Guide: DVD-9 to DVD-5 Multi-PGC "Full Copy" Instructions

[TRILIGHT]

Ok, it's been a long time coming but I've finally put something together that should be fairly easy to follow. Please understand that it is NOT meant to be the "end all, be all" solution to ALL multi-PGC titles! I wrote it so that people who were not familiar could get a better understanding of how to deal with multi-PGC titles. This post would be WAY too long and would not have the same effect without the screenshots so I am only going to post a link here. It is as follows:

http://dvdguides.trilight.net

Should Doom9 decide to include them in the site here, you will be able to access the guide here from now on. Until then, you can access it at the above link. Hopefully this guide will at least give people who are not "in the know" a better understanding of how to deal with multi-PGC titles. Especially considering the use of the new DoItFast4U! tool makes things so much easier to deal with.

EDIT: I've changed the URL. Hopefully this is a bit more helpful.

[Bear263]

Would like to say thanks Trilight. Between this guide and other Scenarist NT guides, I finally made my M.A.S.H. backup without a lot of effort. I have done it in maestro but this was way easier.

Thanks for the time and effort to put this together.

Bear

[TRILIGHT]

You're welcome, Bear. :) With the ease of dealing with chapters and subtitles in Scenarist now (trust me, they were not always so easy! In fact, back when I wrote the Maestro guide, they were downright ANNOYING), it has become much better to use Scenarist for such things than Maestro. Anyway, I would recommend using this method for both single and multi PGC titles now. I'm glad it worked out for you and you got your project completed!

[nydoofus]

Thanks, this is exactly what I needed at the right time.

BTW, how do I contact the creator of DoItFast4U, there seems to be a bug with the VobSub support. For some reason when I activate it, it doesn't rip the 2nd PGC and also the subtitle files are invalid.

[Eyes`Only]

Vobsub PGC functionality was a recent feature. Before, you could only vobsub ALL pgcs or none, but due to popular request I implemented PGC selection. I've seen this bug before and I thought I had corrected it, but maybe I didn't catch it all the way?

I'll be happy to work with you to resolve this. I'll pm you with my email addy.

[caprioles9000]

ww000ttttt Trilight thanks for this great guide.....i do hope that we also see Jdobbs'guide in the end both scenarist users and maestro users will be very happy....thanks man you are the man ;)

Greettzzz...
Caprioles9000

[hendrix]

Trilight - thats a great tutorial thanks :D

hendrix

[TRILIGHT]

I'm glad y'all find the guide useful! Hopefully it clears a few things up for those who don't exactly understand what a PGC is or why the basic method won't work for them on these titles.

[Alexcdr]

hello guys

this is indeed a great tool... but isn´t working for me. when i try to open the avs file in CCE, it gives me this error: "frame rate 20000/1000 is not supported. Supported frame rate are 23.976, 24,25,29.97,30,50,59.94 and 60"

Any ideas??

Thanks in advance

Keep up the goodwork

[Eyes`Only]

what settings did you use and what specs is the vts you're demuxing (is it NTSC, main movie or extra, etc.)

[Alexcdr]

its the main movie...

My settings are: vts1, use force film, vobsub... and pal deinterlace.


p.s. this movie is PAL

[Eyes`Only]

That's what i figured. Your problem is forcefilm. You never use forcefilm with a PAL movie, as far as I know. Remove that checkbox and see if everything works now.

[GlenC]

Hi,

Great looking util.

Quick question though. How do you know what settings to use before you start the process. ie Force film, Vobsub, Decomb, etc.

Surely you need to pull the movie off the dvd before you know these settings...or am I being stupid.

Cheers

Glen.

[Eyes`Only]

Easiest way is to run one of the vobs of the VTS set you want to demux though Bitrate Viewer or DVD2AVI, and figure out what settings to use from the information that both of those utilities give you. Same way people did it before DoItFast4U! existed. :D

[Cbass98]

Excuse my newbiness (just hit my first multi PGC DVD), and I was wondering if there was a tool to demux each individual PGC from the original .VOB file that I extracted with DVD Decrypter?

[caprioles9000]

Eyes Only......

I was wondering..whether it would be possible to make some suggestions for doitfast4u...well i already had ripped a DVD on file mode with dvddecrypter to my HDD before i knew about your tool...and was wondering would it be possible just like smartripper to add a functionality that instead of only being able to choose your dvd drive as the source that you could also maybe choose the vob files from a folder and let doitfast4u do its work.....for those people who for example did save some files to their HDD before they knew about your tool, maybe this functionality could also be usefull.....i know that it would kinda beat its purpose one way...but still i am sure that there lots of people who migth have quickly saved soem files ..because they did not have the time....naturally normally you could run it right away on the DVD when u have the DVD.....but just thought if its not too much of a difficulty maybe it might be useful.....anyways ..let me know what you think ........

[Mishel]

I would second caprioles9000 request and I am sure there are many others.

[Eyes`Only]

Actually it's an extremely BIG request, and the limitation lies with the way DVD Decrypter reads the .ifo and .vob files. Of course this functionality would be 100x more useful than the current version, and I have spoken with Light_UK many, many times requesting it. According to him, it would require an entire 'rewrite' of the code used to parse the .ifos right now. Whether it's a function we are going to see in the near future I do not know. However, I have scripted a utility that can do this (way back when i started this venture) that works by using Vstrip instead of DVD Decrypter. It has many inherent limitations so far, but I may consider incorporating the script as a kind-of 'optional' function of DoItFast4U!, if I can work out how to do so in a smooth, easy fashion. Like I said, it will have it's limitations, such as no DTS, but it does work, and many of my beta testers still play with it today.

