Does a DVD needs at least one Subtitle Stream?

[Xitrum]

I wonder if anybody could help me? I was trying to authoring the Music DVD "Eagles Hell Freezes over", I had a few problems initially with the DTS sound track and managed to fixed it with a lot of helps from DIggedy. I finally managed to Authored the DVD using Scenarist.
The Original DVD has about 9 subtitles in other foreign language but none for English, so I decided not to use Subtitle in my DVD.
When I authored, The DVD plays fine with the main movie only, but I wanted to use the original menu as well, so I copied the the rest of the file from the original disk and used IFOUpdate to update the newly authored DVD.
After that I tried to play the DVD on Power DVD and it works fine the way I wanted it to work, but when I burned the DVD to the disc and played on my set top player, it took a while for the player to recognise the disc, but once it recognised the disc it stopped, so I have to manually press the play button, then it will play. However, when it play it skipped the menu and jumped straight into the main movie.
My question are:
1. Does a DVD needs at least one subtitle track to be compliant?
2. If the answer to Q1 is no, then how would I go about fixing up this problem? I had a quick look at the original IFO file for the main movie which has been updated by IFOupdate, as well as the one produced by Scenarist. In there, I can see that the one produced by IFOUpdate still listed all the Subtitle tracks from the original DVD eventhough the new one does not have any subtitle.
3. Is it possible to manually edit the .IFO file to remove the subtitle track listing or is there any tools that can remove them automatically?
4. Is this a bug with IFOUpdate, or did I doing something wrong, as IFOUpdate should have remove these subtitles automatically because the Authored IFO file did not listed any subtitles?

Thanks in advance.

[oddyseus]

Apparently the ifo jumps to a title that no longer exists in the new DVD so it just stops. When u say that u 'copy the rest of the file' u mean the rest of the fileS of the original DVD or the original ifo, bup etc? What exacly did u ifoupdate?

No u don have to have atleast 1 sub for dvd to work.

U have 2 options.
Either u add all 9 of the original sub streams to your dvd, putting there one dummy black sub and repeat, or

U strip the subs from the oiginal using ifoedit and using the new subless ifo as your original to ifoupdate with.

No ifoupdate does not remove things that u dont include in the newly authored titles. It simply corrects pointers of stuff u did include.

[Xitrum]

oddyseus, I followed exactly what the guide told me.
I copy all the files except the main movie and the .IFO to the hard disk, let say in the "eagles" directory.
I then move the main movie file that scenarist created to this eagle location
I then use IFOUpdate to update my .IFO file from the original DVD.

I will try what you suggested by using IFOEdit to remove the Subtitles and then IFOUpdate using this new IFO file as the original.

Thanx.

[oddyseus]

I then use IFOUpdate to update my .IFO file from the original DVD.

unless there is a writting mistake I think that the problem lies here.
U should always update the original from the new ifo. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Nevertheless do try to strip the subs off and use the subless ifo as master and update from the newly authored

[lucindrea]

personaly i do all my striping before i ever encode the movie .. that way i have a set of vobs that dont have anything in them but my main movie and the sound track i need ( menus are in vob0 most of the time so that is normaly not a problem ) ... then when i have the new vobs from scenartist i move them over and do the ifoupdate just as you stated , but my orginal ifos have allredy been fixed before i encoded so it never goes looking for somthing not their.

[TRILIGHT]

Originally posted by Xitrum
1. Does a DVD needs at least one subtitle track to be compliant?
No.
2. If the answer to Q1 is no, then how would I go about fixing up this problem?
Answer follows.
3. Is it possible to manually edit the .IFO file to remove the subtitle track listing or is there any tools that can remove them automatically?
Yes. Use IFOedit and open the main movie IFO (ex. VTS_01_0.IFO). Open the VTS_PGCITI and then VTS_PGC_1. You will find all your subtitle stream statuses listed here. Simply change them all to "0" if you do not have any subtitles.
4. Is this a bug with IFOUpdate, or did I doing something wrong, as IFOUpdate should have remove these subtitles automatically because the Authored IFO file did not listed any subtitles?
It is not a bug. Basically, from what you've explained thusfar, it seems as if you are not working with your IFO's correctly. It is rather easy to corrupt them in such a manner that is read easily by a software player but that will confuse a standalone. This is why you find it plays fine when you just did the main movie because the IFO is not yet corrupted. Are you following the guides to the letter? Even the slightest deviation can result in IFO files that confuse (or misdirect) a standalone player.

Since you have a DTS stream, you will need to stick with Scenarist. However, I encourage you to read some of my "full copy" Maestro guide as it pertains to what to do with your files once you've created them and the proper way to use IFOupdate. You should find the information useful.

[Xitrum]

Thanks for everyone for your replies and suggestions. I finally managed to get it to work using oddyseus' suggestions. I stripped the subtitles first and then use that ifo file to update my newly authored ifo file.
However, I think what I did initially was corrected and worked, but I think because my standalone DVD player (HITEKER AD-600A) can't read DVD-RW disc properly and could not read the menu file. Since then, I make an exact copy from the DVD-RW to a DVD-R and suddenly it works.
The funny things is that I then used the same DVD-RW to copy a newly authored BLADE 2 movie and the intro works :confused: :confused: