Data Hoarder

Takes bloody forever! First time upgrading storage on this thing haha.

Videos not viewed within the last year will start to be archived, watchable only by the uploader, and then deleted after a three month grace period.

If you have anything you hold dear on Dailymotion, it is well past time to start hoarding it.

Original question by @[email protected]

My partner's grandmother has passed and has left a collection of hundreds possibly thousands of DVDs. These range from official releases to pirated and bootleg copies. What would be the best way to digitize and archive this collection? Is there an external device out there that will let me burn and convert the DVDs? I'd want to possibly upload on archive.org if the copyright expired, store on backblaze or maybe another digital archiving site besides a regular torrent, would appreciate any recs on sites and advice in general. I haven't gone through these yet but figure the project would be a fun learning experience.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/60023388

Archive Team has just begun the distributed archiving of the Japanese SS Blog, a blog hosting service, which is set to be discontinued on March 31, 2025.

And you can help! There isn't much time left, so as many people running the warrior as possible is needed.

Resources:

• The wiki page of the project (not much info)
• The tracker (at the top of the page) has the simplest info on how you can help out
• The github page offers a docker-based alternative for advanced users, and more info on best practices for this sort of archiving

Why help out?

The web is disappearing all the time, and often a lot of previously easily accessible information is lost to time. These japanese blogs may not be very important to you, but they certainly are to a lot of people, and nobody knows what sort of information is found only here, until they need it.

I discovered a while back that my Garmin GPS keeps track of everywhere I go automatically when it is turned on. I found this article about how I could easily copy the gpx files from it onto a computer. I like to hoard the gpx files it produces. I found a website called dérive which can show hundreds of gpx tracks on an OpenStreetMap background. It's super interesting to look at and see everywhere I've drove in the world. Additionally, the gpx tracks are useful for OpenStreetMap editing.

Faster downloads from Gofile, in case Internet Archive is slow or not available: https://gofile.io/d/EFyn1q

Internet Archive for preservation: https://archive.org/details/snes_mods_and_romhacks_collection_20250326_patched

This is the first time I am uploading patched Roms, unlike previously where I uploaded only the patch files. My personal collection of Super Nintendo Romhacks in ready to play patched Roms in .sfc and .smc formats, complete with a descriptive text document. Most, if not all, files are patched by myself, but I did not test every game yet. Some old Romhacks do not work in accurate emulators.

Please share this everywhere where Rom files are allowed to be shared. I am only sharing here at the moment.

This collection comes in two variants: flat structure, and sub structure. "flat" just means all Roms and documents are saved in one single directory. "sub" means, every game got its own dedicated directory, where only related Romhacks and Mods are saved.

snes_mods_and_romhacks_collection_20250326_patched_flat.7z: (View Contents)

     snes_mods_and_romhacks_collection_20250326/
        Super Metroid_Nature v1.03.smc
        Super Metroid_Nature v1.03.txt

snes_mods_and_romhacks_collection_20250326_patched_sub.7z: (View Contents)

        Super Nintendo Mods and Romhacks Collection 2025-03-26/
            Documents/
                Super Metroid/
                    Nature v1.03.txt
            Games/
                Super Metroid/
                    Nature v1.03.smc

Original question by @[email protected]

For years I've on and off looked for web archiving software that can capture most sites, including ones that are "complex" with lots of AJAX and require logins like Reddit. Which ones have worked best for you?

Ideally I want one that can be started up programatically or via command line, an opens a chromium instance (or any browser), and captures everything shown on the page. I could also open the instance myself and log into sites and install addons like UBlock Origin. (btw, archiveweb.page must be started manually).

For years I’ve on and off looked for web archiving software that can capture most sites, including ones that are “complex” with lots of AJAX and require logins like Reddit. Which ones have worked best for you?

Ideally I want one that can be started up programatically or via command line, an opens a chromium instance (or any browser), and captures everything shown on the page. I could also open the instance myself and log into sites and install addons like UBlock Origin. (btw, archiveweb.page must be started manually).

Kinda fun to find myself putting together a list of resources like I've used in the past, as we gotta keep these methods alive as best we can.

For optical media, cds/DVDs/blurays/etc. it's thankfully still pretty straightforward.

For music cds or data cds (PlayStation 1 games or the like) on Windows there's the following for each respectively:

• ExactAudioCopy
• ImgBurn

For DVDs and blurays, it gets a little more complicated. In particular for blurays you'll have to get a bluray drive, internal or external (external may be cheaper), and depending on if you're also trying to handle ripping games, you have to look for a compatible drive or may have to flash the firmware on it.

On the plus side, once you have a bluray drive, if you didn't have any disc drive at all, it may be good for DVDs and other optical media as well.

All this said, here's some software to use:

• Handbrake video transcoder for adjusting video file formats, and also great for ripping DVDs with libdvdcss.
• MakeMKV another video transcoder, can be used for DVDs but given above, is mainly useful for bluray movies.

For cartridge/card-based media, it's sort of hard mode depending on its age. For older game consoles in particular, you may need special hardware to dump their cartridges if you'd really like to do it yourself. However, many older games are already dumped so you can find them online and they're often old enough the rights are in disarray and it's unlikely anyone will hassle you over them.

More recent games from existing companies though, and you know the two in particular, they like to make it murkier. Nevertheless, the methods are usually similar:

• Jailbreak or otherwise exploit the console in question if it's new enough for that (e.g. 3DS/Vita/Switch).
• Find the relevant homebrew software that enables dumping the games.
• Follow all the relevant instructions for the above, have storage with enough space for the dumped games, then enjoy playing them however you like.

Also a fun fact: in some cases a jailbroken console with backwards compatibility can then act as the specialized hardware for dumping other systems' games (see Wii for ripping GameCube games and dumping GameBoy Advance games).

This is a high level overview of some of the tools and resources I'm familiar with for these purposes, so this is by no means comprehensive. I encourage others that know of other tools and methods for this and other media^*^ to comment with their tools/resources.

*-Any LaserDisc rippers around? Vinyl? Video/audio/data cassette dumpers?

So I'm re-ripping my DVD copy of MAS*H to re-encode to a new codec, correct some mistakes I made with my original rip, etc. For example, I noticed that, since this was one of the earlier shows I ripped, I completely missed the fact that there's a second "No laugh track" English audio track that I didn't rip the first time around.

Anyway, these discs have been out in my shed for a number of years now and I have noticed a few of them have started de-laminating in spots. This one in particular, disc 1 of season 4, failed to read once so I pulled it out, cleaned it good and put it back in. It has one large bubble between the layers that isn't apparent on the label side so I don't think it's anything to do with the label getting damp or anything. There's also a wide band of what appear to be very tiny little micro bubbles in a complete circle around the disc. If it doesn't get destroyed in the compression, you can see them in the lower portion of the photo. After letting it warm up and cleaning it a bit I tried again and on the second try it slowed down and thrashed around for a few moments when it got to that same section, dropping into kB/s read speeds, but eventually got past it and succeeded in making the ISO.

I guess I'm going to have to make space to keep complete ISOs of shows and movies I particularly like, like this one. Man, those Bluray images are ridiculous though.