How do you check a huge pile of DVDs to see if they’re defective?
I have a large pile of DVDs lying around here and would like to sell them. I’ve checked the prices, and there are quite a few (probably around 100) valuable movies and TV series (priced at over $20 each) among them. Some are in better condition, others in worse condition.
I sat down and fast-forwarded through the DVDs at 30x speed. But first of all, that’s extremely annoying, and second, I read online that you don’t necessarily catch reading errors that way.
Now I’ve tried a few programs on my PC. Most of them have the problem that they can’t read copy-protected DVDs properly. They throw up tons of errors, and I tested this with completely clean DVDs that work perfectly fine. So they’re not really usable. These include Nero DiscSpeed, DVDiStar, IsoBuster, and many others. I’ve actually tried every free program out there i could find. Before anyone recommends MakeMKV, I really don’t want to do anything illegal just to test DVDs.
In my desperation, I even had some AI programs cobbled together, but unfortunately, they don't work properly either. One plays the movies through and checks for stuttering and such, but it doesn’t detect it properly—or rather, VLC Media Player handles small issues much better than a conventional DVD player. The other program was supposed to do something like IsoBuster, except that it skips the copy-protected sections of the DVD. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work either and it tells me that 90 % of the disc has some problem.
Now I’m faced with a decision: do I just send all my heavily scratched DVDs in to be polished and save myself most of the hassle—but have to pay upfront—or do I keep racking my brain, spending countless more hours installing Linux on another computer, until I hopefully finally find a solution at some point?
I think it's completely crazy that there isn't a working automated solution for a task that is (in my view) so simple.