PgcEdit v7 discussion thread

[blutach]

Just fantastic as usual. Thanks for the prompt attention to all our requests and bug reports. So much more than the Swiss Army Knife of DVD Editing.

Regards

[David Star]

"Maybe later", is a promising hope. With Scenarist HD in $50,000.00 and Bluy Ray Print in $60,000.00, seem than HD-DVD is exclusive for wealthy people. But for a long time exist programs to edit video in HD DVD, and Ulead recently came out DVD Movie Factory Plus 5 to accomplish authoring in HD DVD, in $80.00 Hardware will come soon to most people to accessible pricing. They suggest these indicators to us that people soon will change also DVD to HD-DVD. According to I have understood, majority of technical specifications for DVD will survive in the HD-DVD. Then, you Roiz, that you are a brilliant programmer, will see there will be no superlative differences among DVD and HD-DVD. Time will tell. I hope so soon than complete specifications for HD-DVD, be known by us. In addition, with the new plugin Vobu, Pgcedit becomes more powerful. I design authoring DVD with navigation advanced thanks to you, Roiz, with pgcedit, my favorite program for reauthoring (world champion).

[President]

PgcEdit v7.4 released
Many thank's, Roland, for a new version and new functions&improvements!

[r0lZ]

@David
Yes, HD-DVD will have to be similar to the current DVD-Video format, for compatibility reasons. That's why PgcEdit as it is now should be compatible with this new format.
Unfortunately, to be able to enjoy the new high definition, you need expensive TV sets and players. Furthermore, and that's important for the reauthoring scene, the CSS encryption (or is it called differently?) is greatly improved, and will probably never be cracked. It will therefore be impossible to use PgcEdit on a protected HD-DVD, and I'm not sure I will develop my program only to be used on personal DVDs.

@President: Thanks!

[laserfan]

PgcEdit v7.4 released: A. New function Trace menu -> State -> Restart Playback from Exit Domain, to begin the playback at Title 1 instead of at the First-Play PGC...I don't see this option & wonder if my installation might be wrong? One just copies the new .exe into the PgcEdit directory, yes? I looked hard at the release notes because the behavior of 7.4 seems to have changed for me. I use PgcEdit mostly to "Jump to PGC upon DVD insert" and with 7.4 it appears to work differently:

1. Trace thru the intro cells, make menu selections, get to main title and Break.

2. Toggle PGC pre/post breakpoint (turns red)

3. Insert DVD (Restart Trace) and Run again.

4. Step thru those intro cells, but THIS TIME I DIDN'T SEE THE MENU--WENT STRAIGHT TO THE PGC!

5. Selected "Jump to PGC" and get "The pre-commands jumped-outside the target..." message and looped-thru the menu selection process again one time.

6. Reached the breakpoint again and this time "Jump to PGC" worked.

So the process worked, but it is different from what I'm used-to in that in Step 4 I didn't have to make my menu selections again; PgcEdit seemed to anticipate what I was going to do.

Was a change made to this behavior, could this be an anomaly of the DVD, or have I just lost my mind and it's always worked this way. :rolleyes:

Y'know how you do something over & over again, and then it's different and it freaks you out a little! :eek: :scared: :D

[jeanl]

Thanks r0lZ! Awesome! I especially love the VOBU plugin! That rocks!
jeanl

[r0lZ]

Thanks Jeanl! :)

Laserfan, the new function is the last item of the State menu of the trace. You can launch it also by right-clicking on the normal Reset Trace button. If it doesn't work, try to download and install PgcEdit again.
Yes, it is sufficient to overwrite PgcEdit.exe to install it.

I don't know why you got another navigation when you started the trace again. Are you sure you have reset the trace by clicking on the Reset button (with the insert/eject icon)? Also, be sure to wait 1 or 2 seconds before clicking the Run button, or the trace might still be in its initialization phase.
Maybe you are facing a funny authoring with some sort of random navigation?
Anyway, the trace should still work like before. I have only added the new way to reset it, and it should not influence the behaviour of the navigation.
Could you retry? Also with another DVD. And please let me know if it worked. Thanks!

Note: Though not frequent, the "The pre-commands jumped-outside the target..." message is normal. It happens when the PGC is entered first to establish a valid return point for the RSM command, but is exited before the video has been played. Don't worry!

[blutach]

Yeah, I tested the VOBU plugin last night to get rid of an FBI and I suspect it could also be used to delete playback of closing credits.

Will we be able to reclaim space with VobBlanker (http://jsoto.posunplugged.com/vobblanker.htm) and/or FixVTS?

Regards

[laserfan]

Laserfan, the new function is the last item of the State menu of the trace...If it doesn't work, try to download and install PgcEdit again.There it is. I did install properly but didn't know where to look! :o

I don't know why you got another navigation when you started the trace again...Maybe you are facing a funny authoring with some sort of random navigation? Anyway, the trace should still work like before.Actually what threw me was that the navigation stopped at the main title (by the breakpoint I'd set) and I just haven't seen that before. For some reason on this disc the navigation moves thru the main title on its way to the main menu etc. i.e. it "stopped early" at the breakpoint.

It does the same thing every time so I tried another disc and sure enough, PgcEdit works as it's supposed to and as I expected. So I just picked exactly the *wrong* disc (Munich) to make my first v7.4 run on! My sincere apologies!!!! :scared:

Thanks for a great tool! :)

[jeanl]

Yeah, I tested the VOBU plugin last night to get rid of an FBI and I suspect it could also be used to delete playback of closing credits.

Will we be able to reclaim space with VobBlanker (http://jsoto.posunplugged.com/vobblanker.htm) and/or FixVTS?

Regards
No, not with FixVTS, and vobblanker will complain that the pointers don't match any more. FixVTS isn't smart enough to detect that part of a cell is unreferenced and get rid of it. However, whatever is unreferenced will be in the unreferenced material in DVD Shrink, where you can squash it to death! That's the hurried-man's way to remove end credits!
Jeanl

[blutach]

Aaah - thanks Jean. I didn't think so and suspected VobBlanker (http://jsoto.posunplugged.com/vobblanker.htm) would give that cell table mismatch error and use the VTS_C_ADT table entry.

Probably DVD Remake Pro (http://www.dimadsoft.com/dvdremakepro/index.php) can eliminate this for good.

Or a cell split in VobBlanker (http://jsoto.posunplugged.com/vobblanker.htm) followed by a blanking?

Regards

[r0lZ]

On this subject, I've received a mail explaining that this trick did not work on some players.
Maybe I have to modify also the VTS_C_ADT table. But currently I use VTS_C_ADT to pick the original start and end VOBU of the cell. It's necessary to be able to undo a previous change, or to enlarge a cell that has been reduced with the vobu plugin.

Therefore, if I modify also VTS_C_ADT, I will have to parse the VOB files to find the real start and end of the cell by looking at the V/CIDs. It's not really difficult, but it's time consuming.

I can also add a checkbox "Modify also the VTS_C_ADT table" with a warning explaining that it's not undoable, but I don't like this idea too much.

Anyway, I wonder if it is important to modify VTS_C_ADT also. What do you think?

[blutach]

You can get the VTS_C_ADT back from the PgcEdit_backup folder yes? I know that takes you back to the start, so maybe do an incremental backup first?

Regards

[r0lZ]

Hum, I don't like this method. The backup is optional, and anyway, if you want to modify a DVD after having burned it, the backup is lost. And that's not really easy, too, since I have to load and process an IFO file just for one value.
If I have to parse a file, I prefer to look in the VOB files.
Thanks anyway for the idea.

[jeanl]

Anyway, I wonder if it is important to modify VTS_C_ADT also. What do you think?
I really don't know, but I wouldn't change anything until being 100% sure that changing VTS_C_ADT would make it work. You should get in touch with the person who says it does not work, make sure they haven't screwed up something else, and then ask them to correct VTS_C_ADT manually and see if that makes it work...
But I really don't see why the player would even go look at that table, but who knows!
Jeanl

[Sir Didymus]

...
No, not with FixVTS, and vobblanker will complain that the pointers don't match any more. FixVTS isn't smart enough to detect that part of a cell is unreferenced and get rid of it...

But that's not a fault of FixVTS or VobBlanker...
The point is that both the table VTS_C_ADT and its counterpart in the titleset or menu PGC should not contain different information (possibly, and hopefully) if this information have the same meaning - i.e. defining the start sector and the end sector of a given cell.

...
Anyway, I wonder if it is important to modify VTS_C_ADT also. What do you think?

IMO yes... or better, it should be nice... :)

Well - if I can say this - it's like you are including an harpoon inside your Swiss knife... :)

I mean, with the usage of this plugin the overall possibility to change start and end sectors of the cells respect to the "real" values, as present in the VOBs, is very tricky (and possibly leading to troubles...): as minimum it may imply to cut some GOP or audio... For example, making these changes may lead to MPEG2 stream orphan of the sequence start and end codes, to trow away GOP headers, and so on, screwing up quite seriously the DVD...

I did not test it, but I think I have no difficulties to agree with players eventually complaining about the playback of MPEG2 streams orphan of some sequence codes...

What do you think about ?

[jeanl]

My understanding is that a GOP is almost self contained: the only thing it might need to be decoded properly would be a P-frames from the previous GOP. I don't think it's possible to cut off a stream start code from the rest of the mpeg data: all the start/end codes will be contained in the same GOP (that's for sure). I'm not too sure why some players complain, but it could be because the GOP is open (relies on a frame from the previous GOP to decode) perhaps?
jeanl

[Sir Didymus]

I see...
after playing a little with the plugin, that it keeps the cutting points at the VOBu boundaries, so GOP headers and structure should be safe.

Also the whole plugin operation is affecting just the first and the last cells of a pgc, so its "impact" is relatively limited...

Finally the message box telling to apply the modification at user's own risk is very appropriate...

Anyway the problem related to making orphan the MPEG2 stream of the sequence start and end codes is still present, since a single seq_start and a single seq_end should (and are) normally present in an overall MPEG2 stream...

In any case, all of the doubts related to the open GOPs are still here...

Let's wait for other comments on the matter...

Cheers,
SD

Edit: some spelling...

[r0lZ]

Honestly, I have nothing to say for my defense! ;)
I wrote this plugin at the request of several users, but I know it's a big risk of problems. It's why I have refused until now to let the user modify the cells start and end addresses directly from the cell table editor, and that I have finally implemented this function as a plugin only, with some severe limitations, such as the cut at a nav pack only, and the ability to cut only the beginning or the end of the PGC.
But I want to improve the plugin so that it is as safe as possible. Since I'm not a VOB expert, I rely on this discussion to find the best solution.
BTW, the user that has reported the problems is Tobi, and I'm sure he read this forum.

[Sir Didymus]

Honestly, I have nothing to say for my defense! ;)


Oh, oh...

Well, in any case, please do not take any single one of my comments - even if given in very friendly terms - as a criticism !!!

I am quite convinced PgcEdit is approaching the perfection, and everyone here should be grateful to you for making it available to the community...

:)

[r0lZ]

Honestly, I have nothing to say for my defense! ;)It was a joke, Sir! I just wanted to say that that plugin is a gadget, and I don't want to assume any responsibility. "Use it at your own risk!" is really the only thing I have to say. The criticism about the vobu plugin comes from myself.

[jinjin_jp]

I didn't think so and suspected VobBlanker (http://jsoto.posunplugged.com/vobblanker.htm) would give that cell table mismatch error and use the VTS_C_ADT table entry.

Probably DVD Remake Pro (http://www.dimadsoft.com/dvdremakepro/index.php) can eliminate this for good.
I tried DvdReMakePro. The result was same as VobBlanker. It corrects VTS_PGCITI according to VTS_C_ADT.

Regards.

[blutach]

@jinjin_jp - your research, as always, is terrific!

Regards

[laserfan]

See title--now that I'm using my old Sony DVP-S7000 again, having learned how to burn DVD+R discs that it will play, I have one little problem that has always existed and if I can I'd like to fix it: any homemade disc that I make will not display the running time of a movie thru a new chapter/cell location. So I can't tell how far I am into a movie--only the time since this chapter was entered. It resets to zero whether just playing-thru the cell change normally, or searching to the next/previous chapter.

The ripping & backup process do not to my knowledge change anything about the commands on a disc--at least, if the cells were 8s before (seamless playback joint) they are 8s after, so I don't know what my Sony doesn't like about these discs.

Can any of the smart people here suggest another reason for this? The burning software that I use is RecordNow 7.3--as I type this it occurs to me to try ImgBurn and see if it makes any difference. Other ideas?

Hope no one is offended that I would ask within this thread--but my Searching suggests that all of the discussion of elapsed time & time maps has been taking place here!

[Sir Didymus]

Mhhh, well, the cell flags, that you may easily check with PgcEdit [he, he, this way we stay more or less in topic... :) ] should have their values unchanged respect to the original.

Apart this, on what I know, just SCR (that should not reset to 0) and PTS (that should be continuous across seamless played cells) may affect the display time...

Also sri_fwd and sri_bwd tables, in the nav packs near to the cell borders should have no glitches... But I am not really sure this last one can be a factor...

Out of curiosity, what authoring tool are you using (if any...) in the process ?

Cheers,
SD

[laserfan]

Thanks SD, it turns out we have a rather serious PEBCAK error here. After burning w/ImgBurn and checking again in-depth, this player apparently DEFAULTS to "Time by Chapter" mode! :( I only needed to change to "Time by Title" and it's good... :scared:

I only found it after I double-checked with the original DVD, and then got one of my old discs from 1997, and the player still reset by chapter. Suprised it defaults to this--the player has been removed from power many times (and for long periods) recently.

Sorry for the distraction; I think that's my second bonehead post in this thread this week alone! Giving myself a "strike" and slinking away now...

I did learn ImgBurn beats the heck out of my RecordNow 7.3! :o

[r0lZ]

Thanks SD, it turns out we have a rather serious PEBCAK error here. After burning w/ImgBurn and checking again in-depth, this player apparently DEFAULTS to "Time by Chapter" mode! :( I only needed to change to "Time by Title" and it's good... :scared:So does my Sony DVD-S725D too. Seems it's a signature of the Sony players.
BTW, my player can also display the remaining time of the current chapter or of the whole movie. Great feature, not available on many players! However, the recent Sony models are very poor. You can display only the elapsed time of the whole PGC. Dot. Pity! And not to mention the other missing features... :(

[blutach]

Seems it's a signature of the Sony players.Not my 2. Must be fakes :)

But they display time by title, chapter and as r0lZ says, remaining times which is quite cool too (although I must confess to watching the movie rather than the counter) :)

Regards

[laserfan]

...I must confess to watching the movie rather than the counter...You probably have a much younger bladder than I do! I sometimes sneak a peek to see if I should stop the movie or if it will be over soon! ;)

Thank you guys for giving me a pass on this blunder! :o

[HKT3020_1]

I'm pretty sure this question gets asked time and time again but I just want to clarify. What is the correct way to remove the layer break with PgcEdit. Reason I ask is because my brother got his hands on MI:3 today and well on the layer break there is a half a second pause. On the DVD5 version I'm about to create with DVD-RB, I want seamless playback. Thanks for any help. :)

[blutach]

See the guide on the PgcEdit (http://www.videohelp.com/~r0lZ/pgcedit/index.html) site. You need to tick seamless layer break.

http://www.digital-digest.com/~blutach/dl_burn_guide2/dl_burning_with_pgcedit_v2.htm

Regards

[r0lZ]

Anyway, the ripping programs removes the layer break automatically in most cases, unless you have disabled this option.

See also this post (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=844110#post844110) for a complete explanation.

[kumi]

Just a minor question about time maps:

Let's say I run 'rebuild time map of current PGC' on my main movie PGC, and I get a PGC Playback Time of 01:34:19.01 (at 30fps).

If I then 'Edit PGC', I get a warning:

WARNING: The PGC Playback Time (01:34:19.01 (at 30fps)) doesn't match the total of the cells times (01:34:18.26 (at 30fps)).

Fix it?

If I click Yes, the next time I rebuild the time map I get:

Some times have been fixed in VTS_TMAPTI of VTS 1:

VTS 1, PGC 2 playback time: 01:34:18.26 -> 01:34:19.01

So which one is right? 'Edit PGC' or 'Rebuild time map' ?

By the way thank you so much for continuing to improve PgcEdit, it's become an indispensable tool. And fun to use :)

[r0lZ]

Rebuild Time Map is probably right, as it looks in the VOBs for the correct values.
Edit PGC does only a simple check: the sumn of the cells is supposed to be exactly identical to the total time. If it's not the case after Rebuild Time Map, it's a good indication that there is something wrong in the cells table. It's often (always?) the case with ARccOS/RipGuard protected DVDs.
Anyway, the best method to re-synchronize all timings is to process the title with FixVTS. It will fix the cell times and the total time of the PGC.

[kumi]

Great tip, thanks.

[frank]

Hello r0lZ,

ImgBurn now can burn DVD folders directly.
Can you implement that for single DVD+R/DVD-R?
Burning without ISO is much simpler and faster.

For Double Layer disks I would stay on ISO creation because of the world best control over the LB. :)

[r0lZ]

Well, I don't see the advantage of adding that in PgcEdit.

As you know, the current PgcEdit method use a rather complex method to determine the layer break position, and to offset the files to align it properly on an ECC block. But, as far as I know, ImgBurn v2 does exactly the same thing. If you like the PgcEdit method, you should like the ImgBurn method as well.
Currently, ImgBurn has no preview, but I've heard that it will use the PgcEdit preview in the next release! So, there is no reason to duplicate LUK's excellent work in PgcEdit.
Anyway, ImgBurn (in Build mode) recomputes the VTS sectors anyway, so it is useless to modify them with PgcEdit before the burn.

But I like to launch ImgBurn in build mode, ready with the right parameters, from PgcEdit. It's easy: you have just to create a new entry in the Tools menu. Here are the parameters I use:

Label: Build with ImgBurn
Application: C:\Program Files\ImgBurn\ImgBurn.exe
Arguments: /MODE ISOBUILD /BUILDMODE DEVICE /FILESYSTEM "ISO9660 + UDF" /SRC "%d" /VOLUMELABEL "%l" /IBG "D:\%l.ibg"
Working folder: %d (2nd. option in the dialog)
The Save DVD before and Run in background options are ticked.

Note that the IBG file for DVDInfoPro is automatically created in the root folder of D:\
The same disc label than in PgcEdit is used by default.
Of course, you can change the arguments line to suit your needs.

[blutach]

You can also turn on automatic creation of IBG files in ImgBurn (www.imgburn.com)'s settings (under Graph Data).

If you prefer to build to ISO, change the /BUILDMODE argument to IMAGEFILE

Also, ImgBurn (www.imgburn.com) will automatically pick up the label in the TXT-DATA field, if one is present. If not, it will pick up the parent folder of VIDEO_TS's name. So, there is no need to specify this field.

Regards

[frank]

Good idee! I will test it.

I have burnt a Double Layer dvd in build mode with all the new features (32k space, seamless LB) and ImgBurn worked perfectly. :)
The LB address had a difference of 2 bytes but the cause is probably another UDF header.

If we could set the used features via cmd line then PgcEdit would have no problem to control the burning.

[J-Wo]

I'm encountering an error with PgcEdit 7.4 when in trace mode. I have the program set up to automatically display the preview window and start playing the current cell when in trace mode. The problem is that most times, instead of the preview window I get an error message (see attachment). I then get a blank PgcEditPreview window, which I can either close or leave open. Doesn't matter which because when I trace the next cell, the error message reoccurs. Only closing PgcEdit and re-openning solves the problem, but then the message always comes back. I've noticed this for the last several versions. Do I have something wrong in my program setup?

[r0lZ]

Without the complete error message, I can't understand what's happening. Please post the full message as text here. (You might have to click on the "Details" button of the error dialog box to see it.) Anyway, if you really want to post screen shots, use ImageShack (http://imageshack.us/), as the images posted directly in the forum are usually not approved immediately.
In the meantime, tick "Preview -> Disable DirectDraw overlays" and try again.

[J-Wo]

Sorry that the screen grab isn't showing up. Here's the message window:

PgcEdit 7.4 Error
Error 1 opening file for write
couldn't open "C:\DOCUME~1\JASONW~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\preview.args.ini"

The error message has no Details button, only OK. The bug seems to come up more frequently if I select Disable DirectDraw Overlays. All I know is that path is the same as my %temp% directory.

[r0lZ]

Could you verify that you can write a file to your %temp% directory? (That should be possible, but I don't see any other explanation of your problem.)

[J-Wo]

Yes I can write to my %temp% directory, it's constantly being filled with new files. Does pgcedit need to be installed on a certain drive? Are there codecs that might interfere with the preview window? Is there a special setup I need to run for pgcedit to work properly?

[r0lZ]

Well, there are some Tcl/Tk problems when a path contains foreign or accented characters. And I wonder why the path appear as the old DOS 8.3 filenames in PgcEdit. I've never seen that before. Maybe there is something to check there, but anyway, if the problem is there, the preview should fail each time. I'm puzzled.

For now, try to create a C:\TEMP directory, verify that you can write in it, modify the %temp% environment variable to point to that folder, reboot and retry PgcEdit.

[J-Wo]

Good news! Changing the temp directory to C:\TEMP seems to have solved the problem. The long pathname is what Windows XP sets by default, but I'm not sure why the path appears as old DOS 8.3 in PgcEdit. Thanks for the tip r0lZ!

[r0lZ]

Great. I doesn't understand neither, but if it works, it's fine. Thanks for the confirmation.

[arnie.d]

I created a dual layer dvd with dvd-lab. It's just below 8GB. When I want to burn it with Nero there's more than 200 mb of free space left. But when I want to make an ISO with PgcEdit it says it's 144% full (for a dvd9) so I can't create an ISO. But I'm sure the files aren't to big. Is there a way I can solve this problem?

[r0lZ]

PgcEdit burns everything that is in the DVD folder, including the DVD-ROM files.
Verify that there is nothing in the parent folder of VIDEO_TS.

[arnie.d]

OK that worked! Thanks for the help.