Removing unwanted foreign menus

[itchione]

Just when you thought you understood something.......

I have a swedish region 2 disk (noll tolerans) that i can't play on my dvd player. Thankfully DVDDecrypter can rip and remove RCE and other protections :)

Once on my PC, i use PgcEdit to clean up as much as possible. Usually by tracing and blanking cells i don't want to see.
You know, the typical warnings and special stuff i have little to no interest in seeing :)

Sometimes when cleaning up some unwanted foreign menu's, i am left with many PGC's that are not used when playing the disk, but still called by the buttons within the unwanted foreign menu's (and can't be blanked per se).

Typically i see them as the below example:

VMGM ,LU 1(sv) ,26 (0:00) 4b

that is, swedish LU, with a menu containing 4 buttons.

In this specific case, there are a huge number of these and lots of associated (dummy) entries on the VMGM level.

The only way i have been successful in cleaning this up is to note which PGC are not really used in the final navigation then do the following:

restart trace mode
select unwanted VMGM PGC
run trace
select menu
right click largest menu button
selectively delete all buttons including last button (warning is displayed related to forced button 1 being defualt selected button. just ignore it)
close menu button window
select blank cell and close preview
select ok for kill playback when blanking cell (warning is displayed re trying to playu cell 2 of dummy PGC ignore it and select ok)
restart trace mode twice !
repeat for all unwanted VMGM PGC's containging unwanted foreign language menus.
finally delete all uncalled PGC's (of which there were around 60 in this case).
As a last step, run fixvts to remove the menu crap from within the VOB files

In this case, this worked and the resulting disk was 80% of the original, but it is a long process.

Is there a better and faster way to remove such unwanted special features and the duplicated foreign menu's one typically finds in region 2 disks ?

Cheers, Itchione

[linx05]

Right click on a menu and choose - Remove LU. This will remove all menus with a LU (language unit) 'sv' in your case. Then you just have to run the disc through FixVTS or VobBlanker to clean it up.

I hope I answered your question.

[itchione]

oops, i neglected to highlight the one important fact that only one LU exists on this disk.

In fact, the various foreign language menus are split up between VMGM, VTSM1 and VTSM2. After all my lengthy efforts, only the english language menus remains and is still marked as LU1(sv). It is also split up between VTSM1 and VTSM2 with nothing but 13 dummy PGC's containing pre and post commands within VMGM.
At least its better than the 85 VMGM PGC's is started with :)

It would all be much easier if the disk authors actually used LU as they were intended to be used. Then removing a LU would be rather easy :)

So thanks linux05, my bad :)

Also my bad that i didn't notice macmans post on Taking out Menus of different languages (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=131670). Blutach's comment within this post on using VobBlanker or changing the VCID seems interesting but this does not really clean up the VMGM/VTSM structure in any way (or does it?).

Any other suggestions or clarifications ?

Cheers, Itchione

[blutach]

Changing the VCIDs means you don't HAVE to clean up the navigation. It matters not at all what your preferred languages are, only the English menus will play (since they are the only ones present).

But, you can change all commands which refer to preferred languages to "en". And force the PGC containing the language selection menu to English (use PgcEdit's (http://www.videohelp.com/~r0lZ/pgcedit/index.html) kill playback function for this).

And don't forget about PgcEdit's Delete Uncalled PGCs if the disk is "complicated". Most times after you have simplified the language options, you'll find dozens of PGCs that can go.

Regards

[itchione]

Thanks for your answer Blutach.
Guess i am feeling a little "blond" as i haven't fully digested this yet :confused:

The concerned disk started with an initial menu to select one language from a list of a number of languages.
A selection results in an appropriate copyright warning (in the selected language) and subsequent menus (in the selected language ).
These menu's are accessed by jumping to a specific PGC associated with the selected language themselves (and saved in some GPRM to keep it within that menu "language" when bouncing from film to menu and back).

It may be that the path i took in backing up this DVD was a little clumsy.
Would it have been better to change the button commands within the initial language selection menu so that all buttons jump to the same place as the "english" button ?
Would this have orphaned the unwanted menu's and allowed "Delete uncalled PGC's" to successful remove them ?
Then i could have removed the initial language selection menu itself.
If so, this seems the easiest way to do just what i want.

If not, i am not sure how to handle "KillPGC" in my situation.
Is it correct to assume that as the flow was contained within the english language menu's and there was no way to access menu's in another language, "KillPGC" would have removed these orphaned menus that "Kill uncalled PGC" could not ?

As for the VCID approach, the problem is that i am not so sure how to set the VCID. I assume it is to double click on the menu (usually shown as VTSM X ,LU(sv),Y (0:30) 13b), then click on the VOB/Cell ID and select another VOB/Cell that will point to the english video (menu). In that way, when another language is selected on inserting the DVD, i will always display the english menu's. As mentioned, FixVts will then remove the orphaned cells but will not remove the PGC themselves as they are still in use ?
Is this correct ?

Cheers, Itchione

[blutach]

What I would do is a Kill Playback on that initial language selection menu (selecting English). I'd also blank the warnings, but that's up to you.

After that, the DVD will select the English language menus (the real menus) all by itself (due, as you say, to the setting of the gprm).

This will leave, however, plenty of redundancy in the menu PGCs, where often 4 languages reside. You can be a little bold and actually delete those programs and cells with the wrong languages (content that your language will play), or mirror the VCIDs. And/or delete all those commands which say if gprm(x)=y then Link PGN z (except for the y value which fits your language).

To set the VCID, simply open the PGC in the PGC Editor. Click on one in a foreign language and change the number to the corresponding English one.

So, if a PGC has 2 cells; the 1st (English) is 5/1 and the second (Spanish say) is 21/1; change the 21/1 to 5/1 with the slider. OK and save. And after you've finished doing this for all relevant cells, tidy up and reclaim space with FixVTS or VobBlanker.

No button command changes are necessary.

Regards

[itchione]

Thanks very much Blutach.

Was just experimenting with killpgc and it worked rather well.
I still need a better understanding on subtitles and their associated commands so will experiment a little more, just not right now as my head hurts after reading Subtitle question (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=85160)

Now i think i understand how to efficiently removing menu's in unwanted languages.
Just don't quote me if/when i next hit a brick wall ;)
That may happen sooner rather than later as i am backing up another swedish R2 disk.

Also a thanks to rOlZ for PgcEdit, as i can't say thanks enough times really.

Cheers, Itchione

[jlrm365]

Right click on a menu and choose - Remove LU. This will remove all menus with a LU (language unit) 'sv' in your case. Then you just have to run the disc through FixVTS or VobBlanker to clean it up.

I hope I answered your question.

That is obviously an old post but, thanks to a google search, I found it. It answers a problem I have been having for SO long.

I can't count the number of times that I have been bothered, by leaving foreign menus in back-ups. My pleasure at finding this solution - so simple and yet exactly what I was looking for - exceeds even that exasperation.

It's one of the most useful bits of information I have found and will be one of the most used techniques I will use.

Thank you.