DVDFAB takes forever - cpu usage zero!

I'm using dvdfab because shrink just disappears suddenly and dvd decrypter reports errors.

Fab just ploughs along apparently doing the job. But it seems to get slower and slower. And the amazing thing is that when you use task manager to see what is going on there's nothing going on! The process is using no cpu cycles at all. Nor is anything else. The cpu is idling.

You'd feel it must be hung up, stalled, stopped and feel like aborting - but leave it alone and slowly the blue bar will creep along. It has now been on the go for about 10 hours and it still hasn't finished.

It did the first few files in record time. It has now done 174 files for 2.76GB. I don't know how much more there is for it to do.

I don't know if I can stop it, close it, open it and resume, either and at these speeds I don't want to try.... I'm just keeping it going in the hopes it will get there.

But I would dearly like to know what causes a program to spend 99% of its time doing nothing? Because that's what it must be doing. There's NO cpu cycles being used by the process at all. Yet work is being done so it must suddenly burst into life from time to time - I just haven't happened to catch one of those times on task manager yet.

And there's no files in the audio_ts directory, either, which I think it created. All the files it has made so far are in the video_ts directory.

Can anyone help with some explanations for me?

regards,

ab

 

Dvd movies generally do not have files in the audio_ts. As for the program running slow all I can think of would be that your dma is turned off or the disk you are trying to copy is scratched.

 

As stated check your DMA settings, here is a guide on how to do it and change it if you have to.

http://home.comcast.net/~bbmayo/checking DMA.pdf

 

Thanks for the help.

My only drive is a SATA drive - still has DMA? I'll check.

Can anyone tell me why scratched disks (they are, definitely, though minute and makes no detectable difference to the picture) would cause this program to take so long? What is it doing? Retrying? Without cpu cycles? Has a programmed 'time out' ?

What else can I do? Some other prog to rip the main movie to SVCD or something?

regards,

ab

 

abrogard,
Try this as it will tell you if the scratches are stopping the read. You will use DVDDecrypter and AnyDVD. AnyDVD if you do not have it has a 21 trial offer:
DVDDecrypter: http://www.mrbass.org/dvdrip/

Once you have d/l'd DVDDecrypter set it up this way:
1. Go to tools
2. Go to settings
3. Under General make sure you remove the checkmark next to "Check for Structure Protection"
4. Now go to I/O and make sure the checkmark is next to "ElbyCDIO-Elaborate Bytes or SPTI"
5. Go to CSS- Set CSS cracking to -None

Make sure you have AnyDVD: http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html

After D/l of AnyDVD make sure the foxes head is showing in the lower right taskbar

Insert the DVD Movie and look at the lower taskbar and you will see the foxes head change from red to pale and back to red

Now click on DVDDecrypter
Go to Mode and make sure there is a check mark next to "File"

Click the decrypt button and watch the screen to the right
When you get to an area the computer can not read it will tell you. If DVDDecrypter can not read through the DVD then you will not be able to use that copy to make one. You will then have to find a better copy

This is the only way I could think of that will tell you if it is the DVD Movie scratches or your computer that is causing the problem


Edited due to severe BrainFart

 

1. Thanks for the replies.

2. Sorry about the second thread - I thought I was doing the right thing, actually. This thread really asking about the cpu cycles thing. But it's cool.

3. Anydvd reports it cannot read the disk.
Dyd decrypter reports continual errors.

I guess that settles, that.

You want to backup your disks do it when they're new... this technology won't rescue old disks.

Or is there something that will rip out the movie, warts and all, and save that for you, even if only in something relatively crude, such as SVCD format (or even VCD if really dire) ?

Or should that be another thread?

4. Checking with device manager I have three Primary IDE's listed and three secondary IDE's. I have only one hard drive (SATA-I confused it with the DVD drive earlier) and one DVD drive.

What I assume is the DVD drive is reported as 'use DMA when available' and 'currently Ultra DMA'.

There is one problem section in my Device Manager - 'other devices'- and it lists:

Other PCI Bridge device
PCI mem controller
SM bus controller
USB controller

as needing drivers and I can't install them from the motherboard CD but i suspect they're maybe disabled in the BIOS. This is a new computer and I followed some internet advice when setting it up and part of that advice at one stage was disabling nearly everything in BIOS. Bad advice I think, but there you go. Basically it's working fine. For those interested it is an AsusA8NSLI, Athlon64 3200, Radeon800GT,1gigRam,200gigMaxtor. I've put it together for doing this sort of work and I'm at the beginning of it. I thought I'd start on backing up first before I make my own movies and here we are with the initial probs



5. I already have Nero so I used the CD speed thing that came with it. (I dowloaded the things you pointed at, though, before I remembered I had Nero).

It reports unrecoverable - no, that should be 'uncorrectable' - L-EC errors, whatever they are.


So that settles that as far as the question of backing up rough DVD's goes and thanks very much for that, everyone concerned.

