Maestro & multi pgcs [Archive]

Yohudi

2nd October 2002, 22:04

Used IFOUpdate 0.53 to sort 4 PGC title np today....

Analysis beforehand steered me wrong a bit..

Chapter assignment information for DVDMaestro:
- Playlist (PGC) #4 [VOB Sector: 0]
- 00:00:00:00
- Playlist (PGC) #3 [VOB Sector: 50304]
- 00:02:23:00
- Playlist (PGC) #2 [VOB Sector: 50304]
- This Playlist uses the chapter point(s) identified in Playlist #3
- Playlist (PGC) #1 [VOB Sector: 54105]
- 00:02:35:20
- 00:06:25:16
- 00:09:22:07

when I authed in this sequence I was unable to use create synch audio and kept losing synch.. or more acurrately.. not getting synch to start with.. PGC4 ac3 was 2ch-192 / PGC2+3 and PGC1 ac3 was 6ch-384.

tried audo transcode and substitition but synch remained off.. until I used my brain and put PGC4 at END of timeline NOT start as suggested by analysis... had to manually update chapters to reflect this.. and align PGC4 audio with end of PGC1 separately on track 5

Could then use create synch audio np...

PGC4 still present in playlist... and IFOUpdate made necessary adjustments for re-integration np... all features and functions perfect...

think the PGC source can be anywhere in the timeline btw.. as long as playlist ID's correct segment should still work np..

jdobbs

2nd October 2002, 22:24

I'd like to get this right, so please help me to understand this.

Do you mean that even though PGC#4 started at sector 0, it was not the first thing (physically) in the VOBs (VTS_0n_1- VTS_0n_n)? It should have been your LAST PGC, but would have contained the chapter starting at 00:00:00:00, right?

Did you use DVD2AVI as the frame server for the project? The analysis assumes you are going to encode the entire VTS in one sweep, was that how you did it?

If you playback the VOB directly with Mediaplayer, does PGC#4 play first?

Thanks,
jdobbs

Yohudi

3rd October 2002, 09:02

Hi...

PGC4 Does actually appear physically 1st in the vobset.. as reported by IFOupdate... and does play first.... the analysis IS correct.. I just couldn't get a successful author out of it if i used the reported sequence..

the prob was that if I encoded the entire set using DVD2AVI I couldn't get the audio to align correctly after that... the orig author put the audio for PGC4 on separate track.... deliberately.. to prevent use of Create Synch audio..

Audio came out from a dvd2avi demux as PGC2+3 and PGC1 audio bundeled in 1 ac3 for all related tracks/languages... and PGC4 audio came out as a small file separate from the rest....No matter how tightly I aligned the end of PGC4 and the start of 2/3 and then PGC1 - the audio went out of synch on PGC2 and the rest.

I took the practical workaround approach and split the vobset in the end to PGC's and physically recreated the 4 - 2+3 - 1 structure in maestro and then adjusted this to 2+3 - 1 - 4 as described which worked out ok, even tho I had physically moved location of PGC4..

after I'd confirmed that would all work etc using orig unprocessed m2v's.. just framserved the PGC1 m2v using DVD2AVI and CCE to compress etc

I think as long as the playlists are representative the physical location of the segments don't matter.. on this title anyway...

hope that helps

Yohudi

4th October 2002, 17:53

I apologize if this post seems lengthy but believe it WILL be of interest.

Having had success with 4 PGC's I decided to move on to something a little more complex. The title I chose was 8 pgc, 3 Angle, Region 1. IFOUpdate 0.53 analysis (edited) below

Chapter assignment information for DVDMaestro:
- Playlist (PGC) #1 [VOB Sector: 0]
- 00:00:00:00
through to
- 02:16:03:21
- Playlist (PGC) #2 [VOB Sector: 3593431]
- 02:16:04:06
- 02:16:04:21
- 02:16:40:07
- Playlist (PGC) #3 [VOB Sector: 3593441]
- 02:16:40:22
- Playlist (PGC) #4 [VOB Sector: 3593448]
- 02:16:42:12
- Playlist (PGC) #5 [VOB Sector: 3593455]
- 02:16:44:02
- Playlist (PGC) #6 [VOB Sector: 3593462]
- 02:16:45:22
- Playlist (PGC) #7 [VOB Sector: 3593469]
- 02:16:47:12
- Playlist (PGC) #8 [VOB Sector: 3593476]
- 02:16:49:02

PGC's 2 to 8 had no content at all they were just tiny segments of black video.. no audio.

The angles were all duplicates.. i.e. dummies to prevent DVD2AVI frameserving properly. DVD2AVI can't deal with mult-angle correctly (yet ?) it processes all the angles and cuts multiple frames into the output stream..

i.e. Frame 50 - Angle 1
Frame 50 - Angle 2
Frame 50 - Angle 3
Frame 51 - Angle 1
Frame 51 - Angle 2
Frame 51 - Angle 3

and so on..

This meant losing the dummy angles first (smartripper), frameserve the single-angle stream.. then peform pulldown on result etc...all fairly standard so far...

