RB 1.05 Movie Only still crashes one player

[on30trainman]

jdobbs,
Unfortunately the fix put in to correct compatibility of a Movie Only backup with a very few standalone players did not fix the problem for me. As I noted in a previous thread started by Rayvt I had done a Movie Only backup of Pirates Of The Caribbean with RB 1.04 that played fine in all my players except a Sylvania TV/DVD combo. When Rayvt defined the pre and post command differences he found I went back and edited my file and reburned - the copy worked fine. I retried with the new RB 1.05 and it will not play in that one player. Looked at the VTS using PgcEdit and the correct pre and post commands are there.
Today I did a complete re-encode of Pirates using both RB 1.04 and RB 1.05 - my encoder in all cases is CCE Basic 2.70.01.07. Both prepare/encode/rebuilds were done with the same settings. Again the RB 1.04 version, with edited PGC table, plays fine; the RB 1.05 version crashes. The crash consists of the player trying to find the disk, then turning off. Both burns are done on the same disc type - Philips DVD+RW - using ImgBurn.
The total size of the VOBs is different for each RB version - the one from RB 1.05 is slightly larger than the RB 1.04 edited version. Last .VOB file size: 324,144,576 with RB 1.04 edited and 325,146,624 with RB 1.05.
Maybe something else got changed with the fix that somehow negates the correction. The difference in total VOB size may indicate that - since both encodes were done with the same encoder and same parameters. I PMed Rayvt to see if he has tried a Movie Only backup with RB 1.05 but haven't heard back yet. I guess only a very few of us have players that aren't compatible without a PGC Command table.

[on30trainman]

Did some additional testing:

Redid my backup using the new RB 1.05.1 - the resultant burnt DVD still crashes the one player.
Took the VIDEO_TS folder files generated by RB 1.05.1 and ran them through Shrink using no compression (no encoding/transcoding). This regenerates the VTS_01_X files and generates new VIDEO_TS.IFO and VTS_01_0.IFO files. These files were burnt and the resultant DVD plays fine in that finicky player. BTW the sizes of the files by both methods were identical. IMO RB is adding something to probably the VIDEO_TS.IFO file that is causing this. The needed pre and post commands are there, but? When I get some time I will have to compare VIDEO_TS.IFO and VIDEO_01_0.IFO section by section.

Steve W.

[jdobbs]

Curiouser and curioser.

[Brotoles]

on30trainman, I also solved one problem I had by using DVDShrink.

The backup of War of the Worlds I made using DVD-RB was playing incorretly on my Xbox, (it would always return to the beginning of chapter 10 when it reached the layer break) so I got this backup and remade an ISO image using DVDShrink, but with no transcoding. The resultant ISO was burned using ImgBurn 1.1.0.0 and "voilá", the new backup didn't have the layer break problem playing on my Xbox anymore... :-)

[Zeul]

@jdobbs
I wonder if this problem is associated with the minimum sectors between the VTS sets?

@on30trainman
Please post the ifo files for the RB build and the post processing with shrink.

[on30trainman]

It is interesting that the files run through Shrink generate new VIDEO_TS.IFO and VTS_01_0.IFO files that let the resultant burnt DVD work in that one balky player. I did do a quick compare of the original (out of RB 1.05.1) and Shrunk .IFO files and did see some differences, but I don't know enough about them to know what is important.

Zeul,
I tried to attach the files to this reply but uploading IFO files is not one of the allowed extensions. Maybe I could zip them. I guess I could e-mail them to you off forum if you want. I found an e-mail addy in your Paypal info on your website. Good?

jdobbs,
My vote would be to remove what ever code you added to generate the pre and post commands - that is if we can't find out why this is happening. It would be easier for me to use PgcEdit to add the commands rather than having to run Shrink to generate a whole new set of files. Had to run PgcEdit anyways after Shrink to fix an incorrect VOB number problem with Shrink. Haven't heard anything back from Rayvt yet to see if he still has the problem with RB 1.05 or not.

Thanks to all for replys,

Steve W.

[Zeul]

zip the files up so they are available to me and jdobbs

[on30trainman]

Hi,
Here are the zip files - I hope:

Original VIDEO_TS.IFO and VTS_01_0.IFO files from RB 1.05.1:
http://forum.doom9.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5109&stc=1
Original.zip

Above files after run thru Shrink:
http://forum.doom9.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5110&stc=1
Post Shrink.zip

The movie is Pirates Of The Caribbean

Hopefully I did this correctly.

Steve W.

[jdobbs]

Something else is at work here. I just did a binary compare and the two sets of IFO files are an exact match.

[Zeul]

First thing i see is that firstplaypgc has an illegal timestamp.
There are no menu tables present in either ifo files. I have heard that some players fail when there are no menu tables. An empty PGC (Root) which just links via a pre command to the title PGC is usually added.

[jptheripper]

still, why would one work and not the other?

[jdobbs]

I can add the menu tables and a link easily enough... I still wonder why the two act differently...

@on30trainman

Are you sure you didn't accidentally copy both of these IFO sets from the same build?

[Zeul]

good question - why should they react differently

[Brotoles]

I checked both zipped files, and even though the IFO's have the same CRC32 values, they have different timestamps, so they might be from different sources...

[jptheripper]

im 99% sure he posted the rebuilder ones twice, as i was 99% sure that shrink changed the "provider id" to dvdshrink

[Brotoles]

If you use the "Full Disc" option on DVDShrink, it retains the "DVD REBUILDER" provider

Now, if you use the "Re-author" option, it leaves the provider field blank by default, and I don't know if it automatically fills the field with DVDShrink, if left blank...

[jptheripper]

oh and when opened in dvd remake, there are references to programs 18-67 in pGC1 but there are only 17 programs available (under titles). have no idea what that means

[on30trainman]

Guys,
Now I am stumped. The first time I ran the files thru Shrink the following showed up in the VTS_01_0.IFO file when I opened VTS_C_ADT in IfoEdit:
Number of VOBIDs in VTS_VOBs 1

I then opened the Shrink processed directory in PgcEdit and I got an message that read (as best as I can remember) "that the number of VOBIDs was 1 and should be 8. This is a known error in Shrink. Do I want to fix." Initially I said NO. On exiting it said the file had changed and did I want to save it. I said YES. Well ever since, whenever I run Shrink on the RB files (and yes, I reran RB 1.05.1 on the original ripped files again today and got a fresh set of output) the VOBID number comes up 8 and, guess what, the burnt movie no longer plays in that one player. Something got set somewhere, maybe in a registry entry. I uninstalled Shrink and reinstalled - no change. On the Shrink files, IfoEdit always tells me the VOBID number is 8 and there is no error when opened in PgcEdit.

The files I sent yesterday were after I had done the above in PgcEdit, so I am not surprised that they came out the same. PgcEdit did something, somehow, and now I can't undo it. Unfortunately I erased the RW disc that had the working copy of the burn post Shrink - boy I wish I hadn't done that. But I don't have that many RWs and didn't want to waste a bunch of Rs.

Maybe uninstalling and reinstalling PgcEdit would fix it - will give that a try. Any other ideas? What gives? Hopefully I am not rocking the boat unnecessarily.

Steve W.

[jptheripper]

can you post the untouched rb output ifos,

oh and after pgcedit messed with them, did they work?

[on30trainman]

Brotoles,
Thanks - you jogged my memory. The first Shrink run thru was in the Re-author mode. But for some reason, my aged brain and senior moments the most likely culprit, the following runs were all done in the Full Disk mode. I just reran using Re-author and the VOBIDs in VTS_VOBs is now 1. I am reburning the disk as I type and, if the burnt disk works, I will post the latest sets of files for pre and post shrink in a few minutes.

Steve W.

[Zeul]

The RB files are the important ones

[on30trainman]

OK - here we go with the latest results:
Balky player - Sylvania TV/DVD Combo, don't know maker of player
Ripped files run thru DVD-RB 1.05.1 Movie Only and VIDEO_TS Folder generated.
ImgTool 0.91.6 used to generate .ISO file
ImgBurn 1.1.0.0 to burn DVD
Files run thru DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15 in ReAuthor mode
.ISO image made (ImgTool) and burnt (ImgBurn)
VTS_01_0.IFO opened in PgcEdit and VOBIDs changed to 8
.ISO image made (ImgTool) and burnt (ImgBurn)

I used ImgTool rather than RB to generate the RB ISO so that the same tools were being used in all tests.

RB 1.05.1 output - burnt disk does not play
Run thru Shrink (ReAuthor mode) burnt disk plays fine (VOBIDs = 1)
Shrink files run with PgcEdit and VOBIDs changed to 8, burnt disk plays fine

So Shrink files in ReAuthor mode run fine with VOBIDs of 1 and 8 - something else different

Here are zipped files for the three examples:

Ripped files thru DVD-RB Movie Only:

http://forum.doom9.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5122&stc=1
Original RB VIDEO_TS.zip

Files Run thru Shrink ReAuthor Mode:

http://forum.doom9.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5123&stc=1
Post Shrink VIDEO_TS.zip

Shrink files with VOBID changed by PgcEdit:

http://forum.doom9.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5124&stc=1
Post Shrink & PgcEdit VIDEO_TS.zip

These should reflect the VIDEO_TS.IFO and VTS_01_0.IFO files for the three cases. Maybe I have stirred up an unnecessary storm since I can fix it for that one balky player - which doesn't even get used that much with DVD backups.

Steve W.

[jdobbs]

What happens if you use DVD-RB to create the ISO? Have you tried that?

What's the purpose of changing the VOBIDs?

[on30trainman]

What happens if you use DVD-RB to create the ISO? Have you tried that?

Up until this series of tests I was always using RB to generate the ISO file after you added the feature. Pirates isn't the only DVD backup that has this problem. Before you added the ISO build feature, I would burn the files using Nero 6, those DVDs also have the problem. Everything I have run thru RB has this problem - I just didn't know what the problem was until Rayvt posted about his problem and the fix with the pre and post command. I ran this series of tests with Pirates because the ripped files were still on my hard drive. I usually erase the rips after I am done to regain space on my hds. As I said in a previous post this particular player is not used that often. I noticed the crash but didn't think much about it except that the player was quirky until Rayvt posted. BTW I have played DVD-RB backups in at least 12+ different players with no problems at all - just this odd ball Sylvania combo.
Anything that needs no compression I run thru Shrink (set at no comp) since it gets the job done quicker than RB. But Shrink (transcoding) quality is no comparison to RB with CCE when the backup needs compressing.
Interestingly backups using RB 1.04 and with the added pre and post commands work fine, but even though RB 1.05 adds those commands something else is going on.
It is something how this group jumps in to help and/or solve a problem. Thanks,

Steve W.

Edit: I have no idea about the VOBIDs except that PgcEdit flags it as a known Shrink error when it opens the file and asks you if you want to correct it on exiting the program. The different values seem to have no effect on whether the backup plays or not.

[jdobbs]

The only thing difference I see so far that is significant is that the "First Play PGC" of the original has an illegal framerate in VIDEO_TS.IFO... I wouldn't think that's enough to cause it to crash, though...

[jdobbs]

It is something how this group jumps in to help and/or solve a problem. ThanksI for one want this process to be perfect. It's just makes the quality so much better...

[jdobbs]

Ok... I also noticed that the Shrink one leaves one byte unused between the PGC Program Map and the Cell Playback information table. I think that's unneeded, though... anybody have any idea why it would do that?

[Zeul]

In my tests i found that the program table size must be a multiple of 2 - dunno why - but that is what muxman & scenarist seem to do

[jdobbs]

Hmmm... I don't remember seeing that requirement anywhere...

I'm also confused about the frame rate value in the VIDEO_TS.IFO file. I looked at my code, and it only puts one of two values there (PAL or NTSC) -- and neither of them is what is shown in this IFO file... unless I'm just totally nuts it had to have been edited.

[Edit] Nix that last statement... I just found how it puts the wrong value in. I'll fix it now.

[Zeul]

AFAIK it is only applicable to the Program table - all the others in the PGC will be a multiple of 2 bytes anyway

[jdobbs]

Right... I thought about that after the fact (I'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes. I edited my post and removed it too late).

[rayvt]

I just tried a Movie Only with DVD-RB 1.05 Pro and it worked fine on the Hitachi player that wouldn't play the one produced by 1.04.

I suspect what we have here is an undocumented & previously-unknown de-facto piece of the spec. A requirement by virtue of some players requiring something to be some certain way. on30trainman, I think that the only way we're going to find it is for you to closely examine what pgcedit sees in the two files in the dvddump (info/DVDCommands), and then tweak one or the other of them a little bit at a time until either the good one stops playing or the bad one starts. (I tried to dl your attachments to look at them, but they can't be dl'ed yet.)

Hmmmm, seems like a lot of touchy standalone players got outed by RB's Movie Only mode. Makes sense to me. The developers of player firmware probably never tested with a movie with no menus, no commands, and only one video. Unfortunately, jdobbs is now in the position of having to put completely unnecessary stuff into his code in order to avoid triggering bugs in other people's code.

[ron spencer]

why not just use DVDShrink movie only first at 100% quality (set custom size to 9999 MB) and then process with DVD-RB. That is what I do and on 9 players it is flawless. DVDShrink is more aggressive with layer break removal anyway. This extra step takes 5 mins max.

[jdobbs]

Yeah... but even if this drive is an exception I want DVD-RB to work. The goal is 100% compatibility. If there is one drive out there that has a problem -- you can bet there are two...

I don't mind putting in a little extra code here and there for special cases -- as long as it doesn't get crazy.

[Carpo]

like with cce ;)

[rayvt]

Ron, the whole point of DVD-RB is to have just one tool to use. Doing a gratuitous pass thru shrink or any other tool negates this. Even worse----you don't know if RB creates an problematic disk until you burn it and try to play it. Even worser (is that a word?) is that your disk may play in many players but not in all. In my situation, the wife had friends over and wanted to show them the movie on our 120" projection TV surround sound home theatre--the movie which I hadn't finished with, so I did a quick&dirty movie-only burn to a DVD-RW. It played ok on my computer and all the $20 DVD players on our little TV's but it crashed the Hitachi player on our 120" TV.

IMHO, jdobbs has it right---the goal should be 100% compatable disks that will play on *all* players. The bad/good news is that now he's at the point with DVD-RB where he's running into undocumented and unknown but de-facto parts of the spec. Good in that it works on 99+% of players. Bad in that he has to reverse-engineer those parts of the spec by experimenting on the 1% of players.

[ron spencer]

I agree too!!! I just use DVD Shrink because Rebuilder has issues with movie only for me around 1.0 so I just got into the habbit of doing it (yah I should have reported it). I found that 2 of my players (Toshiba and Polaroid) had issues playing them, as well as PGCEdit gave errors. My Denon 2910 was fine as was my phillips 642. I found that if I pre-processed via Shrink as movie only 100% quality and THEN used DVD-RB then all was PERFECT. I used DVDShrink first. I only have a PIII so 2 errors was enough in terms of time. For me I use (if movie only).

1. DVDShrink movie only 100% quality
2. DVD Rebuilder

Works perfectly...not just on my players, but on any player I take my burns to. Just head to a Best Buy and try.

For me the 5 min. of prep work given my old PIII 866 is worth it. But I agree, a 100% working Rebuilder prog would be nice, but is highly unlikely given the nonsensical way the DVD Standard was devised and implemented.

[on30trainman]

Ron,
I tried your idea of running the ripped files thru Shrink first in ReAuthor mode, selecting only the movie and running the resultant files thru DVD-RB (1.05.1). Actually I didn't expect it to work and it didn't. RB makes up new VIDEO_TS.IFO and VTS_01_0.IFO files, just like Shrink makes up new ones. I am willing to bet that my backups from RB 1.05.1 and other versions would work on all 9 players you have access to - they have worked on at least 8 players I have had access to. Just this one bummer Sylvania combo.

Later,

Steve W.

[ron spencer]

when you open in pgcedit before burning what happens? Any errors?

you mentioned +RW. Try -R with diff media?