I would still like to know how a programme behaves like that.

And I'd like to know if there's any way of getting something off these disks?

regards,

ab

 

abrogard,
There are programs that will try a read the disk. Google for programs like" DVD Rescue" and see what comes up. Some people use toothpaste and lightly polish the DVD. I have never tried any of that but some say it works. Since you used DVDFAB I take it this is a movie so try an borrow a copy ( you own an original) and make a copy

 

First thing to do when a person runs into a troublesome disc where errors are suspected is to do a scan. Nero has the CD DVD Speed utility where Scandisc can be selected to check for bad sectors (which stops the backup software from reading). Bad sectors would explain why the software seems to take forever with no noticable CPU function. If the software will keep trying, it could takes days to complete a rip with a lot of bad sectors, if then. Other software will just quit. The free DVDInfoPro has a scan app if a person doesn't have the software. If too many of the red bad sectors start showing up, the scan could be seriously slowed as would be the decryption software.

Car.Mike
With some of the new copyright protection, a person can use AnyDVD + DVD Decrypter and still not be able to do a backup till the files are processed for compliance. They should still be able to do the rip though as you pointed out. However there are a couple of things you neglected to mention that slysoft suggests. Besides Elby, the SPTI option is acceptable. Also, CSS cracking should be set to none. These are suggested settings Slysoft had noted in the change log. Look at version 5.9.1.1 in History on the Slysoft site or the changes.txt in the AnyDVD app.

abrogard
Minor scratches are a fact of life with DVDs. Depending on the severity is how much they effect readability by the laser. It's all a matter of light refraction. Resurfacing tools such as Skip Dr can help and sometimes rescue software such as that noted can be of help in saving what files that are still readable. Deep scratches or gouges into the dye layer make a disk unreadable. So, clean and polish the disc, and check for scratches. Then if it doesn't look too bad and you're still having problems, do the read scan to see if you have hidden problems or bad sectors that appear to coincide with damage to the disc surface.

 

Thanks again, guys.

1. Why would bad sectors explain why the software '..seems to take forever..' ?

Because you expect lengthy time delays where the software, the computer, is doing nothing when there's a bad sector? Why?

I could understand it if it was thrashing around looking for the end of the sector, the start of the next sector, looking for something. But if it was doing that we'd see cpu cycles. I'd want to see 100% cpu cycles at such a time - emergency, crash action, go for it.

But instead what is it doing? Nothing. No cpu cycles means it is doing nothing. Not any thing. Nothing. Where's the sense in a program doing nothing?

Perhaps as a thread it is waiting for a message to wake it up. Is that it? The software sends a message to the disk and then waits for a reply for an unlimited (virtually) time?

And if it is a bad sector there'll be no reply? Hence endless waiting?

I was a programmer. But really it was before OOPs and I (obviously, I guess) don't really know how a modern programme operates. But there's obviously a flaw here. The wait time, programmed in either deliberately or by default, is too long. Maybe some hacker can fix it with a patch.

Remember the old DOS command 'format' ? Still in use everyday. It detects bad sectors without pausing for a moment. Perhaps there's a difference in 'bad' between the two - floppy disks/hard disks and DVD's but surely it's very much alike?

Or is it something else entirely?

2. Why is the whole thing so difficult? These disks play on my DVD player. Some of the disks I've had this same trouble with play on my computer DVD writer/player. No trouble reading there. Not enough to stop the job. No endless delays.

And when they play sometimes on some of them you might see a few of those little rectangles of colour here and there on the screen that means trouble reading the disk.

Yet it has still been read. And written to Video RAM. It used to be that the image on the VDU came from video RAM. You could write in assembler or even in C or even in Clipper and write directly to video RAM and what you wrote would be translated and shown on the screen if it could be translated into something displayable.

I guess things must be different these days. I don't understand how they can be, though. Surely in the end you must write to VideoRAM somehow or other? And this gets displayed. Simple as that.

So simple that a bad disk can be read and written to video ram with many pieces missing - nonsense holes in vidram - they just get displayed as blocks of random colour or something.

But the show goes on.

It takes a really, really bad disk for the player to completely lose its way, doesn't it?

So: 1. Why can't these programs read as effectively as the DVD players?

2. Why can't this byte stream to video ram be intercepted and kept, stored, used for backups, by really simple software?


regards,

ab

 

brobear,
I knew about the change and must have had a brainfart when I wrote that. Thanks for bringing it up

 

abrogard
Try doing the scan and see what you get. That was the main point of the post, not trying to explain how the read of a defective disc progresses. That's been explained on numerous occasions. You can google and get answers that have already been prepared. There's a lot of them here on AD.

 

Car.Mike
No problem, I'd just been doing a lot of posts on the same topic. Seems a lot of people didn't get the info to forget. It was placed obscurely in the change log, which a lot of people neglect to read.