How to split a dual layer DVD to 2 DVD-Rs

[WZ_Man]

Well, after some experimentation, I think I have come up with a pretty good solution for those of you who do not want to lost quality with your dvd rip by transcoding it to a lower bit rate.

The downside is that it takes 2 DVDs and you have to swap movies half way through. I don't see this being too much of a downside since DVD-Rs are fairly cheap and you need a food/restroom break in the movie, right?

On a side note, this method is only for the movie only, none of the extras or menus are included.. (Personally, I don't care to have these)


Anyway.. here is a step by step approach. I have only tried this with one movie, Phantom Menace, but it should work for them all..


1. Rip the DVD with smart ripper. Do stream processing and only select the first half of the chapters. Also, select copy ifo files
2. Rip the 2nd part of the DVD by selecting the other half of the chapters
3. load up ifoedit (what a wonderful tool) and open the .ifo file that is in the directory of the first DVD
4. Hit Get VTS Sectors and then click on the VOB Extras
5. Select everything but re-mux.
6. Select your new destination directory
7. Let ifoedit do its thing
8. Click Get VTS Sectors on both of the new ifo files that ifoedit generated. (VTS_01_0.IFO and VIDEO_TS.IFO)
9. Make sure you save them
10. All done, test it with your favorite DVD player


Burn it!

This keeps in tact all of the Chapters and plays on a stand-alone DVD player.

Now, for the second DVD

1. Put in "Dummy" VTS_0X_X.VOB files for the missing VOB files. This is due to ifoedit not working correctly if it doesn't find these.

Maybe Derrow can add this into ifoedit? so you don't have to create dummy files? I am not sure.. anyway...

The rest of the steps are the same.

Hope this helps all

UPDATE: after writing this, I found that my DVD 1 is a bit faulty.

for some reason, the VOB correction doesn't seem to be working.

all of the chapters are there, and when you try to skip to chapter 2 it just hangs.. If you forward through the movie without going to chapter 2, then it is perfectly fine. I have no idea what I have done wrong.

I am attaching the 2 ifo files for DVD 1 here, maybe someone can help me out. The 2nd DVD is flawless.


UPDATE #2:

I tried this with Scarface and it works just fine. Don't know what's up with phantom menace... Anyone else have any results?

Thanks,

WZ

[Smonkey]

WZ,

Any updates? Had any luck with PM? I think this subject is going to be very important with the availability of $5 double-sided dvd-rs.

-Smonkey

[WZ_Man]

Originally posted by Smonkey
WZ,

Any updates? Had any luck with PM? I think this subject is going to be very important with the availability of $5 double-sided dvd-rs.

-Smonkey

Well, I have had no problems with any DVD besides PM... I talked to Derrow and he seems to think it is because of multiple angles. He doesn't have a solution right now to that problem either...

it seems to only screw up after editing it with ifoedit, and plays fine after ripping it.. so, I dunno.

so, that is where this stands...

Like I said, this seems to only be a problem with PM.

So, I guess for now I just won't back it up...


I like this method. Requires little effort/time to copy, and you get a perfect quality copy.

Keep me posted on new developments.

-WZ

[sneek666]

I had a question about the dummy files. Do you actually burn them or just use them for ifoedit and then delete?

[WZ_Man]

Just use ifoedit to recreate the vob files by selecting strip vob ids or stream..

-WZ

[sneek666]

ok. i guess im missing something here. you said that when you create the 2nd dvd you need to make dummy files with notpad so that ifoedit will work correctly. I did this. works fine, but my question was do you burn these dummy files onto disk 2 or do you discard them before burning?

[Derrow]

Originally posted by WZ_Man
Well, after some experimentation, I think I have come up with a pretty good solution for those of you who do not want to lost quality with your dvd rip by transcoding it to a lower bit rate.


This is a wonderful solution!

But I guess, you don't need to add dummy VOB files, cause the movie should start anyway with VTS_01_1.VOB on both DVD's.
I will validate your solution, and if you don't mind, I will place it to my FAQ-section on my site.

[WZ_Man]

Sure thing Derrow..

if you don't use dummy files on the second dvd then ifoedit just doesn't do anything. I found that if you put dummy files in there, then you can just select the strip vob id feature and have ifoedit create all new vobs starting at vob 1.... this I found was the best way to make sure that all of the chapters were kept correctly...


-WZ

[karrad]

Has anybody had any more luck with the method of WZ_Man. The simplicity of the approach is the best part. However, I noticed some problems(WZ_Man will concur) like Ifoedit 0.8 crashing when the input stream processing is used in SmartRipper 2.41 to strip unwanted streams.
Just wondering if anybody else has the same problem and is there a soln for it.
Thank you

[karrad]

Sorry,
My problem is that I do not have a DVD-R drive and I was waiting to get one till I have a sure fire method to backup my DVDs. This creates a problem in that I cannot test this method by WZ-Man or can I.
Is it possible (just for testing purposes) to rip the last few chapters (under 700Mb) and after using the method of WZ_Man, burning it on a CD and playing it on a stand alone DVD player or am I missing something huge (I can hear the sighs of disbelief of the more senior members)
:confused:

[romirova]

My PM results came out a little bit different. Disc 2 seems A-OK, with appropriate time and chapters. Disc 1 loads up a number of chapters even before the text scroll stops. It then "skips/sticks" during the flyby following the scroll. If I force to the next "chapter" via remote, the rest seems nominal. I can live with this "special feature", but I'm sure there must be a solution.
I've no access until next week, but I was thinking that since disc 2 works as desired, the thing to do might be to reassign the real VOB's for disc 1 and create artificial ones to simulate the setup of disc 2 (i.e.-the "fake" ones are 01, 02, ...).
Are we having fun yet?

[Mancubas]

Hi

Has this issue with PM been resolved with IFOEdit 0.91.

Thx, in advance...

[John Miller]

Well i'm ripping my DVD movies the same way as WZ_Man: i keep only the main movie, ditch all the menus and extra's and rip out the audio and subtitle streams that i don't need. If the main movie is still to big to fit on one DVD-R, I split it over 2 DVD-R's. However, i just use the method that is described on DOOM9's pages: it works perfectly and is even less complicated and time consuming than the method that WZ_man, describes. I have split about 30 movies already using this method and they all work perfectly. More important however is that i don't need more than 5 minutes to set everything up for a perfect burn. I must admit that I have not ripped and split a movie with multiple angles yet with this method, but is it seems to me that in such a case you need to rip the other angels out first en keep just angle 1 and you should have no problems.
Here's the way is split my DVD's into 2 DVD-R

SHORT DESCRIPTION:
1) rip all files with smartripper in file mode (no stream processing)

2) Examine VOB's with DVD2AVI and look which VOB contains main movie.
Write down VOBid's that you want to ditch from the main movie VOB's

3) Fire up IFOedit, select main movie IFO, press VOB extra's, rip out
all unwanted languages, subs and VOBid's (Make sure to check 'create new VIDEO_TS and VTS_01_0.ifo')

4) If the movie is small enough to burn on one DVD-R, you're set to go, after your have pushed 'Get VTS sectors'. Simply burn it with Nero to a DVD-R

5) If the movie is still to big, loadup the Ifo file in IFOedit and select 'split to 2 DVD-r's' from the VOB extra menu.

6) Select a splitpoint at the beginning of a chapter and split it!

7) Copy Video_TS.ifo and Video_ts.bup to the two dir's where your splitted movies are and fire up IFOedit again and load Video_TS.ifo. Correct the number of chapters on the DVD-R. Don't forget to press 'Get VTS sectors' before you close. Do this for both Dir's.

And that's it. You're ready to burn your splitted movie. This has worked every time for me: i still have to burn my first coaster with this method....

LONG DESCRIPTION:

1) Start smartripper, select file mode and push the 'select all files' button. Rip the complete DVD to your harddisk.

2) Check out the VOB files with DVD2AVI and see which vobs contain the main movie. When you have found the VOBS with the main movie, press F6 in DVD2AVI to see the extra info and check if there are any unwanted VOB ID's in the main movie VOB'S (Logo's, ect...) that you would like to rip out. Write down every VOB ID that you want to keep.
Do not concern you with the VOBid's that you see in VTS_01_0.VOB. This VOB usually contains the menu and this will get ripped out completely anyway.... Just concentrate on the VOBid's that you see in VTS01_1.VOB and so on....

3) Fire up IFOedit and open the corresponding IFO file of the VOB files that contain the main movie. Select 'VOB extras' and select the following options:
Options:
- Strip streams
- correct VOB-Unit pointers in VOB files
- correct IFO tables with new VOB-Unit information
- create nex VIDEO_TS.IFO and VTS_01_O.IFO
VOB file options:
- Remove P-UOps
- Remove Macrovision
- Adjust VOB-Unit Pointers
- Adjust Audio/Subp point.

