Mark Gray's Spacecraft Films

[Finnius]

so I have been going thru ebay to aquire any that I'm missing but after grabbing like 6 discs that some clearance company had...i'm at a standstill.

am still looking for quite a few like:

F-86 Sabre - (2-DVD's)
Mach 3: The XB-70 Valkyrie - (1 DVD)
The Apollo Lunar Surface Journal - (3 DVD's)

and other ones that are harder to find. I would be willing to trade or REPLACE any defective discs you have (as long as you show me a pic of the set you have defective. seems only fair that you had to own it originally to get a disc replaced)

edit: i have these currently-

1967_ASR 1disc
Apollo 01 1disc
Apollo 07 2disc
Apollo 08 3disc
Apollo 09 2disc
Apollo 10 2disc
Apollo 11 3disc original
Apollo 12 3disc
Apollo 13 3disc
Apollo 14 5disc
Apollo 15 6disc
Apollo 16 6disc
Apollo 17 6disc
ASTRONAUTS V1 1disc
Challenger 3disc
Developing Project Apollo 1disc
GEMINI ORIENTATION 1disc
Liftoff 2disc
live_from_the_moon (720p).mp4
Misson to the Moon 2disc
MSC REPORTS 1964-1969 1disc
Project Gemini 3disc
Project Mercury 6disc
Saturn I & IB 3disc
Saturn V 3disc
STS-26 1disc

The reason I am doing this is two-fold. 1: Mark will most likely never continue or restart his site. 2: From a historic perspective I feel these discs should be preserved by as many people as possible for future generations. This is why I brought up the subject of disc-rot in the first place...because i was working on making backups and started encountering problems. We need to preserve this material for the future.

[Finnius]

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.

me neither. I looked at the old website and can't see anything that might fit those 2.

[Thorny]

me neither. I looked at the old website and can't see anything that might fit those 2.

AWC might be Astronaut Wives Club, but what that has to do with Spacecraft Films, I don't know.

[db9999]

I'm glad I found this interesting conversation about SpacecraftFilms!

Like a few others, I created an account here just to discuss the SpacecraftFilms DVDs. Some folks on this thread have converted them to iso images and/or video files which is a great way to preserve the videos.

I'm surprised that, to my knowledge, NASA never made these videos available like SpacecraftFilms did. If NASA made similar DVD/Blu-ray discs I think they would sell very well. These are video recordings of the most impressive engineering feats in history and I would think NASA would have made them available for streaming or on disc. Hopefully the National Archives has copies of everything SpacecraftFilms made.

Someone mentioned having problems with a few discs. My Mercury disc #4 gave me problems. I think I was finally able to convert it to an iso image file but I need to watch it again to make sure it plays correctly. If my image doesn't play properly I would probably be willing to trade for a good copy.

Here is what I have:

Apollo 1, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
ASR, 1965-1968
The Astronauts, vol 1
Developing Project Apollo
Freedom 7
Gemini
Gemini FCO
Live from the Moon, DVD (not sure if I also have the Blu-ray version)
Man in Space
Mercury
The Mighty Saturns, I and IB
The Mighty Saturns, The Saturn V
Mission to the Moon
MSCR 1964-1969
STS-109

[mtakala24]

From what I understand of the timeline, the Spacecraft Films scans that they did, were in the pre-HD/4K era. Some materials have since been scanned again and released by Nasa too in HD - at least some of the Apollo 11 footage is like that.

[buckyhead]

Great thread on an important topic.  If NASA won't sell or host this data... then it falls to people like those of you above to make sure it stays alive and available.

As cool as it would be to own the physical DVDs, the second-hand market is just out of my price range (and too sparsely populated).  I wonder how many copies exist out there.

[gpalz]

Curious to know if anyone's DVD(s) are not playable anymore? My DVD players are unable to read my Apollo 1 disc now. Disc plays the opening Spacecraft Film intro and stops. No issues when I bought it years ago.

[catdlr]

Curious to know if anyone's DVD(s) are not playable anymore? My DVD players are unable to read my Apollo 1 disc now. Disc plays the opening Spacecraft Film intro and stops. No issues when I bought it years ago.

I read a report long ago that this issue may occur.  I decided to rip all my DVDs to data.  Had to purchase an extra external FH to house them all.  But look up this product "MkvToMp4": it reads the entire DVD, analyzes it, sees what is recoverable, and spits out the content so you can choose what to convert to MP4.

https://www.videohelp.com/software/MkvToMp4

[gpalz]

Curious to know if anyone's DVD(s) are not playable anymore? My DVD players are unable to read my Apollo 1 disc now. Disc plays the opening Spacecraft Film intro and stops. No issues when I bought it years ago.

I read a report long ago that this issue may occur.  I decided to rip all my DVDs to data.  Had to purchase an extra external FH to house them all.  But look up this product "MkvToMp4": it reads the entire DVD, analyzes it, sees what is recoverable, and spits out the content so you can choose what to convert to MP4.

https://www.videohelp.com/software/MkvToMp4

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to get the program to analyze the DVD and do what you describe. I'll visit the video help forum and see what I can find there. Thanks.

EDIT: Gave VLC a try. VLC is capable of reading and capturing the individual VOB files.

[mtakala24]

Yeah, disc rot is unfortunate and happens. I think me and Finnius can provide replacement vob files to replace unreadable ones that you may have but for what we have saved succesfully, against proof of ownership.

[gpalz]

mod edit: apparently about the Apollo 1 disc

Just to follow-up here and close the loop. Turns out the first 14 VOB files are readable which covers up to CM Removal. It seems the remaining VOB files 15 - 34 are no longer readable based on the few that I tried to read unsuccessfully. Backed up the good VOB's and converted them MP4's as well. So I was able to salvage around 2 hours of material from the DVD. Thank you for your input.