Seamless Branching, Cells, Chapters

[foxmid]

Hi, I'm trying my first backup by vob-id for Die Hard. This particular DVD has two versions of the film, the first using vobid 1,2,3,5,6, the second using 1,2,3,4,5,6.

I've got it laid out in Scenarist (yay!) and it even compiles correctly, but doesn't play quite right because I can't get IFO Update to work.

Basically, I get the tracks set up, export the .SCP file into ScenChap, paste the values that IFOUpdate exported for me, and reimport the new .SCP file into Scenarist.

Now, I've got the correct number of PGCs, Cells, and everything - the problem is, my original has many cells that aren't chapter points, but they wind up as chapter points after I import them.

I've gone in and done a "Rearrange chapters" and removed the scenes that are just cells (while looking at the original IFO in IFO Edit).

Is this all I've got to do?

Secondly - do I have to link the cells using commands or anything to get them to go from one track to the next, or is that handled by dragging them over (in the correct sequence, of course! egads!) to the PGC?

Thanks for your help and patience. I know Scenarist WAAAAY better than I ever imagined, at this point - yet I still no nothing. What a world.

[foxmid]

More realizations -

Is IFOUpdate supposed to give you all cells in its export of chapters? Basically, I've got 78 cells per PGC (for either of the two movies), with 56 chapters.

I've already encoded the freaking movie, importing chapter points that IFOUpdate gave me, unfortunately, there are 78, rather than 56. Fixing this in Scenarist is impossible, I believe, since even though I removed the other "chapter points" that it imported, when I hit chapter forward in PowerDVD, it goes to where the I-frame is in the encoded video.

I wound up about 200MB over the limit anyway, so am going to have to re-encode, and have fixed the chapter points in DoCCE4U, so it should be OK. Has anyone else been around this crazy road?

I wound up just opening up a spreadsheet and using that to figure out which chapter=XXX to delete, since after the first VOB, the frame number is useless. I think I did it right?

[Eyes`Only]

if you're using scenchap, it created scenes, not chapters. the correct course of action is to reauthor this in the scenario editor correctly. it sounds like all you did was drag/drop the track into the scenario editor (wrong!). the correct thing to do is drag/drop each scene from the asset list into the scenario editor, choosing whether it is a chapter (drag on to the PGC) or just a cell (drag onto last chapter). You do this by opening the ifo in ifoedit and duplicating the structure of the original ifo. In the end, your pgc should have the correct # of cells and chapters.

[foxmid]

Ok - Thanks. I think I understand what you are clearly stating to me, but let me re-cap to be sure.

Basically, I'll use ScenChap to create my scenes (they will appear in the track editor). I then create a Title, and PGC, and then drag the scenes, rather than the whole entire track over to the Scenario editor.

Correct?

This is an extroardinary amount of work to re-author by vobid!
Thanks for the quick reply - not to mention your great software!

[Eyes`Only]

Correct. By placing the scenes manually, you choose whether they become chapters or just cells. If you open an RA project, you will see what a PGC looks like in the scenario editor when it's a mixture of chapters and cells. Use one of those RA projects to guide you if you get confused.

Glad you like my work ;)

[foxmid]

Thanks for the Scenarist primer, Eyes.

I did just as you said, and sure enough, my newly authored IFO looks dead on like the original!

I was a bit nervous, I decided to cheat a bit. Once I'd built the scene & chapter structure for vobid 1 in pgc1, I copied the entire PGC from title1 to title2 (since they are the same), and saved myself 43 drag & drop operations.

I was nervous, because from what I've read, you've got to go in vobid order when you create the pgcs in the scenario editor.

Anyway, now if I could just get the file size to come out right?!?!
I calculated based on all the audio & dts tracks, and still came out 60 MB too large.. At least I dont have to do all the setup again, just reencode one of the vobids.

One last question - I couldn't figure it out, and couldn't find anywhere that tells you, how do you get subtitles imported into Scenarist from what DIF4U creates?

I gave up on that for this project, but evidently I've got to do it again for From Hell (demuxed by vob-id by itself! that smart DIF4U software)

Thanks again for the hand-holding and coddling. One of these days, I'm going to know what I'm doing!

[Eyes`Only]

Anyway, now if I could just get the file size to come out right?!?!
I calculated based on all the audio & dts tracks, and still came out 60 MB too large.. At least I dont have to do all the setup again, just reencode one of the vobids.DTS takes a bit more overhead in a .vob (approx .0295% compared to .0269% for regular audio), so that can throw off calculations.

As for subtitles, you need to import the .sst. Check out trilight's uberguide at http://dvdguides.trilight.net/ for a good idea of how to do this.

[foxmid]

btw - just got version 1.3.4.0 - Nice new program title! Matches your tagline.