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Topic: VLC & Handbrake Work-Around Solution

17th Mar 2023, 10:31 AM
	Magic Marmalade If you're not lost... It's not an adventure! Member since Jun 2014 3719 Points Moderator	Hi chums, Just wanted to report a strange and accidental solution to a problem I have been having, and which I stumbled upon yesterday... and which might be helpful to anyone else in my situation. I've been trying to convert my DVDs to mp4s on my computer for some time now, as I like / prefer to watch my movies on my phone these days.... (Don't ask me why, I'm just strange like that! ) ...Anyway, being cheap, as I am, I'm not going to buy software to do it, and especially now they only seem to sell this software as a year subscription only... so naturally, I aloght on the tried and trusted free options of VLC and Handbrake. The problem is, I have a couple of dozen DVDs that have problems ripping a proper file, whereby, VLC will rip the whole thing, but the completed file is shorter in duration than I know the movie to be, and when I play back the file, the reason is that about half way through, the file freezes, catches up with itself, but then plays the remainder as about two or three times speed, with no sound. And as for Handbrake, it's great for the older DVDs (the five or six out of a hundred I have) that don't have copy protection on, everything else gives that intensely annoying error message: "No Valid Source Found" after scanning the disc. I have, of course, looked at many Youtube videos on the subject, which tend to cook my un-technical brain, and followed the advice where I could: Increase caching value, GNU twiddles and teaks, checking and unchecking LibDVDscan to read, downloading the libdvdscc thingy business etc. etc. and so on, all to no avail. Having ripped all the DVDs that would rip, I finally arrived at a point where I'd boiled it down to a pile of the problem DVDs which this / these issues affect. I tried one last time with them, but was about to go monkey on my computer... (throw poo at the screen, jump up and down screeching etc.) ...when an odd thing occurred> I began by trying to scan a DVD once more in Handbrake, on the off chance it would see it, but alas: "No Valid Source" again, so I opened VLC and began to try a rip there, which at least, I know, can read, and transcode the movie (albeit imperfectly), but just a few seconds in, thought better of it, and hit the stop button... ....This produced the mp4 file of just a few seconds duration in my video files with the thumbnail, so I deleted this, and sat and pondered. Anyway, in one last desperate attempt, I scanned in Handbrake again, and what do you know... ...It worked! So, I tried it again with another disc, and another... same thing, Handbrake cannot initially scan disc due to these inhibiting elements, but VLC can, and for some reason, by beginning a rip in VLC, which seems to get past this copy protection, this seems to carry over into Handbrake, once an initial VLC file has been made. So, it seems VLC can crack the nut for Handbrake, and get through the barrier it can't by itself, and Handbrake then gives a better, un-corrupted, consistent file in the end. So not a pretty solution, but it works. Perhaps some techno-bod about these parts can explain what it is in VLC that causes my problem with that, and what it is in Handbrake, that VLC can get around, and why? (Could I in theory, hoist that element out of Handbrake in program files, or grab the magic element from VLC, and paste it into Handbrake program?)