Problem with an old video on a DVD-R disc.
 

Hello,

Would appreciate some advice. Years ago I thought I was being clever by saving a home movie from my 8mm camcorder to a DVD-R using my old dvd player that had a recording/disc burning function. This was circa 2004. The movie on the disc could be played at any time on that Sony dvd player, which I confirmed as recently as a couple of years ago. I've just tried to play the disc now on my current blu-ray/dvd player but got an error message. Same deal on my PS-4. When I put the disc into my PC, not only doesn't the video play (using VLC or the Windows player) but according to my computer the disc is empty! I suppose I could find my old dvd player, play the disc & capture the footage somehow but I'm not sure where I've packed it away. Just wondered if there's a PC based solution or some other trickery anyone could suggest to finally convert the video file into a current format.

Thanks!

Bad media, bad burn or a combination of the two. Despite the claims of DVDs lasting decades, yours is 14 years old and possibly just going/gone bad. Which is why it's critical to copy your discs and data on other media (hard drives, tape, etc) to new media every few years.

Try a different reader and/or different machines. If it's still not recognized, try using ISO Buster and ISO Puzzle. You'll have to buy to full program to complete the recovery, but it do enough to let you know if it's able to recover anything or not.

Standalone DVD players are far more tolerant about playing marginally DVDs because they're single function, unlike PC DVD readers/writers.

Also, are you sure the disc has something written to it? You can tell because the underside will be a lighter purple/blue where the data's written. Sometimes we just forget that we never used that disc! :D

Playing in the original DVD-Recorder but not i a computer would suggest the disc was either unfinalized or something went wrong when the DVD-Recorder tried to finalize the disc.

If it's the former it should be possible to sort it by putting it in the original DVD-recorder and let it finalize it. How to do that will depend on the model.

Alternatively there are combinations of software that can recover the disc contents if it's the latter, or if the DVD recorder is unavailable or broken. I've done this a few times. Not showing anything in windows explorer doesn't mean the disc is actually empty.

Trying the original recorder is a good be. Hopefully it is just a not-finalized disc that can be resolved in the original machine.

There has been a lot of poor DVD-R media sold, even well known brands. For example, I have a number of Ridata branded discs from 10+ years ago that do not play in anything today, but that did play when new. Thankfully much is the material is replaceable.

For important material on DVD (and other media) it is a good idea to make multiple copies, and periodically test the copies for read errors so you can make a new copy before the errors become uncorrectable.