"Das Boot DC" Superbit edition: 2x DVD9 -> 1x DVD9. It's *almost* working!

[MCSmarties]

I am trying to modify my Superbit edition of Das Boot - Director's Cut.
Basically, I'm fed up having to switch DVD in the middle and sit through all the FBI warnings etc. again just to continue watching the movie! It completely kills the mood for me.
So what I am trying to do is combine the two DVDs, keeping only the german DTS soundtrack, into one DVD9.
I'm aware that I will still need to reencode and thus lose some quality, but I can live with that.

What I have done so far:
1. ripped both DVDs with DVDDecrypter. DVD1 weighs 6.12GB, DVD2 weighs 5.66GB so total is 11.78GB.

2. used DVDRemake Pro 3.6.3 to combine the DVDs:
- Extracted main movie from DVD2 ("Copy PGC") and added to the Program Chain of DVD1 ("Add Copied PGC" = PGC2). Note that "Append copied PGC" remained grayed out. Is it because the PGC is too big? :confused:
- Modified the Chapters menu of DVD1 by adding the menu for DVD2 ("Copy PGC" -> "Append Copied PGC")
- Fixed the playback by deleting post commands from PGC1 and adding "Link PGC 2", then deleting pre commands from PGC2.
- Fixed proper continuation of the movie: DVD1 had 35 chapters (eg cells), DVD2 had 65 cells but only really started at cell 36, so I deleted cells 1-35 from DVD2 and fixed the references
- Added Breakpoints for chapters 36-65 by adding them to the Titles.
- Removed all AC3 tracks, keeping only the German DTS soundtrack
- Edited the Main Menu so as to delete the Audio Menu button (since I only have one audio stream left)
- Hid several PGCs with crap for later blanking
- Saved DVD, which generated 11 VOBs (VTS_01_1.VOB to VTS_01_11.VOB), thus breaking the DVD specifications.

3. Merged VOB 8+9 and VOB10+11 using VOBMerge 2.5 to end up with 9 VOBs, two of which are oversized.

4. Used VOBBlanker 2.1.3.0 to delete unwanted crap (FBI warnings etc), delete the audio menu and replace the main menu with a customized still BMP without the Audio menu button.
Saved the tweaked DVD which resulted in 9 VOBs, only the last of which is grossly oversized at 2.61GB.
Total DVD size is now 10.6 GB.

5. Cleaned the resulting DVD with FixVTS. No errors.

Now I want to reencode my DVD to fit onto 1 DVD-DL disc.
I want to use DVD Rebuilder 1.26.2 with CCE SP 2.67.00.27.

Here is the problem: DVD Rebuilder won't load my "combined" DVD properly.
Even though it loads the DVD directory without errors, it only recognizes 6.62GB instead of the whole 10.6GB!
I tried to reencode anyway, but as expected I ended up with only half the movie. I noticed that the encoding did not abort right at the end of what was DVD1, but rather a little later.

I then tried to load the "unblanked", raw combined DVD with 11 VOBs from step 2.
Now DVD Rebuilder only loads VOBS 1-9 for a total of 9.2GB, so that's no go either.

I also cannot load the cleaned DVD in DVDRemake Pro anymore. Only the menus are loaded, the VOBs are completely ignored.

Ironically, DVDShrink can load and process the combined DVD perfectly!
I can produce a working DVD-DL that way, but I'm not too thrilled about the quality since I still have to recompress to about 70%.
I would really like prefer to reencode using CCE in multiple passes (6? I have time...) instead of the DVDShrink approach.

Is there a way I can make DVD Rebuilder load an "oversized" DVD properly?
Or does anybody have an idea what else I could do for my project? Did I do something wrong?
:thanks:

[Ghitulescu]

If DVD shrink can cope with your custom DVD, then use it at 100% (no compression, ignore the warning) and use that output to feed DVDRB. I hope you have some extra space.

[MCSmarties]

Thanks for the reply Ghitulescu!

I just tried your suggestion but no luck.
DVDShrink also spits out 11 VOBs at 1GB each. If I try to load them in DVD Rebuilder, it stops again at VOB 9.
If I merge the extra VOBs with VOBMerge, DVD Rebuilder loads again only 6.62GB.
If I specify in DVDShrink not to split the VOBs into 1GB chunks, I am left with only one, huge VOB file. DVD Rebuilder doesn't detect it at all and only loads the menus.

I can load this output in VOBBlanker, DVDShrink and PGCEdit but not in DVD Rebuilder or DVDRemake Pro. Weird.

[Ghitulescu]

Ok, then try demuxing the movie into ESs then remux them again, this way you should have compliant VOBs.

[MCSmarties]

Well, I managed to solve the problem!

What I did was to reencode the combined DVD in DVD Rebuilder before using VOBBlanker - i.e. right after step 3.
Turns out that once I had merged the extra VOBs with VOBMerge, DVD Rebuilder was perfectly happy to open and process
the oversized DVD. It just didn't like the output from VOBBlanker, FixVTS or not.

Once this was done, I continued with step 4 to clean up the menu.

I ended up with a slightly undersized DVD (there would still be 100MB of free space for a DVD-DL). Oh well.
Comparing the quality with the DVD I previously reencoded with DVDShrink, the picture looks as expected MUCH better.

@Ghitulescu: Thanks for trying to help me, I appreciate it. One more thing, I did not understand what you meant by
"ESs" in your last post. I know how to demux DVD audio streams, but I guess that's not what you were referring to?
For my future reference, how would I go about doing what you proposed? Thanks!

[Ghitulescu]

Well, I managed to solve the problem!

What I did was to reencode the combined DVD in DVD Rebuilder before using VOBBlanker - i.e. right after step 3.
Turns out that once I had merged the extra VOBs with VOBMerge, DVD Rebuilder was perfectly happy to open and process
the oversized DVD. It just didn't like the output from VOBBlanker, FixVTS or not.

Once this was done, I continued with step 4 to clean up the menu.

I ended up with a slightly undersized DVD (there would still be 100MB of free space for a DVD-DL). Oh well.
Comparing the quality with the DVD I previously reencoded with DVDShrink, the picture looks as expected MUCH better.

@Ghitulescu: Thanks for trying to help me, I appreciate it. One more thing, I did not understand what you meant by
"ESs" in your last post. I know how to demux DVD audio streams, but I guess that's not what you were referring to?
For my future reference, how would I go about doing what you proposed? Thanks!

Elementary Streams - ie audio, video, subtitles as individual files.

[MCSmarties]

LOL OK, now I understand!
I was wondering if there was another format you could "decompose" VOBs into (independent of streams) :p

:thanks: