Q 4 blutach on VobBlanker/Shrink guide

[absinthe]

I'm trying to find a way to back up a DVD with movie only and preserving menus (w/o any reencoding, assuming that the main movie VOBs will fit on a DVD5). I'm trying blutach's guide located at: http://jsoto.posunplugged.com/guides/VobBlanker/adding_menus/index.htm

I've been through it a couple of times and I wonder if I'm not doing something right. The only place I can see where I might be doing something wrong is in the step "reauthor with DVD Shrink in the usual way" (maybe I should've put this in the DVD Shrink forum, but really the guide mostly uses VobBlanker).

I'm assuming that the reauthor step simply means to open the original DVD files in DVD Shrink and, in reauthor mode, drag the main movie title (and nothing else) over to the DVD folder on the left, set for no compression, deselect unwanted audio/subs, and backup.

Basically, after replacing and processing with VobBlanker, I'm left with a DVD that's almost the size of the original. Something I don't quite understand: it looks like the guide instructs one to use VobBlanker to simply import (or replace) the original main movie with the reauthored movie. At what point are the extras removed?

-abs

[blutach]

Hi absinthe

The guide is specific for folks who have re-authored their DVDs with DVD Shrink (or Nero Recode) and in so doing, have eliminated extras and now decide they'd like their menu back.

To accomplish what you want to do from scratch, I'd recommend simply using the blank function on the extras titles in VobBlanker, a guide for which is on jsoto's site.

I have a version 3 coming out soon, which uses PgcEdit's new blank all titles function (available in v5.6B1) and which totally eliminates the need to reprogram any VM commands.

However, again, if you're starting from scratch, just use the VobBlanker guide - see here (http://jsoto.posunplugged.com/guides/VobBlanker/blanking/index.php).

Regards

[absinthe]

Blu,

Hello, and thanks!

Forgive me, but I don't quite see the point of the guide. I mean, if I reauthor in Shrink in a way that does not preserve the menus (which is essentially what I'm doing), then I don't see how this guide would work.

On the other hand, if I reauthor in Shrink in a way that does preserve the menus, well then I have the menus and I don't need the guide. (I mean here in the strict sense of "reauthoring", which in the case of Shrink will render still-motion menus with no buttons if I am correct. Otherwise, you have to shrink the whole disc and thus you still have the menus -- right?)

On a third hand (??? :)), if I use VobBlanker to blank out unwanted material, well then I still have my menus and ... man, I'm confused :p.

I'm looking for a way to basically just take the VOB set that contains the main movie, in the situation where that VOB set/VTS will fit on a single disc, and keep the main menu (no MPG encoding involved). I do use VobBlanker to get rid of unwanted stuff on occasion, but this can be tedious. Right now I'm trying to back up a movie with 14 titlesets, the main movie being in VTS_14. The movie itself, even with all the audio tracks, will fit with plenty of room to spare. The VobBlanker method wil be particularly tedious with this disc because there's about a thousand teeny, weeny little extras.

Obviously, each disc is different, but I'm wondering if there's a way to accomplish this without too much headache.

-abs

[blutach]

Hi again abs

1. If you do a reauthor in DVD Shrink or Nero Recode or whatever, then you will end up with:

(a) the movie (perhaps chopped to exclude intros, credits and other unwanted parts, or done at mixed compression) and

(b) optionally, some extras if you want them and have space for them,

and that's that. No working menu. This guide puts it back. However, I see what you are saying about tedium of blanking lots of extras (although I find it not so bad), and version 3 of this guide, which is very streamlined in the way it blanks things, is available but not yet published. If you want a copy, please email me and I will send you a word 2003 version.

2. You can't reauthor in DVD Shrink (or Recode) and preserve the menus (as mentioned above). You can however, do the disk in full disk mode, blank out extras (which doesn't really blank them but replaces them with a pic/blank frame) and optionally turn the menus into working menus but at 2 frames per second, which looks awful.

So, email me and I will send you v3 of the guide, which blanks everything very quickly and involves VobBlanker only once and also involves no editing the VM commands on the menus.

Regards

[absinthe]

Check your PM/e-mail. (I think I also PM'd you before I found your e-mail address, so just delete the PM).

thx!

-abs

[absinthe]

Blutach,

Thanks for the guide. It got the job done! In fact, I only had to follow the first 2 or 3 steps. I just blanked out all the VTSs except for the main movie, and then opened the resulting original in DVD Shrink. Shrink showed that the movie was already only 3.5 GB, so I just processed it with no compression and that's it ... done!

A rather incredibly fast and simple solution for making a movie-only copy when your main movie VOBs can already fit on a DVD5 by themselves.

Of course, my DVD still has a whopping 13 empty titlesets, which I guess is a wee bit sloppy. Some day I'd like to figure out how to do what I did except have the resulting DVD simply have the main movie in VTS_01 and that's it.

Thanks!!

-abs

[jeanl]

Originally posted by absinthe

Of course, my DVD still has a whopping 13 empty titlesets, which I guess is a wee bit sloppy. Some day I'd like to figure out how to do what I did except have the resulting DVD simply have the main movie in VTS_01 and that's it.
-abs
Don't even think about it!!! :D
This was discussed in this forum a while back, and there's a lot of stuff that needs to be changed/updated for you to be able to remove all the VTS... It would be cleaner for sure, but it's just from an aesthetics point of view! Getting rid of them isn't going to save you much space, and it could be a royal pain in the neck!
jeanl

[Surf]

ahem, I beg to differ, jean, please grade my post on Soundscape's. :p

[jeanl]

I just read your post and realized that things have improved lately!! My impression was that cleaning up these unused VTS was useless, dangerous and time-consuming, but you've shown that it's relatively easy!
Thanks for that! ;)

jeanl

[Surf]

All thanks to you maestro. But it IS time comsuming...I did it while twiddling...running out of projects to do.

[absinthe]

But I'm wondering if there isn't a simple way to do this "in reverse."

In other words, just copy the VOB set and IFO/BUP containing main movie and menus to a separate folder. You've already got all your streams and chapter points. Oughta be able to import them into some program that could put them back together in a reauthor sorta way.

I nominate PgcEdit. Right now, I've got it doing my laundry and dishes for me ... so DVD reauthoring shouldn't be a problem :D

-abs

[blutach]

Gents,

In order to successfully remove titlesets and titles (which are very eay to do in IfoEdit) and thus narrow down what's on the disk, you need to be sure that there all the PGCs in the to be deleted titlesets are no longer referenced. PgcEdit can, of course, tell you this and in simple DVDs you can do this. But really, we are talking about, in this example, 13 titlesets of 20k each. Wanna risk your backup over 260k and files which you can't see?

jsoto has already highlighted (see here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=90502)) the need for (and both he and r0lZ have implemented) audio and subtitle stream reinsertion in blanks.

Do this at your own risk unless the titleset is totally unreferenced.

Regards