New IFOUpdate Version

[TRILIGHT]

I've not really had much of a chance to look into this or test it out yet. However, if I understand correctly, it's advantage comes in when you have just a handful of vobid's that are re-used throughout many different PGC's. All you do is strip by vobid and create one big PGC from these sections. IFOupdate does the job of recreating the many different PGC's for you. At least, this is my current understanding of what adjusted cell mode does. Like I said, I haven't had a chance to play with it myself yet.

[jdobbs]

I personally use it for all multiple PGC movies except when there are sound or NTSC related problems (see earlier comments)... It is designed to make the process simple by not making you have to reauthor multiple PGCs.

[TRILIGHT]

Jdobbs...

I apologize for asking a question without having a chance to test it myself. However, is it intended to be extracted by VOBID and then reconstructed as listed in the graphical representation? Or are you able to do a complete extraction of the VTS and recreate that way? Thanks!

[jdobbs]

It is meant to work with the entire VTS with no further work. The only time you would need to extract by VOBID is in those instances where there is sound missing in the original or video mixtures (where you want to encode parts at 29.97 and other parts at 23.976 followed by pulldown).

[Jafco]

jdobbs,

Just wanted to alert you to an odd situation:

I used your IFOUpdate, version 0.63, in Multi-PGC mode, to re-construct the Green Mile R1/NTSC. I used "Autocorrect VTS Sectors," which it claimed to do. However, when it didn't play back exactly correctly in my standalone (unusually), I double checked the VTS Sectors by using IFOEdit to get the VTS Sectors again. Lo and behold, it found something to correct.

I double checked that I had IFOUpdate set to automatically correct VTS sectors, and it was properly set. You may, therefore have a bug.

**** EDIT ****
Actually, my problem was due to a "zero byte" VTS_02_0.VOB file. Literally, it was zero bytes, and it was screwing up the get VTS sector functions of either IFOUpdate, IFOEdit, or both. Most importantly, it caused me to coaster a couple of discs because my standalone was choking when trying to play VTS_2.




Thanks,

Jafco

[TRILIGHT]

Very interesting! Can't wait to try this out. :)

[jdobbs]

@Jafco

That would definitely be a bug... could you look at the message displayed by IFOUpdate and let me know what was missed?

[FilipeAmadeuO]

@Jafco

Look if there is not any 0 Kb file ?????
Because if it is , you must delete before doing Get VTS Sectors

@jdobbs

Do you have any ifo editor for DVD Audio ????
If you want i can send you some ifos.
Ifo edit doesn´t work

[TRILIGHT]

Originally posted by Jafco
Actually, my problem was due to a "zero byte" VTS_02_0.VOB file. Literally, it was zero bytes, and it was screwing up the get VTS sector functions of either IFOUpdate, IFOEdit, or both. Most importantly, it caused me to coaster a couple of discs because my standalone was choking when trying to play VTS_2.

It is exactly for reasons like this that myself and many others do not support stripping and deleting things out. If you just REALLY feel the need then you should still be following the procedures we lay out and just replacing things you don't want with clips of "nothing". Deleting and stripping things will always lead to inconsistent results. Just one example of many.

[Jafco]

@jdobbs

It was the 0 kb VOB file that was screwing it up. Rookie mistake. Thanks and sorry for the needless alarm.

@FilipeAmadeuO

Thanks for the tip.

[Xitrum]

Jdobbs,
I tried out your new features in IFOUpdate last night and it worked like a charm. Thanks a lot for the tool because it will take away alot of laborious manual process when it comes to multi PGC programs.

I have a DVD title that I have been hold off for a while, I will try to do it with your new tool this weekend, but before I do it, I just want to ask you whether your tool will work on this DVD?

The main movie file of this DVD has 3 PGC, the first PGC is the main movie, the second PGC is a dummy PGC with about 12 frames and the third PGC contains some of the making of the movie.

The things that make this a strange movie is in the sound tracks. The first PGC has 2 sound tracks, the first sound track is 2channel with a bit rate of 192kbps, the 2nd sound track is 5.1 channel with the bit rate of 448kbps. The dummy pgc did not have any sound track. The third PGC has one 2channel sound track, but the bit rate for this track is the same as the 5.1 channel sound track of the first PGC (ie. 448kbps.)

When I tried to reauthor the DVD in scenrist, Scenarist gave me an error when I tried to re-encoded the third PGC with the sound track in the x80 position and said that the bit rate is different between the first track and the third track. When I tried to put a dummy file in the first track and the real track in the second (x81),it also complained that the number of channel are different between the first PGC and the third PGC. Finally, I have to put a dummy third track in the first PGC and 2 dummy track in the first two positions in the third PGC and the real track in the third position, only then Scenarist allowed me to reauthor the DVD.

However, after IFOUpdated the .IFO file and also using IFOEdit to edit the address of the third sound track in PGC 3 to the first position (x80), I tried to play the movie. The movie played fine, but when it come to the extras at the end of the movie I can only get the picture but not sound.

I am aware that if I used your new "Adjust cell mode method", I will get a delay in audio when it comes to the extras due to the dummy PGC in the middle, but I just want to find out whether your method will still work with these strange sound tracks in different PGCs?

I think I have seen a couple movie with strange sound track in the past without the dummy PGC in the middle, I will try and do those with your method as well. One come to my mind immediately is one of the superman movie has 2 PGCs the first PGC has 2 sound track with address (x80,x81) but the second PGC has only one sound track with address x83. Does your method still works with these movies?

I can't wait till you fix the problem with dummy PGC in the middle with no sound tracks. Any idea how long before you have that fixed?

Thanks.

[Eyes`Only]

JDobbs,

While you're still diligently working on your code, I had an idea. Not fully thought out, but here's the gist of it:

Can u make it to where we author a 1pgc scenarist/maestro project, then specify which pgc of the original that we reauthored? Some movies have the 'short' version in pgc1, and then the 'extended version' in pgc2. If we could just reauthor pgc2 and then tell ifoupdate that we used pgc2, we could reauthor these with ease. Unless you have another way?

[Xitrum]

Eye` only,
As I understand it and already tried out this method on a couple DVDs, the current method will take care of that for you. You don't have to worry about any "short" PGC with this new method. The only time where you have to watch out is when there are Dummy/Short (less than 1 second) PGCs with no sound track in the middle of other normal PGCs. (Also when there are multi angles PGCs as well, or when there are PGCs with funny sound track addresses as I mentioned above).

Other than that, JDobbs new "Adjusted Cell mode" method would works whether there are short or long PGCs or whether there are repeated VOBID in other PGCs or not. That why I asked you in the other thread to see if you can modify your DIF4U program to allows for demuxing a movie at the VTS level, and if possile give a warning message when it detected there are PGCs with no sound track in the movie.

[Eyes`Only]

I dont want to transcode a whole pgc1 when all i need is pgc2. Your method relies on putting all the pgcs together and authoring. To me, this is totally unnecessary, which is why I'd like a better method. I don't want to stick PGC1 and PGC2 and PGC3 together, etc. I want to do it efficiently. I also want my vobids to match the original, as I know how to do complex stuff like button over video, and this wont work with this 'hacked' method you seem to be proposing, far as I can tell.

If you don't understand now, you will someday when you really try to reauthor something like button-over-video, infinifilm, etc. The GPRMs won't line up from the original IFO/Vobs.

But, like I said, if it does happen that the button over video and infinifilm will still work, I'll be happy to add it to DoItFast4U. I'm just not a big fan of hacked processes, as you can tell. And an .ifo with only vobid1 in it to me is a hack. Our current methods always used the correct vobids just like the original. To stray from that is to introduce issues I am sure I don't really want to deal with.

Jdobbs is looking at infinifilm as we speak, and hopefully soon he'll have answers for how we can replicate those marvelous DVDs.

By the way: once you start putting multiple pgcs into one stream, you lose the ability to diagnose the stream type. What if pgc1 and pgc2 are FILM but pgc3-40 are IVTC or interlaced? You're going to have to transcode the WHOLE m2v as some type right? And the only way you can do so and have a good picture in the previous example would be to use decomb/deinterlace methods. Which would slow down your transcoding of PGC1 and PGC2. If you were to not use decomb/deinterlace, PGC1 and PGC2 will be fine, PGC3-40 will look like hell. Not to mention you can't forcefilm it (for NTSC ppl) because your interlaced will go all screwy if you do. There's WAY TOO MANY scenarios you people haven't thought of that could go wrong. I took all these things into consideration and that's why I don't think this is a good idea! I'm not trying to rain on the parade, I'm just being thoughtful and meticulous about what will work and what won't. Too many unfixable (at this point) variables that will cause endless headache for this VOBID1 method, IMO.

[Xitrum]

Eyes` Only,
I think you still don't understand how this method works.
With this method, you don't have to put all the PGCs together, all you need to do is just put one PGC together for the whole VTS and then IFOUPdate will then do it work and produce a new IFO with multiple PGCs and multiple VOBID as the original. With this method, you don't end up with one VOBID but the same number of VOBID as the original. That's the beauty of this new method.

I haven't done one DVD with video over button before (I tried to do the Matrix but gave up as it was too complicated) so I don't know whether this method would work. But I think you should try this method out with a short (30min) extra of a movie where it has more than 1 PGC and more than one VOBID in the PGC to see how good this method is.

Sorry, I did not look at it closely before, but the Update IFO only contains 1 VOBID but the number of PGCs are the same as the original.

[Eyes`Only]

I think you still don't understand how this method works.
With this method, you don't have to put all the PGCs together, all you need to do is just put one PGC together for the whole VTS

Do you understand what happens when u demux a VTS? Your resulting .m2v is one that's mixing all the PGCs together!

And I have tested this method. If your reauthored .ifo has one VOBID, ifoupdate uses that and your IFOUpdated .ifo now has one too. Haven't you looked at your .ifos? I helped test this method with JDobbs directly. Trust me I know how it works. I also told him directly that I don't like the idea of the single VOBID method.

[Xitrum]

Eyes` Only
I just did one this morning, and compared the 2 .IFO files, the IFO produced by Scenarist contains one PGC with one VOB, but when I used IFOUpdate with the "Adjusted Cell Mode", my new .IFO file now have the same number of PGCs as the Original and the same number of VOBID as the original.

Maybe you were using the older version of IFOUpdate, the version I used was IFOUpdate v0.63

[Eyes`Only]

This is an example of my reauthored/ifoupdated .ifo:

PGC_1 (program chain): [Title(TTN): 1] [02:34:11.21 / 30 fps] (Programs: 50) (Cells: 50) (uses VOB-IDs: 1)
[Ch 01] [Pg 01] [Cell 01] [V/C Id: 1/ 1] : time: 00:01:05.24 / 30 fps [Pos: 00:01:05.24] [Frames: 1974]
[Ch 02] [Pg 02] [Cell 02] [V/C Id: 1/ 2] Layer Br.: time: 00:03:25.07 / 30 fps [Pos: 00:04:31.01] [Frames: 8131]
[Ch 03] [Pg 03] [Cell 03] [V/C Id: 1/ 3] Layer Br.: time: 00:00:15.00 / 30 fps [Pos: 00:04:46.01] [Frames: 8581]
[Ch 04] [Pg 04] [Cell 04] [V/C Id: 1/ 4] : time: 00:01:39.12 / 30 fps [Pos: 00:06:25.13] [Frames: 11563]
[Ch 05] [Pg 05] [Cell 05] [V/C Id: 1/ 5]

Those are 1/1, 1/2, 2/1, 2/2, and 2/3 in the original .ifo.

You're saying yours ends up with something like 1/1, 1/2, 2/1, 2/2, 3/1, etc?

[Xitrum]

Eyes` Only,
Sorry, my mistake. After used IFOUpdate, I still ended up with one VOBID, but I do get the same number of PGCs as the original, and each PGC has the same number of cell as the original.

I don't know whether different vobids has any significant, but the DVDs I copied played perfectly.

[jdobbs]

@Xitrum

I'm not sure whether we will ever get past the sound problems. You might check and see if you have "Copy Audio and Subpictures" checked, as that can make a difference.

The sound issue is one of the reasons Eyes'Only is looking so hard at the VOBID breakout.

For almost all movies, it makes no difference whether you are working with one VOBID or 10... The PGCs look at cells and generally don't care about what VOBID is assigned to it just as long as it matches what is listed in the IFO. But the key word here is "almost." There are some (admittedly rare) exceptions.

As for the multiple VOBIDs -- it all depends how you author it. If you author in a single PGC with multiple VOBIDs... then they carry over. That's one of the reasons I'm looking so closely at methods to break out the stream by VOBID. If you author it with a single VOBID and a long list of CELLS, that's what you get...

Here is what I think would make the perfect rip in any case:

1. You break it out VOBID (but not by individual PGC).
2. Reencode all the VOBIDs.
3. Put it back together in Scenarist.
4. Update using IFOUpdate and Adjusted Mode.

But -- like I said, the single (authored) PGC rip is very effective, and it doesn't get much simpler than how it works.

Note: Multiple PGCs can all use the same VOBID.

[Eyes`Only]

Here is what I think would make the perfect rip in any case:

1. You break it out VOBID (but not by individual PGC).
2. Reencode all the VOBIDs.
3. Put it back together in Scenarist.
4. Update using IFOUpdate and Adjusted Mode.

I agree. I have done this method twice now and it works flawlessly. And I have my original structure of VOBIDs still! Awesome work, JDobbs.

[TRILIGHT]

I'll admit it's a good idea in theory but it just won't work reliably for the reasons Eyes`Only mentioned. Many times you have different video types and they even need to be encoded at different settings. You just can't do this with one big file. Then there's the audio problem Jdobbs mentioned.