Dunno what to say really. What about if you run through DVD Shrink, save the IFO and BUPs, then run DV Rebuilder and when done replace the DVD Rebuilder files with shrink ones....strange

[on30trainman]

when you open in pgcedit before burning what happens? Any errors?

you mentioned +RW. Try -R with diff media?

No errors. The only PgcEdit errors I ever got were on Shrink files run on the RB output files. For Pirates Of The Caribbean 8 VOBIDs are generated in the rebuild and Shrink reports only 1.

The crashing problem has shown up with burns on TY 8X -R hub printable disks and other media types also including Fuji (TY), RiData, Verbatim, Sony - (+R and -R). It is definitely not media related.
When I started this series of tests I didn't want to waste a bunch of write once disks. The only -RWs I could find at local Micro Center were 2X max - too slow. The +RWs are Philips 4X.

Some more tests are in process - will report on results later.

Steve W.

[ron spencer]

what is your burner? can you try on another burner. If you do all this then I suspect you have a messed up player.

trash it for a new one...but it is intruging that DVDshrink alone is fine. too bad the author is not around anymore....he might be able to help.

you could also try to PM mpucoder, he knows much, but he rarely posts in this forum, check for him in the PGCEdit (IFO Editors) forum

[jetsx23]

@JDobbs

I am still having this issue with 1.051 also. I created the ISO with rebuilder (default everything) and burned with decrypter. Put the disc into the problem players and they crashed.

So What I did was extracted all the files with Winrar from the ISO and went into PGCedit. Opened the DVD files created by Rebuilder and just did a save dvd. It did create new files (The ones being talked about in this thread) with new timestamps.

Closed PGCedit and went into DVD Shrink, recreated the the ISO (No Compression) and burnt with Decrypter. The only change I made in shrink was to do region 1 only instead of using all regions.

Put the new disc into the problem players and now they work fine.

Let me know if you need any files for research.

Thanks

[ron spencer]

Boy...this is interesting. Anyone know how to contact DVDShrink and ask?

Very interesting.

[jetsx23]

To all,

Im sorry I should have stated this before. Before I tried the PGCedit route (My previous post). I took the burnt disc. Re-ripped it with decrypter and then ran those files through shrink. Created the new ISO and burnt with decrypter. This did not work. I had to do the PGCedit piece for it to work correctly. So I do not think shrink fixes the problem. Its when PGCedit creates the new IFO's in which fixed my issue.

[Zeul]

Before anyone post processes their IFOs with PGCedit make sure you have made a copy of them. Process with PGCedit and make a copy of those also. Please then supply both sets of IFOs zipped so that jdobbs (and others) can have a comprehensive look at these files.

[jetsx23]

PGCEDIT saves the old files for you in a backup folder. Just to let everyone know.

[Zeul]

It does - however - i would think a lot of ppl delete this folder before making the iso.

[jdobbs]

Wow. Look what happened to this thread while I was working? I've fixed this issue and sent a test version of DVD-RB to on30trainman -- it worked.

It was a simple fix that was discussed early in the thread. It only affects a very finicky player (the odd length on the program table).

On to menu encoding...

Thanks.

[jdobbs]

Oh... and before I forget... Thanks, Zeul for the insight into the table.

:goodpost:

Thanks to on30trainman for pointing it out and testing it for me.

And thanks to everyone else for chipping in to find this nasty little gremlin.

[on30trainman]

To all,

Im sorry I should have stated this before. Before I tried the PGCedit route (My previous post). I took the burnt disc. Re-ripped it with decrypter and then ran those files through shrink. Created the new ISO and burnt with decrypter. This did not work. I had to do the PGCedit piece for it to work correctly. So I do not think shrink fixes the problem. Its when PGCedit creates the new IFO's in which fixed my issue.

Did you run the files thru Shrink in ReAuthor mode? That was the only way it would correct the problem for me. But all of this should be moot now - jdobbs has fixed the problem. I ran a complete backup using the test version of RB he sent me and the burnt disk played in my maverick player. Tomorrow I will rerip another disk that wouldn't play as another test, but it shouldn't matter now. The fixes will undoubtably be in the next release of RB. My thanks to jdobbs and all who helped solve this. Glad I had the time to test the fix - advantage of being retired ;) .

Steve W.