Mark Gray's Spacecraft Films

[Steve G]

The best way I have found ripping the DVDs onto your hard drive is to use HandBrake. It bypasses any write protection that Mark used.

Mark often used multiple angles that required a special handheld remote to access, which was a pain. HandBrake gives the ability to see the angles, and then rip them appropriately. The beauty of HandBrake is that it's free with no adaware or nasty hitchhikers with the software.

Just be sure you organize the destination file and use separate folders to divide the mission's highlights, such as prelaunch, launch day, etc.

You can also figure out quickly how to determine the beginning and end of the chapters so you don't get little five minute segmants that need pieceing together. Will require a bit of trial and error, but the end results is great.

[Finnius]

yes there are many programs to copy a dvd on a 1-to-1 basis. I was talking about disc-rot....which handbrake cannot deal with.

[Blackstar]

Seeing the words "disk rot" made me nervous, so I pulled out my collection to check them. No disk rot on any of the open cases. Almost all the disks are in perfect condition. The Apollo 15 and 16 ones are still sealed. I also have the STS-109 disk. I don't know if I have Apollo 12 and 17. If they made Apollo 17, then I probably have it and need to find it. I might have skipped Apollo 12 because I knew there was not a lot of good lunar surface footage.

It has been a long time since I watched any of these, but I should do so. I remember being really impressed with them at the time. And that raises an interesting question of if these still remain the best quality videos that were made publicly available? Maybe there are a few higher-quality shots in things like the Apollo 11 documentary.

[yg1968]

The best way I have found ripping the DVDs onto your hard drive is to use HandBrake. It bypasses any write protection that Mark used.

There is no protection on the DVDs, you can just copy and paste the files onto a hard drive. You can then play the DVDs with PowerDVD.

[yg1968]

Seeing the words "disk rot" made me nervous, so I pulled out my collection to check them. No disk rot on any of the open cases. Almost all the disks are in perfect condition.

You wouldn't be able to see it visually. You would only know by playing the DVDs or when trying to copy them onto a hard drive (i.e., if they are damaged, you would get read-errors when trying to copy or play the DVDs on a computer).

[Finnius]

Seeing the words "disk rot" made me nervous, so I pulled out my collection to check them. No disk rot on any of the open cases. Almost all the disks are in perfect condition. The Apollo 15 and 16 ones are still sealed. I also have the STS-109 disk. I don't know if I have Apollo 12 and 17. If they made Apollo 17, then I probably have it and need to find it. I might have skipped Apollo 12 because I knew there was not a lot of good lunar surface footage.

It has been a long time since I watched any of these, but I should do so. I remember being really impressed with them at the time. And that raises an interesting question of if these still remain the best quality videos that were made publicly available? Maybe there are a few higher-quality shots in things like the Apollo 11 documentary.

1. check your sealed sets. just because they are sealed does not mean that the aluminum coat has not started to oxidize.
2. mark did indeed make a 6disc set for Apollo 17.
3. mark did release an HD uncompressed set of all Apollo mission on flashdrive. It was 1TB in size. Those would be the best publicly available. I am trying to contact Mark to purchase that. If anyone reads this that is in contact with Mark...let him know. Cost is not an issue for me.

[Finnius]

yg1968 is entirely correct. All the discs were set for Region 0...with no copy protection added. On CD's disc-rot would be visually apparent...but not on DVD's. Again, if anyone is experiencing read-errors on their discs...you can PM me for the best programs to use to try and recover your discs. I also might be able to help in other ways as well.

So far, what i have found is that the most prominent set to have problems is the "Project Mercury 6disc set". Not the big bulky set that had six separate compartments...but the slimmer set that had the discs back-to-back. Both packaging sets were released in 2005.

[Finnius]

Another good free program is "makemkv" It reads dvd/bluray and preserves all audio/video tracks. It also preserves all chapters stops/subtitles/languages. As for the secondary angles/videos...it finds and rips those but yes you would still have to label them according to which is which...by comparing. I do this by loading the actual dvd in Cyberlink and the 2ndary in another vid program like kmplayer, vlc, mpc-hd. Your vids will come out with no compression. so if that vid was 2gigs to start..the file will be 2 gigs as well.

The best way I have found ripping the DVDs onto your hard drive is to use HandBrake. It bypasses any write protection that Mark used.

Mark often used multiple angles that required a special handheld remote to access, which was a pain. HandBrake gives the ability to see the angles, and then rip them appropriately. The beauty of HandBrake is that it's free with no adaware or nasty hitchhikers with the software.

Just be sure you organize the destination file and use separate folders to divide the mission's highlights, such as prelaunch, launch day, etc.

You can also figure out quickly how to determine the beginning and end of the chapters so you don't get little five minute segmants that need pieceing together. Will require a bit of trial and error, but the end results is great.

[mtakala24]

Good discussion about disk rot. I will reserve some time to read my collection to HDD format.

Any ideas about trying different DVD readers if some disk cannot be read? I would presume it won't make a difference, although reading of bad disks was popular differentiator (and measured in technical reviews) when DVD drives first came out for PCs.

[Finnius]

i have 2 bluray reader/writers hooked up to my rig...didn't matter. I have finally copied all my discs and so far only had 2 instances of problems. The aformentioned "Mercury" 6disc set and "gemini flight controller orientation". Luckily for Gemini i was able to force-recheck and finally retrieved all the data. For Mercury I had to get anothe set as my 1st set had 3 discs rotted almost 50% and the others had about 15%

[mtakala24]

I have started my process. The D1 on Gemini set took 5+ hours to read, but eventually 0 errors. D2 and D3 seem to be fine.

[Thorny]

I copied all of mine with Acrok Video Converter Ultimate, no issues. They are Mighty Saturns: Early Saturns and Saturn V, Apollo 11, Project Gemini, and Liftoff.

[mtakala24]

Late night, the first problem came up. Apollo 15 6-disc set, the last disc is giving unreadable errors. I'm interested in getting working files and willing to trade with proof that you also really have similar issues.

Also Developing Project Apollo (new, in the wrapper still!) was almost completely unreadable.

Update a day later: those turned out to be the only rotten ones for me.

[Finnius]

I have finally finished these so far: (with a bit of brute force rechecking with Recovery Toolbox for CD & DVD Decrypter)

1967 ASR
Apollo 7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17
Astronauts v1
Challenger
Developing Project Apollo
Gemini Orientation
Liftoff!
Mission to the Moon
MSC Reports 1964-1969
Project Gemini
Project Mercury
Saturn I & IB
Saturn V
STS-26

[aaronmelzak]

Created an account just to post here. I too was unfortunately a customer of Spacecraft Films that did not get all their orders. I had well over $200 worth of orders never delivered. And now the website is gone, I assume Mark is either gone or moved on.

I have long archived all the discs I bought from their store or obtained from libraries in my area. I think I have everything that was released and provided. The only thing I didn't get were the third set of STS DVD's and the collection on the Manned Space Center which were the last sets he sold pre-orders for but never delivered.

Here is my collection (backed up in multiple locations and ripped to video):

1965 ASR
1966 ASR
1967 ASR
1968 ASR
Apollo 1, 7-17
AWC
First Lunar Landing
Freedom 7
Gemini
Man in Space
Mercury
Mission to the Moon
MSC Reports
Saturn I and IB
Saturn V
STS-1 to STS-41B
STS-51-J to STS-28
Challenger (STS-51-L)
Columbia
The Astronauts Volume 1

Is there anything I am missing?

[catdlr]

Created an account just to post here. I too was unfortunately a customer of Spacecraft Films that did not get all their orders. I had well over $200 worth of orders never delivered. And now the website is gone, I assume Mark is either gone or moved on.

I have long archived all the discs I bought from their store or obtained from libraries in my area. I think I have everything that was released and provided. The only thing I didn't get were the third set of STS DVD's and the collection on the Manned Space Center which were the last sets he sold pre-orders for but never delivered.

Here is my collection (backed up in multiple locations and ripped to video):

1965 ASR
1966 ASR
1967 ASR
1968 ASR
Apollo 1, 7-17
AWC
First Lunar Landing
Freedom 7
Gemini
Man in Space
Mercury
Mission to the Moon
MSC Reports
Saturn I and IB
Saturn V
STS-1 to STS-41B
STS-51-J to STS-28
Challenger (STS-51-L)
Columbia
The Astronauts Volume 1

Is there anything I am missing?

This is an excellent post to welcome you to the Forum. I'm sorry for your unfortunate loss of funds due to this company. I'm glad you were able to obtain copies elsewhere and were smart enough to rip and archive them in various locations.

I am glad you are here among professionals.
Tony

[nickrulercreator]

It's been a while since I even looked at this thread I created so long ago.

I guess, to start, my current collection consists of the following:

ASR 1967
MSCR 1964-1969
Apollo 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, and 17
STS-26
Gemini
Saturns - I and IB
Saturns - Saturn V
Liftoff!

It's great to see others keeping their collections up and growing them as they can!

[ariane5]

3. mark did release an HD uncompressed set of all Apollo mission on flashdrive. It was 1TB in size. Those would be the best publicly available. I am trying to contact Mark to purchase that. If anyone reads this that is in contact with Mark...let him know. Cost is not an issue for me.

I bought that flashdrive with all the 16mm films on it. In the end it is not o.k., because those are the old film scans which are blurry towards the edges.
There was a new scan of all the 16mm filmns, which are available on youtube if you search for "Apollo Flight Journal" resp. "Apollo nn Flight Journal" (set in the flight number for nn). Only missing is Apollo 16.

[ariane5]

Here is my collection (backed up in multiple locations and ripped to video):

AWC
Columbia

What is meant with AWC ?
I am not aware of a set called Columbia. Therer were sets for STS-26, STS-27, ST-29, STS-30, STS-109. I have those.

[yg1968]

Is there anything I am missing?

You have the main ones but there was a few more. For a complete list of the Spacecraft Films DVDs that were once available, see the second post in this thread (in this other forum):
https://www.statueforum.com/showthread.php?t=157767

See also my post in this thread:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=58193.msg2454299#msg2454299