If you want to rip out certain VOBid's you also check 'strip vobID's', but usually, this is not neccesary.
Type in the name of a destination directory and press 'Ok'.

4) IFOedit will now ask you to select the languages and the subs that you want to keep. If you checked 'strip VobID's' it will also ask you which VobID's you want to keep. After doing that, press 'strip-it' and let IFOedit do it's magic.

5) Check the size of the stripped VOB's. If the size is small enough to fit on 1 DVD-R, you're almost done: fire up IFO edit one more time and load the IFO file. Press GET VTS sectors and now your really done. Burn it to a DVD-R and it will work perfectly !

6) If the total size of the vob's was still to large, we are going to have to split the movie in 2 ! Fire up IFOedit and open VTS_1_0.IFO. Select 'Split to 2 DVD-r's' from the 'VOB extras' menu.

7)All options have been set already. Type in two different directory's for the two parts of the movie. I usually make 2 DIR's like C:\1half and c:\2half. Press 'OK'.

8) In the next screen IFOedit will ask to determine a splitting point. Don't use the splitting point that IFOedit suggests, but select the beginning of a chapter as a splitting point. I usually look at the total time of the movie an try to split to movie in half. This means that you will get about equally big VOB files on both DVD-r's. For this example let's say that our movie has 28 chapters and that I chose chapter 14 as the splitting point. Make sure that 'correct IFO tables' is checked and press 'split it'.

7) After IFOedit has worked it's magic, the movie will have been split in two and placed in c:\1half and c:\2half. Now copy over VIDEO_TS.IFO and VIDEO_TS.BUP from the previous original directory (the one that you created when ripping out the unwanted streams). Copy these files to both directory's. Open the first VIDEO_TS.IFO (from c:\1fhalf) in IFOedit and select VMG_PTT_SPRT in the top window. In the bottom window you will see a line called 'Number of chapters'. The value for this line will be 28 (in our example). Doubleclick on the value and change it to 13. Save the IFO file and then press GET VTS sectors. We're all done with the first part of the movie. Load up VIDEO_TS.IFO from the second part and repeat the operation, but this time change the value to 14 (because there are 28-14= 14 chapters left on the second DVD).

And thats it. Check out the operation of both parts with a Software DVD player like PowerDVD and then burn both parts to a DVD-R and they will play perfectly on a standalone DVD player ( at least they do on my SONY DVD).

[tyee]

Hi John
I tried your above method and it seems to work great. Used LOTR. However, I tried it again starting at step 6 of the 'long description' because it's obvious LOTR is not going to fit on 1 DVD. I selected all the same options as in step 3 of 'long description' also. The problem comes at step 7 when you say --

"Now copy over VIDEO_TS.IFO and VIDEO_TS.BUP from the previous original directory (the one that you created when ripping out the unwanted streams)."

At this point there is no stripped streams VIDEO_TS and VIDEO_BUP files, only the original ones from the original rip to the harddrive, which are incorrect obviously for us at this point.

It looks like there is a bug, and is verified in the Infoedit 'FAQ' that during a split to 2 DVDs, Ifoedit does not copy over VIDEO_TS and VIDEO_BUP files to the 2 new folders even if we check the step 3 option of 'create new VIDEO_TS.IFO and VTS_01_O.IFO'. We must have these if we have stripped streams, menus out etc.

Do you know a way around this. The reason I ask is because Ifoedit is basically doing the work twice if we use your procedure from start to finish, although it does work.

tyee

[John Miller]

I'm not quite sure but i think that while you are splitting, you can also select the option to rip streams out. I think that it is only when you do not rip any streams, that no new video_ts is created. You could try to split the DVD and at the same time rip out an unwanted subtitle. I'm not sure but i think that a new video_ts will be created then....
On the other hand: you can always use the 'create Ifos' button in the main screen of ifo edit, but for this Ifoedit has to scan all the VOB's all over again, so it is just as time consuming as my method to do the splitting in 2 steps...
Anyway, i don't care if it takes a bit longer because i do all the ripping on a spare pc, so it doesn't matter how long it takes.

[tyee]

Hi John
Yes, I did strip out a stream when I was doing it but still no VIDEO_TS.IFO. I guess we'll have to wait for Derrow to fix it.

tyee