Stripping to 1 angle also meant missing the segments that made up PGC 2 to 8... but I went and got these separately anyway.. and that's when i came across something interesting. I assembled PGC 1 to 8 on the timeline in maestro, and imported the multi-pgc chp file. I was surprised when the file did not come in completely...

There were 51 chapters in PGC 1, 3 chapters in PGC 2 and 1 chapter each in 3 to 8, a total of 60 in all. Maestro brought in just 49 chapterpoints.. even though IFOUpdate HAD correctly saved the missing chapters in its analysis. Chapters in maestro were correct up to PGC1 - chap 50.

Examination of the end of the stream showed PGC 2 to 8 to be made up segments below the minimum allowed length for chapter points.. which was why the missing 10 markers had been truncated on import. Even if the stream had been frameserved direct from the Vobs as PGC 1 thru 8 ,the chapters would still have been truncated. In addition maestro would not allow the manual entry of chapters based on the timings in the analysis... they were all declared as being of illegal length.

I decided to replace the "illegal" Pgc 2 to 8 segments with segments that would at least allow entry of chapter-points, and then entered chapter-points to make up for the ones not importable from the chp file. Whats interesting about this is I made my chapters indiscriminately. I couldn't use the values from the chp file as maestro still saw them as illegal. I just made chapters to match up the number of those missing.

Once I had correct number of chapterpoints I made playlists.. I made the playlists conform to the IFOUpdate 0.53 analysis.. then compiled and IFOUpdated.. EVERYTHING WORKS.

This in conjunction with other tests I've made leads me to believe that the source and content of additional PGC's does NOT matter in relation to re-integration. I can think of certain circumstances where physical location of additional PGC might be made an issue. At the moment it seems that, as long as playlists accurately represent IFOUpdate analysis of chapterpoints and distribution through PGC's, then you can fake the multi-PGC content anyway you like.

I thought this one would be hard to do... but it was much easier when I'd found out the above. I don't think for a minute that this will be the case with everything.. at some point physical location is sure to become an issue.. if it can be made one.

EDIT:

I had a closer look at this... tried serving all the segments together to get it all in one file.. like a normal DVD2AVI framserve.. no joy...

the prob is someone has their retaliation in first... the analysis shows a required .m2v length of 02:16:49:02. But even with all the segments frameserved together the file is only 02:16:03:27 in length.. just enough to get the 51 pgc-1 chapters..I re-applied the workaround detailed above and full re-integration was once again a success..

It seems to me that this slight mismatching of content vs requirement is going to be difficult to beat "automatically".

jdobbs

5th October 2002, 09:35

Examination of the end of the stream showed PGC 2 to 8 to be made up segments below the minimum allowed length for chapter points.. which was why the missing 10 markers had been truncated on import.

I don't see any chapters that are an intrinsically too short. What probably happened is that they were too short when they were aligned at the I-Frame.

You might try using AVISYNTH's blankclip() function after the main movie you've encoded to make it long enough for all the chapters. You should also then be able to use the IFOUpdate generated file for CCE to make sure an I-Frame is at the proper locations. If everything works properly (I haven't tested the I-Frame insertion point very thoroughly) you should be able to then just import the chapters as-is and author.

PGC2 is unique. I've seen lots of blank PGCs, but this is the first one I've seen with multiple chapters. I wonder if it actually has any utility, or it's just there to confuse?

Yohudi

5th October 2002, 11:13

PGC2 is interesting...... i wish you could see these in maestro....

these are illegal chapters... I have to make a video segment over 8 times longer than the 1 demuxed from the vob just to be able to enter 3 chapters in maestro... they are locked tight against each other

something is going on.. but i note your comments and will make further tests

PGC's 2 to 8 are there simply to confuse/cause problems if missing ..they contain no content.... at maximum zoom in maestro they don't even take up 1 index mark. All 8 together were smaller than the 1 single clip i made to accept 3 chaptermarks...

also in my fix i just duplicated the same clip 8 times once for each PGC.... so the orig content was definitely irrelavent

Yohudi

10th October 2002, 02:45

Originally posted by jdobbs

PGC2 is unique. I've seen lots of blank PGCs, but this is the first one I've seen with multiple chapters. I wonder if it actually has any utility, or it's just there to confuse?

I got it wrong when I said PGC 2 was chaptered just to confuse... I think theres a conditional branch on this PGC.. which navs you to alternative intro+menu segments.... depending on which PGC2 chapter you enter from...

The reason I say this is that with my extra long (8x longer) segment in place the menu nav has slowed considerably compared with the original title... so when I play it in standalone you can see the switching as the PGC runs

jdobbs

10th October 2002, 12:55

Just had a thought (that's an event in and of itself). What if IFOUpdate had an option to, when it encounters PGCs that have no content (no chapters, no cells), just leave them intact. That way you wouldn't have to attempt to recreate them. With no content there is no reason to change them anyhow... All the chapter information could be adjusted to account for this.

Whoah... Why didn't I think of that one before?

jdobbs

auenf

10th October 2002, 14:34

Originally posted by jdobbs
Just had a thought (that's an event in and of itself). What if IFOUpdate had an option to, when it encounters PGCs that have no content (no chapters, no cells), just leave them intact. That way you wouldn't have to attempt to recreate them. With no content there is no reason to change them anyhow... All the chapter information could be adjusted to account for this.

Whoah... Why didn't I think of that one before?

jdobbs

why dont you pass that along to the IFOEdit author?

;)

Enf...

Bruce Leroy

10th October 2002, 19:42

Is it true that the latest version of ifoedit has a maestro mode that eliminates the first pgc which has the complete vts?...

jdobbs

10th October 2002, 21:28

@Bruce Leroy,

The Maestro mode is a part of IFOUpdate, not IFOEDIT, and yes it is in the lastest version.

@auenf,

I'll add the change to IFOUpdate this weekend. :)

jdobbs

auenf

11th October 2002, 14:26

Originally posted by jdobbs
@Bruce Leroy,

The Maestro mode is a part of IFOUpdate, not IFOEDIT, and yes it is in the lastest version.

@auenf,

I'll add the change to IFOUpdate this weekend. :)

jdobbs

umm, IFOEdit or IFOUpdate, now im confused...

oh well, ill go back to sleep

@jdobbs,

keep up the sense of humor, oh and the good work.

Enf...

jdobbs

12th October 2002, 20:35

@auenf,

True to my word, here a version of IFOUpdate that will leave dummy PGCs intact when authoring. I also added one other slight mod that was requested by Eyes' Only. Here is info from the "Readme" file:

Oct 12, 2002 (v0.55)
- Added logic in the "Automatically Analyze Original IFO" option that identifies Dummy PGCs and automates their handling. Now, when recreating the VTS with this option on, you simply ignore the fact that they exist. IFOUpdate will leave them intact (skip over them) in the original IFO as it copies information from the newly created IFO file. To compensate, the author simply creates a new VOB set that contains only the non-dummy PGCs in proper order.

- Added INI support for the "Copy Audio and Subpicture Tables" option as requested by Eyes' Only. Option state is now saved when clicked and remains persistent between sessions.

jdobbs

Bruce Leroy

13th October 2002, 17:49

Sorry, slip of the tongue. I meant ifoupdate. Are we going to get a guide for use with maestro soon? Thanks in advance, you guys are great.

fletch

14th October 2002, 02:09

I too am looking forward to a guide for use with DVD Maestro if possible please ? ;)

Cheers

Fletch

foxmolder

17th October 2002, 11:46

Please for Jdobbs or Trilight:
Can you compile a guide on "how to make...?"
with CCE and Maestro and Multi PGC ?
Your job will be a lot appreciated.
Thanks.

jdobbs

17th October 2002, 22:42

Attached is a draft guide in RTF format. I actually wrote it a few days ago and it is supposed to include some graphics, but the graphics (screenshots) made it too large to post. So you'll have to use your imagination... Please note that this is not the only way to do a multiple PGC backup, it is just one option. You have to use your own judgement as to whether this works for you. Also, I ask that you not kill me with obvious questions. My heart went out to TRILIGHT after his guide was posted and he was inundated. I'm wincing already... Also don't comment on the quality (or lack thereof) -- Doom9 is a lot better at writing guides than I am.

Things to watch for:

1. Don't accidentally leave the "Maestro Multi-PGC" option clicked when you decide do a single PGC.

2. PGCs with no sound that are physically in front of a PGC with sound can cause synchronization loss.

3. If you are doing an NTSC multi-PGC and some parts are FILM with RFF flags set, and others are from an interlaced source you may have to break out the PGCs (e.g. using smartripper) and do them individually. Your only other choice would be to encode the whole thing at 29.97

jdobbs

foxmolder

18th October 2002, 12:22

Jdobbs, thank you.
Your help is very appreciated.
I swear I will not kill to you with obvious questions.

TRILIGHT

18th October 2002, 19:00

Thanks, Jdobbs! I don't even like taking credit for the guide sometimes. I mean, afterall, I just "stood on the shoulders of giants" and came up with a process that worked for me. I'm sure others were doing the same thing, I was just crazy enough to take screenshots and type stuff up. hehe ;)

I've actually got a bit to learn since I've been "out of the loop" lately. Apparently there is an effective way to do multi-PGC in Maestro now and you have something in IFOupdate to support that. I'm still in the process of moving for my new job but I'm eager to take a look at the new info when I get a chance!

Yohudi

18th October 2002, 19:59

I have recently encountered a multi-PGC title where the issue of content mismatching has once again reared it's ugly head.

On this title the AC3 audio track as Demuxed by DVD2AVI is too long and if left unedited does not allow sync to be obtained...

there is a segment of approx 3 seconds (silent) on the front end of the audio file which prevents alignment in the correct place on the maestro timeline.. I.E. you can create a positive offset or delay the start of audio in relation to video.. but I know of no way, short of editing the track, where you can advance the start of the audio track beyond 00:00:00:00.

I got round this by chopping the problematic 3 second segment from the file, which then allowed me the space to align the audio in the correct place.

I think this has been acheived by some kind of asset timecode embedding, but I tried using "ignore embedded timecode" option in maestro, unfortuneately to no avail.

Served the video direct from the vobs on re-encode with DVD2AVI/AVIsynth 2. Encoded with CCE and as stated Demuxed the audio whilst saving the project file. Can't see how anything I've done in processing might have caused this prob...

they r getting trickier in attempts to prevent backup..

TRILIGHT

18th October 2002, 20:10

Originally posted by Yohudi
they r getting trickier in attempts to prevent backup..

Nah. They are not worried about people like us excercising "fair use" rights. My guess is the reason things are seemingly getting more complicated is because the structure itself is getting more complicated in the authoring process. It wasn't long ago that you couldn't get a decent DVD menu anywhere! Now they are much more interactive. It stands to reason that the more complex the original authoring gets (intentional or not), the more complex it will be to recreate that layout and have it work properly.

Metallifux

22nd October 2002, 13:22

This new version of IfoUpdate sounds just the ticket for some of the problems I have had with multiPGC's well done that man JDobbs.

Bruce Leroy

25th October 2002, 20:26

This method kicks ass. I just did the scorpion king with little problems. Thanks jdobbs, You're the man!

jdobbs

26th October 2002, 01:14

Thanks.

TRILIGHT

26th October 2002, 12:56

Originally posted by Bruce Leroy
Thanks jdobbs, You're the man!
I've been saying this ever since he came up with the idea of IFOupdate! hehe :) Tis true! It's always the little details that make something great, isn't it? :)

mpegje

27th October 2002, 17:39

i have ripped a dvd with 2 pgc's, the first audio track has the same lenght as the movie, but the 2e and 3e audio tracks are 9 seconds shorter than the main movie. thise are started in pgc 2. my quistion is how to handle with the 9 seconds of emptyness in the biginning of the audio track 2 en 3.

mpegje

kimpen

28th October 2002, 13:15

Hi,

great work for the tutorial... thanks a lot to jdobbs!
I wish to add that I hope to see in it more details about audio tracks managing, because in the multi-PGCs examples, this could be a little more complex to manage;

I tried fo follow the guide and everything is okay;
I only have a problem when trying to re-encode the entire VTS (wich contains multi-PGCs) because CCE 2.64 stops to work before the end of the file!

I use an AVISYINTH script which contains the D2V project file as generated by DVD2AVI, but there's no way for me to understand why the encoding process stops almost at a half of the entire process!

Any help?

Thanks,
Kim.

Sargondvd

4th November 2002, 09:25

I was wondering if Derrow had come up with an ICON for IfoUpdate , it such a usefull tool it realy should be given nice Icon , just a thought.

Regards and thanks for your efforts

Sargondvd

4th November 2002, 09:32

Sorry i got you confused with Derrow for the author , please accept my appologies ,

jdobbs

4th November 2002, 23:43

That's okay. Most of what IFOUpdate does is just automating a sequence of things that used to be done manually through IFOEDIT. So Derrow gets the credit for the original thought anyway!

goonyah

7th November 2002, 16:44

Yohudi,

I experienced terrible audio sync only once. It was when I frameserved directly from the VOBs and demuxed the audio with DVD2AVI. Now, I only use the d2v created by DVD2AVI, and don't have any problems.

Hope this helps someone.

sidders

14th November 2002, 17:03

Aploogies that I've posted this somewhere else,

I am having a lot of problems reauthoring multiple PGCs in these programs. Iam using the CCE IFOUpdate method.
First I tried Maestro, using playlists. The problem I was having was that some of the chapter points in the playlists didn't correspond with chapters in the original movie. So, for example, I impotrted all the chapters from the movie into Maestro using Chapter Xtractor, then created a playlist. All fine up to here. But then, I had 20 seconds of a logo which was PGC 2. The first chapter point in the movie was 46 seconds, so in order to create this, I had to add another chapter point to the timeline. When I did this, it changed all the times in my playlist fot the first PGC!!! I couldn't see any way to rectify this, so I moved on to Scenarist....

OK, Scenarist.... I got the hand of the basics, i.e. importing the video and audio, and creting a script to import into SCenChap, then opening from script in Scenarist again. I also understood that each VTS folder was a new PGC, but adding all the points for each PGC confused me. Do I add a new scene for each point? If so, how do I stop this new scene appearing as a chapter in the movie? God, I hope people are understanding this...!!!!

I am going to attempt to do Crossroads tonight, which has 10 PGCs!!! Can anybody give me steps as to how to do this??

Bruce Leroy

14th November 2002, 17:27

I'm not an expert like jdobbs or anybody, but I have been successful
on all of my muliple pgc movies. It appears to me that you should use
the ifoupdate method of getting the chapter points instead of chapter extractor. This will also give you a txt file that will tell you how to assign the chapters for each pgc. (warning: sometimes maestro will chop off the very last chapter so you'll have to manually input the last one.)

Hope this helps.

Sargondvd

16th November 2002, 10:46

I have read the guide several times , but i must be missing someing in getting the correct results
Infupdate 0.56 reports ....