If you want this functionality built-in to DVD Decrypter (wouldn't that be NICE?!) maybe more ppl contacting Light_UK about it will show him that we NEED it, and he'll be more apt to work on it (so far just a couple of others have hit him up.) His website is http://www.dvddecrypter.com. While you're talking to him, give him a sense of urgency about us needing version 3.1.5.0 too!

Another fix for you all that have .vobs/.ifos on your hdd:

Use ifoedit (Settings>Image Creation>Uncheck "Check DVD Size" first) and create yourself another image of your DVD. Then use daemon-tools (http://www.daemon-tools.com) to mount this image as a pseudo-dvdrom, and now DVD Decrypter can use this pseudo-dvdrom to rip from.

As a general rule, for all of my DVD-Backups, I NEVER rip the .vob/.ifos to the hdd. I do an .iso read using DVD Decrypter, and rip the whole DVD to a single .ISO/.MDS combination. Then I mount that with daemon-tools, and proceed from there. That way, if anything goes wrong I have the exact image of the DVD to work with again. I highly suggest others start following the same procedures. You'll find the advantages are numerous.

[TRILIGHT]

@Caprioles9000 & Mishel: I don't think you grasp what it is the tool actually does for you. Think of it as an automation tool, not a control tool. DIF4U! is a front-end tool which automates a lot of the back-end apps and processes which would normally take you a considerable amount of time to do manually. If you watched it as it was running, you would easily see that the ripping is done via DVD Decrypter. DVD Decrypter does not work with files from the hard drive and no updates to the DIF4U! code will change that. There have been a number of posts here about DVD Decrypter and doing this. Take a look at "Daemon Tools".

@Everyone: You should probably spend a little time becoming more familiar with the tool to understand how it operates and what it's actually doing for you. It will help you to understand how to work with your project. Someone had asked how they knew what settings to choose ahead of time before running the tool. Seriously, if you are not familiar enough with how to obtain this information and work with it, you should probably not be trying to tackle more complex multi-PGC projects (or vobid projects). I can't stress enough how important it is to have a fundamental understanding of what it is you're actually doing. It will help you in the long run.

[hendrix]

DIF4U is a great tool - it saved me a lot of time, im just glad that i dont have to open up notepad and create .avs files anymore :D
thanks Eyes`Only and everyone else who helped creating this great tool

hendrix

[Eyes`Only]

Thanks hendrix.

All: I just put version 1.0.0 out on my site publicly. It incorporates many requests and plenty of new additions. Enjoy!

[caprioles9000]

@ Eyes & Trilight ....

I definetly agree with both of you ....when i was in Tyris' test group who also had such an automation tool it was simply amazing......DUITFAST4U is also amazing ......it works great .....from what i see of eyes'post i guess its a huge step to work such a source in ..so for now i am sure many people should be very happy that even such a tool exists:) .....and they do not have to go through the mess we had to in the earlier days.......well i am sure that we will see these type of tools get better and better ..and have more and more functionalities in teh future ......THNX Eyes for creating such a tool:)))......and cant wait to see updates on them:)...and i guess i will try deamont tools and also start ripping my DVD's as an ISO:)!!!! Thnx guys appreciate all the information posted!!!!

[TRILIGHT]

Glad you find the information useful, Caprioles9000! Happy Backing Up! :D

[Eyes`Only]

Thanks Caprioles9000.

You'll find the .iso method has many benefits. Knowing that you have a complete image of your DVD at all times is one of the best ones. Since the image is mounted read-only, you can't 'accidentally' change a file or two. Also, demuxing from a virtual drive is fast, much faster than most people's dvdrom drives, with no fluctuation in speed as it gets further into the DVD.

I originally opposed this method, thinking it was too much 'overhead'. But after being forced to use it because of the limitations of DVD Decrypter, I quickly grew accustomed to it, and now feel that with the cheap prices of hdds, this is definitely the way people should start using.

[valnar]

There is a gentleman in Germany creating a tool which automates some processes too, but not as many as Doit4U. It does the CCE behind the scenes, which is really nice.

http://www.dvd2dvd-r.de/index.php
Have you looked at his tool? Perhaps the two can be combined in a way? CCE is no fun to do by hand either.

Robert

[Eyes`Only]

I've read a lot about dvd2dvdr. Even tried to install it a while back, but like many, it crashes my machine (both win2k and winxp), so I never actually used it. But I dont believe in dictating the way someone should use CCE, so I'm not interesting in going past the steps DoItFast4U! goes now.

In case you are not aware, there's about 3 main differing styles of CCE. These are:

1) Robshot Method
2) Roba Method (some say this makes a diff, others think Roba only matters for non-DVD stuff like SVCD,Divx,etc.)
3) One-pass method

I'm sure there's many other preferences I haven't even begun to list here. So consequently, I think finding your own 'perfect fit' is something best left to individual tastes.

Oh and I disagree. I think CCE is quite easy. How could anyone that has learned CCE not think so? Set a couple settings after checking to see how the original .vob is structured. drag your .avs file(s) into it, and press start!

[TRILIGHT]

Yeah, CCE is pretty easy. He may be referring to having to do a lot of encodes at once though. Which would mean he hasn't learned the value of editing the ECL file :D Saves a whole crapload of time!

[TRILIGHT]

Search for "Robshot Method" and "Roba Method" as Eyes mentioned.