I recently got a DVD set from a trade on here. A few discs skip and I was wondering if there are any software that are good for backing up skipping DVDs. The traders is overseas so I definitely don't want to waste time having to do the international shipping process which took almost 3 weeks for this set.

Instead of throwing them out or trying to get new copies I would like to see if there is anything I can do to recover the bad discs.

I know there are programs that do this sort of thing for free but I don't want to risk infecting my computer with some sort of virus.

I recently got a DVD set from a trade on here. A few discs skip and I was wondering if there are any software that are good for backing up skipping DVDs. The traders is overseas so I definitely don't want to waste time having to do the international shipping process which took almost 3 weeks for this set.

Instead of throwing them out or trying to get new copies I would like to see if there is anything I can do to recover the bad discs.

I know there are programs that do this sort of thing for free but I don't want to risk infecting my computer with some sort of virus.

How are they skipping? Is it during playback? Sometimes I've had discs that skip and stutter on my DVD player. I have taken those discs and re-burned them on better quality media (usually Taiyo Yuden) at a low speed like 4x and that solves the problem.

1. Inspect physical disc. If dirty, clean. Maybe buff and polish.
2. Try to copy disc with DVD Shrink. If it copies, burn copy to new disc with Imgburn.
3. If it doesn't copy but says something like "invalid DVD structure", the underlying video file may be good, so pull video off with DVD Authoring program or DVD Decrypter. Re-author new disc.
Sometimes you just screwed with all three though.

Were they VHS dubs recorded on a standalone DVD recorder? I see this often on recordings from standalone DVD recorders at the higher quality settings. The encoder on the recording deck is sometimes not fast enough, or does not have a large enough buffer. As a result, the machine will drop frames. Playback results in 'skips', with no way to recover the lost data.

If there are errors in the disc, this software can help

http://www.videohelp.com/software/DVD-Decrypter

You can set it to skip over the read errors of the bad sectors.