VTS_7_x.vobs has 4 pgc 's ,

PGC1 has 21 chapters ,time length = 1:10:35:13, last chapter start point 1:10:34.16 vob sector =0

PGC2 has 2 chapters , time length = 0:05:04:05 , last chapter start point 1:13:01:33 - vob sector = 222760

pgc3 has 1 chapter , time length = 0:02:13:03 . chapter start point = 1:15:39:18 - vob sector 274011

PGC4 has 1 chapter , time length = 0:02:013:03 chapter start point = 1:15:39:18 - vob sector 274011

when i do DVD2AVI , CCE , Maestro shows the total video content as being 1:10.35:13 , so the chapters past PGC1 dont load

What am i missing here , it is clear the PGC2, pGC3 has content , not so sure about PGC4 , is DVD2AVI the problem ( using 1.86)

The guide also points out about adding playlists , can any one give a few more details on this

Regards and thanks

jdobbs

16th November 2002, 15:20

I've run into this too. I'm not sure, and haven't had the time to investigate thoroughly. But I think sometimes these chapters point to sectors that have nothing in them (definitely nothing that DVD2AVI sees). I've also demuxed the content and didn't find anything.

What I do in these instances is create a single Maestro chapterpoint at the very end of the stream I've created with CCE (a few frames long, usually blackness). I then create as many playlists as I need to fill out the PGC count (in your case 3) and point them all at that last chapter point.

That way I have the references to PGCs in case they are called in the DVD and my player won't complain. It's possible you could lose some content such as an FBI Warning or Studio Logo. But I looked extensively on the ones I did and nothing was missing.

It is also possible that the apparently blank PGCs are performing some task in their pre or post commands (like changing an audiostream or enabling a subtitle) -- that's another reason to replicate them. IFOUPdate doesn't change the pre/post commands in the PGCs (except to remove region checking) -- so you should be safe there.

caprioles9000

17th November 2002, 16:51

Originally posted by sidders
Aploogies that I've posted this somewhere else,

I am having a lot of problems reauthoring multiple PGCs in these programs. Iam using the CCE IFOUpdate method.
First I tried Maestro, using playlists. The problem I was having was that some of the chapter points in the playlists didn't correspond with chapters in the original movie. So, for example, I impotrted all the chapters from the movie into Maestro using Chapter Xtractor, then created a playlist. All fine up to here. But then, I had 20 seconds of a logo which was PGC 2. The first chapter point in the movie was 46 seconds, so in order to create this, I had to add another chapter point to the timeline. When I did this, it changed all the times in my playlist fot the first PGC!!! I couldn't see any way to rectify this, so I moved on to Scenarist....

OK, Scenarist.... I got the hand of the basics, i.e. importing the video and audio, and creting a script to import into SCenChap, then opening from script in Scenarist again. I also understood that each VTS folder was a new PGC, but adding all the points for each PGC confused me. Do I add a new scene for each point? If so, how do I stop this new scene appearing as a chapter in the movie? God, I hope people are understanding this...!!!!

I am going to attempt to do Crossroads tonight, which has 10 PGCs!!! Can anybody give me steps as to how to do this??

@SIDDER..
i seem to have the same problem......everything works fine when i use the ifoupdate/maestro guide ...however when my project is compiled....it seems that the first chapter does not correspond as with the original!!......Simply do not know what to do...does anyone have any suggestions.......it seems like it just shifts ...as if one chapter is mising ..however it is not ..the chapters start from 00:00:00:00 ...and end with the corresponding last chapter :(....i'm stuck!!..Also whats strange is that PGC 4 is only one chapter and its the 00:00:00:00 ??? Is that normal!!

Well an update to my situation I have realized that it seems to miss the first chapter point of every PGC.....on the original the first chapter point is different than the one compiled......anyone got an idea what i might be doing wrong ....i just add the chapter points to maestros playlist by right clicking and then adding the chapter point itself (the corresponding chapter point ass listed by the ifoupdate output text)...so i am guessing that its not the way i add the chapterpoints to maestro...the question is waht could it be what am i missing here????

caprioles9000

18th November 2002, 09:35

well looks like i have found my problem ..when i was re-encoding with CCE ..i used the wrong chapter positions:(....i guess thats wht the chp. file from ifoupdate did not match .......guess it was my own mistake .....so ..i'll post again if it works...

Yohudi

18th November 2002, 12:34

I would say I'm an old hand at multi-pgc now.. thanks to JDobbs and the on-going development of IFOUpdate.

My only issues now are that the process is becoming quite long-winded.

I was wondering about a decryptor / IfoUpdate / Vobedit / CCE / IFoEdit / IFOUpdate based method. Without using maestro at all.

I thought if the multi-PGC cells could be exported as a single cell-based list for ALL PGC's and imported into the new authoring part of IFOEdit, then, theoretically, you could do a cell-based update with IFOUpdate and avoid the need to create playlist structure completely.

would this be anywhere near the mark.. or am I talking out my arse ??

Sargondvd

18th November 2002, 13:40

thanks for help , adding 3 playlists with a chapter point , worked ,
I also note that the orginal IFO file when reviewed ,had chapters 4 & 5 as PGC2 , chapter point 5 in PGC3, 4.

