hardware encoding. That is intended for real time transcoding. There are not many settings that work since it is just sending the file to the video card and letting it do its thing.
Slower is better. If you set the software encoder to very slow it will produce an output that is very high quality per megabyte. I generally don’t care if it takes twice as long to encode it as to watch it. I queue it up and let it run over night.
Choose the right codec. I like 10 bit HEVC, because I know it will work on the clients I play it from. When you rip a DVD using MakeMKV, the video will be MPEG-2, it was designed in the 1990’s and converting the file to a modern codec will save a lot of space. I don’t reencode 4K UHD rips much since I don’t want to mess with losing the hdr or other color features that I like in watching those files.
Audio tracks: I will rip out audio for languages I don’t speak, or desctiptive audio track, but go out of my way to label things like director commentaries. I don’t reencode the audio tracks at all, you won’t save much disk space by messing with them compared to the video tracks.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’m old enough to remember people lying that compact discs were practically indestructible.
adb@jlai.lu 1 month ago
Prime motivation was getting the clients to buy their whole collection a second time.
Obelix@feddit.org 1 month ago
I have Audio-CDs from the 80s that are still playing 40 years later. And I have CDs with deep scratches that also play without problems.
JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Disk rot usually happens when air gets in contact with the reflective coating and oxidises it. With CD’s, it’s actually the top side you need to be worried about, as it’s right there under a thin lacquer coating. Any ding to that can expose the layer or just literally chip off a chunk of data.
At least on DVD’s it’s sandwiched inside the disk, so usually the only reason is a manufacturing error, and not really something the user can cause.
FireWire400@lemmy.world 1 month ago
And I have PDO pressings of Faith No More albums that are 40 tears old and have just started to rot. Common occurrence with PDO pressings apparently; one manufacturing error is all it takes.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I think the early rounds of those trying to get people to switch to the format were motivated by the fact that tapes were easily recordable by everyone.
Tapes tear and require mechanical parts. But it wouldn’t happen were there not commercial interest.
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Tapes are overall simply worse. The fact that the more you use them lends to them becoming worse quality overtime is a big reason they suck.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Except cds had better audio quality, you could shuffle or skip, they didn’t where out or get “eaten” by the player, there was no rewinding or having to flip the tapes over, you could install cd changers in your car so you wouldnt have to swap discs around, and there was still no preventing you from recording a cd onto a cassette if you wanted. My old boombox could bootleg that shit easy as could be.
No one in or out of the industry wanted to keep cassettes. By comparison, they were trash.
NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Disc-rot. -It happens but it’s not as common as its made out to be. In my collection it’s only occured in 2 out of 500+ discs.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
A couple years ago I made a big project to rip all my DVDs.
Out of several hundred movies only 6 were unplayable. There didn’t seem to be a pattern to it either; age of the disc, wear or handling, big budget then current release or old movie slapped onto a disc in one of those cheap cardboard sleeves.
Out of my collection of TV shows on DVD, easily a quarter of the discs failed, and if one disc in a season of a show didn’t work most of them probably wouldn’t. Many had visible blotch marks in them. I figure they probably used a cheaper manufacturing process for TV shows where they were selling 3 to 6 discs rather than one, maybe two discs with a single movie on it.
RedEyeFlightControl@lemmy.world 1 month ago
What is the goto software/suite for ripping DVDs these days? It has been ages since I’ve done any.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 1 month ago
and that’s why I left all my 360 games on top of the TV all these years. we rotate them out as coasters just to make sure they’re still getting used.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 month ago
One of my first jobs in IT I worked in a local newspaper - I thought I wanted to be a journalist turns out it’s boring. Anyway we had all the old archived papers on a dvd and someone used it as a coaster and erased about 10 years worth of files. Naturally there were zero backups, so that data was just gone. Fantastic.
Fortunately the local library has backups but they’re on microfiche, so not particularly convenient. I think Google might have scanned them now though so they’re probably archived again.
aquilarift@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Back them up while you can.
sunbeam60@lemmy.one 1 month ago
Yo ho, to the seas we go!!
jamie_oliver@lemmy.world 1 month ago
This happened to about five of my 360 games. I was so disappointed when I set it up after YEARS and went to play old favorites and the discs were rotted…
ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Damn, I still have a collection of old 360 titles. I’m scared to open their cases.
figjam@midwest.social 1 month ago
Same.
adavis@lemmy.world 1 month ago
This is one of my motivations for dumping my games and modding my consoles. Pull out Wii sports and it doesn’t work? No problems I’ll run it off usb.
ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com 1 month ago
Need to buy that 5th copy of the same media.
zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 1 month ago
WB is replacing them
ElectroLisa@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
“Optical Media Bad”
AtariDump@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Beer good!
Agent641@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Plastic shopping bag: lasts 1000 years stuck in a bush outside a Tesco without breaking down
Carefully engineered storage medium’
funkajunk@lemm.ee 1 month ago
CRUMBLING
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I know you didn’t mean it, but actually they break down into smaller and smaller fragments very easily because of temperatures changing, so not visible after a few winters. Maybe except areas which don’t freeze, like those plastic floating islands in the Pacific.