Sony's Mini-Disc

Description

Thge Sony mini-disc looks like a mini-DVD except that it is housed in a clear (most times) case that works very much like the old 3.25" floppies.  This audio disc came around just before the CD-R's became popular and the CD-R's killed them.

Where can they be transferred:

Checked with 999 and RBE Electronics.  John at RBE referred me to Commercial Electronic.

CE (604-669-5528) 9-5:30 can do it for $50 per hour, double if rush.

Nathan (guy works at CE) can do it after hours for about half price....604-754-8129

Working with miniDVD's

Work with these little DVD's comes as:

1. Finalizing the DVD.
2. Copying the DVD.
3. Consolidating miniDVD's onto one standard DVD.
4. Unreadable miniDVD....see posting on "ripping an unreadable miniDVD".

Finalizing

Many miniDVD's I find are not finalized.  Make sure the customer leaves the camcorder so that you can finalize the DVD's.

Time: 4-5 minutes each.

Cost:  $5-6

Copying miniDVD's to standard DVD's

It is a very good idea to backup the miniDVD's as this is usually the customer's only copy of valuable footage.  I find that when these miniDVD's are being read (for backup by Nero) I usually encounter at least one "Unrecoverable read error" and sometimes as many as 6 or 7.  It seems that these errors do not have a great impact to the playback of the discs, but it still concerns me.

Time: 4 minutes to read, read & write is 10 minutes

Cost: $7.50

Consolidating MiniDVD's onto a Standard DVD

Essentially consolidating the DVD's into a standard DVD involves identifying the contents and making note of the dates, then copying the contents into Vegas Pro, labeling the timeline and rendering out the footage.  Then importing the timeline into DVD Architect and preparing and burning the contents.  Typically 3-4 miniDVD's will fit onto a standard DVD.

1. Load miniDVD into drive (0.5 min)
2. Use VLC to read the menu and record the dates in a spread sheet (0.5 min)
3. In Vegas Pro import the footage from the miniDVD (2-3 min)
   1. File / Import / import from DVD?
   2. load onto timeline
   3. create a region for each date that you want in the final menu.
   4. render using UltimateS
   5. this should produce each clip named by date
4. In DVD Architect (5 min?):
   1. drag clips into project....each clip should create a menu name by date
   2. prepare
   3. burn

Time: 9-10 min?

Cost: $7.50?

Ripping An Unreadable miniDVD

Problem Customer brings in a mini DVD that cannot be read by the computer and sometimes cannot be read by a DVD player.  The disc is either corrupt or has not been finalized by the camera.  Sometimes that solution is to get the customer to bring in the camera to finalize the disc.  Let's assume that the camera is not available or the disc is finalized and still cannot be read.

Solution:

1. Get iso of the DVD.
2. Place disc in tray.
3. Open isoBuster (my programs/smart projects)
4. At the top of the left window pane, select the burner that has the disc
5. The left pane will contain info about the each track etc.  The right pane will contain details of the selected left pane track.
6. A window titled "No file systems and/or files found" indicating that there is a problem with the disc format and the box will be asking you to proceed to finding missing files.  Select <cancel> button.
7. Right click the left pane's session 1 disc and select "extract from-to".
8. A box titled "extract From-To" will open.  Select <Start Extraction> button.
9. It will ask you where to copy the iso file....give it a name and location on the HDD.  This will take a while to copy the disc to the HDD.
10. Now open the iso image file with isoBuster by selecting file/open image file and then the file that you just copied to the HDD.
11. A window titled "No file systems and/or files found" indicating that there is a problem with the disc format and the box will be asking you to proceed to finding missing files.  Select <Make it so> button.
12. A window titled "Scanning for lost data" will appear and start processing the iso file.
13. When the scan is finished, the right pane should be showing "recovered" VOB, VTS, etc files.
14. Select all the files in the right pane and right click.  Select "Extract Objects".  Extract the files to a appropriate area on HDD.
15. Now pull VOB's into Vegas or Nero Vision (see other article) or whatever.......

NOTE:

Had a situation where isoBuster recovered all the VOB's.  Two VOB's were about 500MB, one was about 10 minutes long and the other only 2 seconds!!! Initially I threw these both on the timeline and rendered them out as 2 second and 10 minute clips!  Redoing isoBuster had no effect.  Processed the clip through ACDSee Video Convertor Pro 3.5 ....which fixed the length (first tried AVI and Vegas did not like the file, then used mpg and Vegas worked fine.