When this was used it also resulted in the correct chapter in the main vob , so perhaps it just does not matter , as long as the correct PCGs are there.

Sargondvd

20th November 2002, 06:45

the fim is colateral damae IFo Update shows there are 6 PGC's , shown in the order of
PGC 2 = 00:00:00 chapter
Pgc 1 31 chapters 00:03:01 etc
Pgc 3 1 chapter
PGC 4 31 chapters ( same list as PGc 1)
Pgc 5 same chapter as PGC3
Pgc 6 1 chapter

After importing the assets to Maestro , i noticed that there are 6 audio files from DVD2AVI , the 6th audio track is only 2 mins long.

The video is 1:45:00 long , and 5 audio tracks are 1:43:00 long

the 6th track appears to be the WB logo sound . so do i add track 6 to all the audio tracks using the audio sync . or just put it on the 6th track input in maestro ?

Am i correct in assigning 5 playlists , adding the chapter in to playlists as shown on INFupdate chapters readfile etc , and should i look for the complied authored INF file to contain the same pattern relating to the PGC's that was in the orginal , prior to using Infupdate on the authored INF

regards & thanks

Yohudi

30th November 2002, 18:01

the report on this is the use of stratagey that initially causes prob with DVD2AVI/CCE/Maestro/IFOUpdate method..

Extra Cell of 7mins 11 secs 8 frames is tagged onto front of movie vobset.. but isn't represented in the IFO.

the IFO steers playback past extra Cell as starts as indicated in analysis below:-

Chapter assignment information for DVDMaestro Playlists:
- Playlist #1 (PGC #1); [VOB Sector: 152945]
- 00:00:00:00
- 00:06:27:12
- 00:14:10:00
- 00:20:17:24
- 00:23:40:00
- 00:28:29:24
- 00:35:35:07
- 00:40:54:15
- 00:49:32:00
- 00:52:59:19
- 00:57:18:11
- 01:02:27:20
- 01:06:47:18
- 01:13:48:12
- 01:18:56:06
- 01:24:18:20
- 01:31:44:08
- 01:35:02:05
- 01:44:35:04
- 01:49:18:21
- 01:56:27:02
- 02:01:28:19
- 02:07:41:14
- 02:10:04:07
- Playlist #2 (PGC #2); [VOB Sector: 3598398]
- 02:19:16:00
Any unlisted PGCs have been determined to be nulls (dummys)
and will remain intact in the original file.

what analysis doesn't show is extra cell starting at VTS Sector 0... DVD2AVI does see this extra cell if you frame serve the main vobset and adds 7 mins + as mentioned to the eventual M2V. this then trhows chaps and audio... but not subs btw.. out by 7 mins for length of title.

is easy to beat.. just rip to separate single pgc vobs before DVD2AVI but is new one on me.. and seems designed to cause probs with maestro IFOupdate method.

Bear263

2nd December 2002, 02:09

Followed the guide to the T. Nice work to the author. The video and chapters work very well.

I have a problem with the audio though. I'm trying to backup M.A.S.H. season 2. It has 8 pgc's each 1/2 hour show. The video and audio are in sync for the first 6. The 7th and 8th are the only ones with the audio sync problems. Not much but noticeable. I tried ac3 delay corrector didn't work. Tried to have dvd maestro auto sync but no avail. This is NTSC and pulldown was used.

Any help?

Thanks

Sargondvd

2nd December 2002, 11:22

Yohudi , you seem to have Multi PGC's sorted , can you explain , how vobedit is used in relation to the Multi PGC method ?

regards

Yohudi

2nd December 2002, 12:48

Sargondvd..

I've been making use of Vobedit to get round a few probs... it gives a much better analysis of actual VOB contents than anything else at the moment..

Vobedit spots hidden content not identified by other tools like subrip or IFOUpdate... it is also useful in determining/confirming presence of extra cells which may not be represented in the IFO.... as with my last post.

I also use it to strip the smaller PGC content to m2v/ac3 etc.. there's often no need to re-encode these.. and the various rippers often do not seem to extract these properly. Also I've now taken to stripping out content to PGC Vobs.. so needed to use a good and reliable vob stripper to process/check.

In the question I posed about a Maestroless method, I envisaged a situation where IFOUpdate analysis was followed by a rip to pgc's using decryptor/smartripper. Then pgc Vobs examined/stripped using Vobedit....

Bear263:

re your audio sync prob... you'll probably find that at least one of the cells in the episode has been authed with the ac3 at a different delay setting... so that even if you correct delay there is still a mismatch...

i.e
3 cells at 80ms 1 Cell at 120ms the rest at 80ms.. even if you correct the 80ms delay based on the 1st 3 cells the rest of the stream will still be out of sync.. cell 4 would throw itself and everthing else out of sync by +/-40ms

Sargondvd

3rd December 2002, 00:23

thanks Yohudi , ill have to look more into vobedit , it not a tool i have used often to date .

Is there a guide on using vobedit for the striping PGCs, cells , or is it very straight foward.

You are correct when you say that some vob stripers do not pick up all the cells , found this happening a few times.

Am i correct in saying that most new releases seems to be Multi-PGC's now days.

regards

Bear263

3rd December 2002, 15:50

Yohudi, is there any way around this?

Last night I ripped each episode seperately and they all came up with 13ms. I know that if i create 8 different movies in maestro, the audio will be in sync. But can't figure out how to get the playlists worked out. Can't seem to make one playlist with 8 different movies.

Thinking of taking all the episodes and inserting them on the movie 1 timeline. One after the other. But what about the audio? Would I put each track on it's own audio line and then match it up to each episode and pray that it all sync's up?

Thanks for the help. I usually try to figure it out and read before I post. Which is why I don't post much. But this one I'd like to get right.

Bear

Yohudi

3rd December 2002, 19:04

Assemble all the clips in one track on the time line

righclick in the audio track and select create sync audio from the popup.. this will allow you to specify which ac3 belogs with each clip

Yohudi

3rd December 2002, 19:08

Originally posted by Sargondvd
Is there a guide on using vobedit for the striping PGCs, cells , or is it very straight foward.

Am i correct in saying that most new releases seems to be Multi-PGC's now days.

regards

Derrow has some guides up.. as he's the program author i believe

Alot but not all of the new titles are multi-pgc... it's not a new thing btw... multi-pgc adult titles have been on release since 2000

Bear263

5th December 2002, 03:55

Originally posted by Yohudi
Assemble all the clips in one track on the time line

righclick in the audio track and select create sync audio from the popup.. this will allow you to specify which ac3 belogs with each clip

When I do this, the audio is in sync but can not import chapters from the multipgc-maestro.chp. It gives me a chapter point postion is invalid since it will violate the minimum allowable chapter length.

Must I add each chapter by hand? Or is there a way to select all the clips to have it appear as one clip?

Thanks

Yohudi

5th December 2002, 13:11

The chaps can usually be manually tweaked to values which will work...

the import prob is probably due to timecode resetting in each clip or something like that... there's an easy way to get them all as one clip

put them in order on the maestro timeline... delete project menus and don't bother with audio etc... save and compole... then demux (vobedit) to get the joined m2v.....

Bear263

5th December 2002, 14:05

Thanks for the info. I figured it out this morning. I just selected all the clips and told maestro to export movie. What it did was combined them all into one .m2v. Then I just imported that .m2v and it worked.

Thanks again.

jdobbs

5th December 2002, 14:15

@Bear263,

There are a lot of chapters that are separated by a few frames. This happens a lot when a PGC has a chapter point at the very beginning and end. You will see that there is often only 12 frames between the end/begin point (between PGCs). If the I Frames for the two points don't match exactly, the points may fall too close together (e.g. within a single PGC) and Maestro won't import one of them.

Bear263

5th December 2002, 23:22

@jdobbs

I figured that was the problem but couldn't figure a way (other than manually setting chapter points) around it. The way I did it worked like a charm.

Fixing to try disc 2 of M.A.S.H. season 2

Thanks again for the help.

Bear

Scoobydeux

6th December 2002, 12:39

My first attempt at this failed.... Perhaps this is why...

Maestro did indeed not accept the final chapter from my CHP file, so I created one manually. It wouldn't let me create it at the right time: 2:05:05:09 and the latest it would let me go to was 2:05:02:28. When you say manually create this chapter, is it acceptable to bump this chapter back to the last "maestro acceptable" location, or do I need to add some "black space" at the end so the last chapter can be in the right position?

The disk I made played fine on several PC's, but would not even RECOGNIZE as a DVD in several standalones, did not know if this could be the error....

Scoobydeux

jdobbs

6th December 2002, 17:22

@Scoobydeux,

In my experience the only time I've ever created a set that ran on a PC but not on a standalone it was because I forgot to do "Correct VTS Sectors". Try copying the DVD you burned to your hard drive, and run IFOUpdates "Correct VTS Sectors" against an IFO in that directory -- if it makes any changes this was definitely the cause.

It's okay to back the time up a couple of seconds... that's exactly what I do. Usually that last chapter is only there so you can hit the "Next" button to get to the end and still hit the post commands.

Yohudi

6th December 2002, 18:32

There's a good little trick for getting away with "illegal" chapters as you describe in maestro.. as long as there's even a tiny bit of m2v after the chapter point you enter

say the siruation is exactly the same.. i.e last chap point failed to import + manual entry of the value fails..

put a second instance of the m2v in the same track... at the end.. now enter the chap value as close to the end of the 1st instance of m2v. now delete the 2nd instance you put on the timeline... the chapter point shoud remain where you entered it...

works great for me..

Bear263

6th December 2002, 23:05

Well I tried M.A.S.H. Disc 2 and the same audio sync problem occured.

Question: When using dvd2avi it runs film 99% until the end. Then it changes to ntsc 1% as it stops. Could that be the problem? I use force film in dvd2avi as it is 99% or better.

Thanks
Bear

jdobbs

7th December 2002, 01:59

No. You should use force film. How many PGCs does it have? Sometimes you will find a single PGC in the stream somewhere that has not sound on the track you have select and it throws everything off.

Scoobydeux

7th December 2002, 03:01

Thanks, Yohudi, that's a great tip! Always nice to know ways to fool the programs..

