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How to recover VOB video files in camcoder dvd with udf filesystem which appears empty but it's not

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I recently discovered some old double-sided mini dvd-rw disks (2.8GB) which were used for recording video with a Sony DCR-DVD201E handycam. Both sides already had content but they were unfinalized so I could not mount them on my Ubuntu 22.04 box. I proceeded with finalizing them through the camera. One side worked fine. But the other one didn't: The disk now appears as almost full of data (~1.3GB out of 1.4GB) but something seems to be wrong with the filesystem, which appears completely empty of files or folders both on my computer AND the camera. Note that the disk does *not* contain any bad blocks and it does not cause any read errors. So we're not talking about medium failures or hardware-related issue. Judging from other disks created and finalized by the same camera (including the other side of this disk), the filesystem should contain something like this:
VIDEO_TS/
VIDEO_TS/
VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.BUP
VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.IFO
VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.VOB
VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.BUP
VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.IFO
VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB
:
:
The output of dvd+rw-mediainfo is the following:
$ dvd+rw-mediainfo /dev/sr0
INQUIRY:                [HL-DT-ST][DVDRAM GP57EB40 ][RF01]
GET [CURRENT] CONFIGURATION:
 Mounted Media:         13h, DVD-RW Restricted Overwrite
 Media ID:              TDK502sakuM3
 Current Write Speed:   2.0x1385=2770KB/s
 Write Speed #0:        2.0x1385=2770KB/s
 Speed Descriptor#0:    00/716191 R@6.0x1385=8310KB/s W@2.0x1385=2770KB/s
READ DVD STRUCTURE[#10h]:
 Media Book Type:       00h, DVD-ROM book [revision 0]
 Legacy lead-out at:    716800*2KB=1468006400
READ DVD STRUCTURE[#0h]:
 Media Book Type:       32h, DVD-RW book [revision 2]
 Last border-out at:    2045*2KB=4188160
READ DISC INFORMATION:
 Disc status:           complete
 Number of Sessions:    1
 State of Last Session: complete
 Number of Tracks:      1
READ FORMAT CAPACITIES:
 formatted:		690544*2048=1414234112
 00h(800):		716192*2048=1466761216
 10h(10):		716192*2048=1466761216
 13h(10):		25648*2048=52527104
 15h(10):		716192*2048=1466761216
READ TRACK INFORMATION[#1]:
 Track State:           complete incremental
 Track Start Address:   0*2KB
 Free Blocks:           0*2KB
 Fixed Packet Size:     16*2KB
 Track Size:            690544*2KB
FABRICATED TOC:
 Track#1  :             14@0
 Track#AA :             14@690544
 Multi-session Info:    #1@0
READ CAPACITY:          690544*2048=1414234112
K3b reports the following: K3b report on dvd contents However if you mount the disk, ls, du, etc. show 0 data/files/folders. I ripped the contents using dd:
dd bs=2048 skip=0 count=690544 if=/dev/sr0 of=./out.iso
The output file is recognized via file command as:
out.iso: UDF filesystem data (version 1.5) '2009_06_27_05H54M_PM'
Then I tried udfinfo:
filename=out.iso
label=2009_06_27_05H54M_PM
uuid=00a8784b20202020
lvid=2009_06_27_05H54M_PM
vid=SONY_MOBILE
vsid=        SONY_MOBILE_VOLUME_SET
fsid=SONY_MOBILE_FILE_SET
fullvsid=00A8784B        SONY_MOBILE_VOLUME_SET
owner=
organization=
contact=
appid=
impid=*SONY_MOBILE
winserialnum=0x709b0f01
blocksize=2048
blocks=690544
usedblocks=690268
freeblocks=0
behindblocks=0
numfiles=0
numdirs=1
udfrev=1.02
udfwriterev=1.02
integrity=closed
accesstype=readonly
softwriteprotect=yes
hardwriteprotect=yes
start=16, blocks=5, type=VRS
start=32, blocks=16, type=MVDS
start=48, blocks=16, type=RVDS
start=64, blocks=1, type=LVID
start=256, blocks=1, type=ANCHOR
start=260, blocks=690268, type=PSPACE
start=690543, blocks=1, type=ANCHOR
I mounted it and tried photorec but it produces multiple small mpeg files, many of which are unplayable and which are probably part of a bigger VOB file that doesn't show up. Since I know that the disc contains VOB files, I tried ffmpeg just in case it could somehow skip the "garbage" and transcode it into something useful, however if failed:
out.iso: Invalid data found when processing input
Handbrake also failed to recognize any data when I tried to use the file as a source, although it does work properly with the directory structure of other disks possessing the VIDEO_TS folder I showed earlier. Then I tried opening the out.iso file with VLC. That one actually DID work, i.e. it started streaming video content, however with some issues: - You cannot navigate in the video as timestamps/index is broken - Converting it to mp4 creates a video with stuttering, broken timestamps, etc.. - It is obvious that it doesn't contain the whole video. Most probably the camera broke the content into multiple VOB files, so at some point it stops reading I tried to recode one of the mp4 files that I produced using VLC, even with shorter length than expected, in order to be able to see proper length (in seconds) and navigate using a player, but ffmpeg produced the following errors in the output without fixing them in the final output file:
ffmpeg -fflags +igndts -i vlc-converted.mp4 -vcodec libx264 -acodec aac fixed.mp4
:
[aac @ 0x555e72b0a6c0] Queue input is backward in time
[mp4 @ 0x555e72afe980] Non-monotonous DTS in output stream 0:1; previous: 143927607, current: 143927095; changing to 143927608. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.
[aac @ 0x555e72b0a6c0] Queue input is backward in time
[mp4 @ 0x555e72afe980] Non-monotonous DTS in output stream 0:1; previous: 143933751, current: 143933239; changing to 143933752. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.
:
So the questions are these: - Are you aware of any (linux) tool that can discover files in a UDF filesystem which contains the data but obviously doesn't have proper filesystem entries for them? - If no UDF tool exists, are you aware of any tool that can specifically recognize VOB files from a raw filesystem and "restore" them as ddrescue would do? - If none of the above is possible, do you know any ffmpeg trick or alternative tool that could at least fix the timestamp indexes of the portion of the video stream that VLC managed to convert?
Asked by Kostas Filios (633 rep)
May 9, 2023, 07:41 AM
Last activity: Sep 27, 2023, 09:51 AM