Need help with video files

[TVnoob]

Hi,

 

I have a problem I can't seem to find a solution to.

 

My parents have some old video footage from my childhood on a hard drive. But the files only show up on one smart LG tv. I would like to get the files out of this hard drive so I could watch them on PC and other devices. I brought the hard drive to local tech stores and tech repair shops. Noone could figure out a way to get the files out. The files don't show up at all when I open the hard drive on PC.

 

I had an idea to just record the TV screen while playing the video files but I don't find a way to record this TV screen while also playing videos from the hard drive.

[kirashi]

38 minutes ago, TVnoob said:

Hi,

 

I have a problem I can't seem to find a solution to.

 

My parents have some old video footage from my childhood on a hard drive. But the files only show up on one smart LG tv. I would like to get the files out of this hard drive so I could watch them on PC and other devices. I brought the hard drive to local tech stores and tech repair shops. Noone could figure out a way to get the files out. The files don't show up at all when I open the hard drive on PC.

 

I had an idea to just record the TV screen while playing the video files but I don't find a way to record this TV screen while also playing videos from the hard drive.

External drives should be detected by most any computer these days, however the format of the drive may hinder a given device's ability to read the drive's contents. We'd need a lot more information to even begin speculating what's up with your situation here, like...

• How was this drive originally used? (with a computer? with a proprietary cable box PVR system? etc.)
• What kind of drive is it? (USB? eSATA? Firewire? supply the make and model, or take clear photos.)

Once we know more information, we can maybe suggest things to try, such as connecting the drive to a PC running Linux or checking if it appears in Windows Disk Management but just happens to be missing a drive letter.

[mariushm]

The file system on the hard drive may not be NTFS or Exfat or anything that Windows may be able to open directly... that could explain why you're not seeing the files.

 

How do the files show up on one smart LG tv?  By connecting the hard drive through USB or something like that?

 

If that happens, then you could boot from a Linux DVD, mount the hard drive as a usb portable device and then you may be able to explore the contents of the drive.

 

Before messing around with it, I would suggest using a tool like Macrium Reflect or something else to create a drive image , like a DVD/CD image but for the whole drive.

 

You can then mess around either with the hard drive or the drive image, knowing the other one still exists.

[RabbidEwok]

1 hour ago, TVnoob said:

Hi,

 

I have a problem I can't seem to find a solution to.

 

My parents have some old video footage from my childhood on a hard drive. But the files only show up on one smart LG tv. I would like to get the files out of this hard drive so I could watch them on PC and other devices. I brought the hard drive to local tech stores and tech repair shops. Noone could figure out a way to get the files out. The files don't show up at all when I open the hard drive on PC.

 

I had an idea to just record the TV screen while playing the video files but I don't find a way to record this TV screen while also playing videos from the hard drive.

Did they use a Mac? 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

How were the files generated? It could be a drive format issue. You may have better luck making a bootable Linux USB drive (Ubuntu, Mint, or any relatively popular distribution for easy help finding would do), then checking if it can see the drive and its content.

[TVnoob]

9 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

How were the files generated? It could be a drive format issue. You may have better luck making a bootable Linux USB drive (Ubuntu, Mint, or any relatively popular distribution for easy help finding would do), then checking if it can see the drive and its content.

The tech guys used linux to try and open the files.

 

By hard drive i meant a SanDisk external hard drive that is connected to TV with a USB cable.
The videos originally came from old vhs tapes. The LG smart TV had some way of putting the videos on the hard drive in this format that can only be seen by the TV.

Does anyone know a way to just record the TV screen? That would be a simple way to solve my problem.

10 hours ago, RabbidEwok said:

Did they use a Mac? 

[LogicalDrm]

On 10/21/2023 at 10:27 AM, TVnoob said:

By hard drive i meant a SanDisk external hard drive that is connected to TV with a USB cable.
The videos originally came from old vhs tapes. The LG smart TV had some way of putting the videos on the hard drive in this format that can only be seen by the TV.

That seems odd. I think what you mean is that your parents had one of those VHS/DVD/HDD combo players and used that. The settings probably were using proprietary format as default, while it most likely had others like AVI or MPEG as options. 

 

Though looking up some answers from Google, there might not have been such options. So best option would have been to get those videos as burned to DVD since ripping DVDs is easy and fast, and only requires DVD player.

 

On 10/21/2023 at 10:27 AM, TVnoob said:

Does anyone know a way to just record the TV screen? That would be a simple way to solve my problem.

Literally just pointing camera at the screen. Any capture card would require video signal to be output through connection, and such isn't happening with this.

[Helly]

Could try to root the TV get something like an FTP server running on it so you can log in on it and copy the files that way. They would still be encoded with a codec your PC doesn't understand but that's a problem for later. I did this exact thing with TV recordings on my old samsung tv.

How to do this with your TV i have no idea, good luck.