Thanks also, Jdobbs. I did multiple get VTS sectors prior to burning, just to make sure that was good as well. No such luck. I think I'll just start again from scratch, and see if I dorked up an IFO file somewhere along the line.....

Bear263

7th December 2002, 03:16

Originally posted by jdobbs
No. You should use force film. How many PGCs does it have? Sometimes you will find a single PGC in the stream somewhere that has not sound on the track you have select and it throws everything off.

That's what I thought jdobbs. Thanks for the reassurance I was doing it right. The dvd has 8 PGCs all in vts_03.vob 1-8. As stated in an earlier post, it all sync's up if I do them individually. Just thought I'd try it again.

Bear

Yohudi

11th December 2002, 21:47

A Scenarist user at another forum made a remark that got me thinking and then (successfully) testing something in maestro.

The remark was in relation to ultra-short (12 frames) cell content. He said that Scenarist asks "What type of Still" on load/Import of these segments...

So I though what If i just substitute a still for this type of PGC content... the handy thing about stills in maestro is that they can be arbitrarily re-sized in terms of length.. and you can use the same still multiple times... v useful if you need to enter multiple tiny chapters..

Anyway.. tried it and it's beautiful to behold.. just used a 720x576 black still for PAL and 720x480 for NTSC.. hasn't failed me yet...

Xayd

22nd January 2003, 13:53

jdobbs, great guide first of all, thanks a ton for it. I had all but given up on being able to recreate the Band of Brothers DVDs with their multiple PGCs that are often in odd orders as far as the video streams go, but this guide worked like a champ on the first one.

Sorry for bumping this old post, but there's something I noticed with Maestro and that first BoB disc, though, that you might want to note in the final guide, is that Maestro does not display chapter start/end times in the playlists very logically when used in this fashion.

I spent a couple hours trying to find the default setting I was missing that was causing Maestro to default the chapters in each playlist to the beginning of the video stream, when in fact Maestro was displaying the times relative to the current playlist, not the total stream. I was thinking (and had a couple of people agreeing with me that I asked about it when they looked at the situation) that Maestro simply would not let you start Playlist 1 at anything other than Chapter 1, 00:00:00:00, when in fact Maestro was doing what I told it to do, just not displaying the time the way I thought it should since it was showing me the time on each chapter relative to the beginning of the playlist instead of the beginning of everything.

In the end it all works fine, so it doesn't really matter, but you might wanna note that with a screenshot in the final guide.

jdobbs

22nd January 2003, 14:36

@Yohudi

I just read your post for the first time (where have I been?) -- Whoa!! You just solved a problem I've been struggling with for a week. The extras in "Unfaithful" had several (4) sequences transposed on a single stream that all ended with a transfer to a 12 cell frame at the end of the sequence. It had four entry points whose times all were greater than the video's. IT WAS A STILL!

Thanks.

@Xayd

Thanks.

whaqatac

22nd January 2003, 14:53

This is the same problem I have been having with the 'I am Sam' PAL DVD. The extras all refer back to a 12 frame still at the beginning of the VOB file.

Does the new version of IFOUpdate resolve this issue now?

jdobbs

23rd January 2003, 01:37

Not yet. I'll see what I can do.

whaqatac

23rd January 2003, 10:07

Jdobbs, Thank you.

After a week of trying to resolve the issue in reauthoring the seamless branching extras in my 'I am Sam' Pal DVD, your program has done it.

The problem I had was that each of the chapter files refers back to a 12 cell still at the beginning of the section but reauthoring the VOBs and running through the new adjusted mode in IFOUpdate worked perfectly.

Thank you very much for the help and guidance that you have given and the work that you have been putting into IFOUpdate.

rkorkie

28th January 2003, 21:45

Hey guys, I am obviously missing a very fundamental piece of information regarding multi-pgc authoring using Maestro. I am doing the Band of Brothers disc 1. Normally I am the type of guy to strip out everything and leave one video and audio track per movie, and drop the rest and author it. However, given that there are 2 episodes per disk, I thought it would be a good idea to follow jdobbs' maestro multi-pgc guide. Then things fell apart...

I extracted all the files using dvd decrypter, and then I generated my .d2v file, and then put that through CCE. Well, I am not sure if I was supposed to author each PGC into it's own .mpv file, or if I was supposed to transcode the entire film into one .mpv (which is what I did). Needless to say, I used Maestro, only had one timeline with one video asset and one audio dts asset. I imported the IFOUpdate generated multi-pgc .chp file and authored. When I did my file IFOUPdate "Update IFO" command, I got the error "Only 1 source PGC file found. Can't use Maestro mode. Aborting.".

Obviously I did something wrong. Reading all the posts I possibly can, I keep reading about creating multiple playlists. Well, from what I see in Maestro, I only see one timeline, and nothing that is specifically called playlists, or even the option the create multiple playlists. So basically my question is simple: what did I do wrong that I only ended up with one .mpv file and not able to author to multi-pgc? What my problem not creating 2 .mpv files or was I supposed to somehow create multiple playlists in Maestro...

Confused...

Ryan