Heeelp ! I really can't figure this out

[waldok]

Hi,

Please help me on this cause I've been reading everything in forums and I still can't succeeed.
I am trying to produce MiniDVDs using IfoEdit (my new standalone DVD player plays miniDVD perfect). I encoded DVD movie with DVD2SVCD, got m2v file. I used DVD2AVI to get 2 AC3 streams (english and french) and used Vobedit to extract subtitles to a ".sup" file. Then I authored all the stuff with IfoEdit and got vob files with all the "legal" IFO and bup stuff. (Of course I did all that was written in the guide I found here, get VTS and all).

Now I would like to author this to 3 CD-R (MiniDVD, yes, it fits). Problem is whatever option I select in IfoEdit, I can't get the subtitles to work when MiniDVDs are played back. I checked that they were here in the initial Vobs (after Ifoedit authoring) but after I split the Vobs to 700MB size and recreat Ifos, no subs appear anymore. I tried all options in Ifoedit (copy original IFO files, create new IFO, etc etc) but no way.

Please help me on this cause I have perfect quality on my 3 CD-Rs (5.1 sound, picture is more than OK) but those damn subtitles don't appear.

Sorry for long post, but I hope somebody can help me on this since I've been fighting with it for 3 days now.
Main question is : how to split to 3 miniDVDs withut losing subtitles in IfoEdit ?

thanks a lot

Waldok (not :cool: anymore)

[waldok]

Hi,

Can't someone help me on this ?
As an update, it seems that the subtitles information "disappear" during the IfoEdit authoring step. (Vobedit can identify and extract subpicture in each ripped VOB files, but cannot find it anymore in the IFOedit authored VOBS.

Still can't figure out why.

Any advice will be appreciated (any other method for splitting the VOBs over multiples CD-Rs in MIniDVD format with subtitles will be appreciated also.

Thanks

Waldok

[aklendathu]

I don't know whether this is relevant to your problem, but the subtitle information written by IFOEDIT to the VTS_n_xx.IFO files
is incomplete. You have to manually edit the created IFO file with
IFOEDIT and adjust some parameters (not present -> present;
caption type from 'not specified' to 'normal caption' and may have
also to specify language i.e., 'English'. I'm quoting these from memory so the information may be incomplete, but once you find the right menu I'm sure you'll be able to figure out the items to change.

How did you split the VOB files ? Could it be that not all
streams were copied over ?

[waldok]

Man, I thought nobody would ever answer this !

I did change the subtitles info by hand in IFOEdit but no luck. I tried many other things but no way. It seems th authoring part of IfoEdit is a bit buggy as far as subpictures streams are concerned (in the so authored Vobs, only the first one included subs, I checked with Vobrator).

Anyway, in the meantime, it appears I finally found another way to do this, using DVDMaestro, Chapter Extractor, SubRip and...IfoEdit (can't leave this one aside when it comes to DVD stuff). I also used ImgToolsa nd DVDDecrypter.

The procedure was quite complicated but I finally succeeded in getting 4 nice MiniDVD on CD-Rs with 2 AC3 5.1 channels, subtitles and chapters, and "nearly decent" splitting points.

Basically, I encoded with DVD2SVCD, 2pass CCE at avg 1800kbs, (targetted to four 650MB Cds in the end), grabbed audio tracks with DVD2AVI, extracted chapters with Chapter Extractor, ripped subs with subrip.
Then I authored the whole stuff with DVDMaestro (lots of small details to fix before a satisfactory result though, like subs timecodes, CCE timecode, chapters timecode, subs palette, etc...)

Then I used IFOedit to split the Maestro VOBS to 2 DVD-Rs, setting a split point at half of the cells for each DVD-R. Then I did this job again on each Disc1 and Disc 2 set of VOBS (generating another Disc1 and Disc2 set on vobs in each) and I finally got four ready to burn MiniDVDs, size below 650MB. I then used ImgTools to create DVD image and burnt it with the great DVDDecrypter in ISO write mode.

It works great, I just hope I can remember all the steps for next time !

I was thinking about writing some guide since the method was so complicated and involved so many different software (most parts were taken from existing Doom9 guides though). But I don't know if anyone is interested in this DVD to CD-R story since DVD burners now become cheaper (I guess I'll have to move to some of these one day too...money, money, money...)

Well, thanks anyway for your reply !

Waldok :cool: again.

[aklendathu]

Subtitles may be a bit tricky.
I suspect that since it is such a small amount of data, they may be
cached by the player to be displayed at the suitable time and then
they might be all in one VOB file (say). This problem could be fixed
if it were possible to manipulate the .sup files. I've asked this
forum for means and ways of doing that. Turns out its a proprietary
format therefore it's not possible to do anything with them.

Glad you were able to solve your problem. But man, what a complicated
procedure...