I think the idea Jdobbs has about recreating all the vobid's is going to be the only way to do anything reliably. However, as was pointed out, this is WAY overkill for something that can be recreated simply by doing PGC's.

[jdobbs]

Remember, though, that a lot of the folks here aren't using NTSC. So the single PGC Adjusted Mode works a lot more reliably with PAL. Those damn empty sound spots are a horror though. I was planning to create filler for the blank spots -- but my knowledge of AC3 streams just doesn't hack it...

[Xitrum]

I agreed with you all that this new method will not work in all cases, but in a lot of cases this method should work, and when it does work, it cut down a lot of laborious works.
Like other methods, there are some DVDs that none of the methods currently available will not produce an exact copy of the original DVD, we just have to choose the most appropriate method to use and just have to live without some of the fancy stuff in the original DVD.
What I wanted to say is that method will add one more to the already available methods that we are currently using.
Anyway, I also wanted to say that I really appriciated for all the works and effort that you guys had put in to produce all the awesome tools that I'm currently using.

[jdobbs]

You are exactly right. That's the main reason I created it, because sometimes you just want it to be easy. The VOBID method (while a lot more complex) is for when you want it to be perfect.

[TRILIGHT]

Originally posted by Xitrum
Like other methods, there are some DVDs that none of the methods currently available will produce an exact copy of the original DVD, we just have to choose the most appropriate method to use and just have to live without some of the fancy stuff in the original DVD.

I certainly don't mean this to sound like I'm geing argumentative but I beg to differ. I know that Eyes and myself as well as a lot of others never leave anything out on the disc. The method we use is very reliable. The one place I see "adjusted cell mode" really shining would be a VTS set that has a LOT of PGC's made up of the same (and relatively few) VOBID's. This is where it would be very reliable and would save a lot of time. The "one stream" thing is just a bad idea IMO.

By the way, I'm not knockin ya, Jdobbs! You know I LOVE the work you've done! I just don't think the "one stream" thing will ever produce anything that is reliable in reintegrating with the original disc layout. There are just way too many variables to consider in re-encoding and reauthoring to have the disc look and behave correctly.

[Xitrum]

I certainly don't mean this to sound like I'm geing argumentative but I beg to differ. I know that Eyes and myself as well as a lot of others never leave anything out on the disc. The method we use is very reliable. The one place I see "adjusted cell mode" really shining would be a VTS set that has a LOT of PGC's made up of the same (and relatively few) VOBID's. This is where it would be very reliable and would save a lot of time. The "one stream" thing is just a bad idea IMO

I tried to copy a couple of DVD using the VOBID method, but gave up in the end due to the amount of works involved.

Would this method work if one of the PGCs has 2 sound track at address x80 and x81 and another PGC has only 1 sound track at address x83?

Also, another question, I currently using the demux by PGC method for one of the 007 movie, and this movie has a couple of PGCs with 3 VOBID in each. The first vob is 00:00:00.12 frames long the 2nd is 00:00:00.24 frames long and the third is 00:00:01.11 frames long. I used DIF4U to produced an .avs file for these PGC but when I tried to drag and drop these .avs into CCE it refused to accepted. (personally, I don't wanted to CCE these short mpv files, but when I tried to import this mpv file into scenarist, it complained because the scenes are too short). So I'm sort of stuck at the moment.
Would the VOBID method you're using works on this kind of movies?

[Eyes`Only]

In that situation, I'd throw those .m2vs into Scenarist as-is.

[TRILIGHT]

Yes, it would. The way you make a determination if something should be done by PGC or vobid is to inspect the IFO structure and see if vobid's are re-used in other PGCs. If they are, you should do it by vobid. Now there is ONE exception to this rule and it is the situation you describe. Many times, there is a single vobid that is referenced throughout the many PGC's and it is like a 15 frame clip that seems to appear at the end of them all. This is just a chapter point so there is something to jump through if you hit the chapter forward key. Also, there are sometimes commands attached to this vobid so you'll want to recreate it properly.

The idea is to not use up more space than is necessary. If this is the only repeated vobid then you could do it by PGC and simply place a "scene" (as it's referred to in Scenarist) or "chapter" at the end of this video clip and it will suffice. Now I'm not sure about your "1 sec" clip. I would imagine it too is nothing more than a "chapter point" or "placeholder" if you will for commands. As for the audio, that is easily recreated by using dummy clips (which I have for download at my site by the way) to recreate the structure. You might want to invest some time into learning the way we do our titles. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised how reliable it is to do full backups this way.

[Xitrum]

Firstly, I would like to say that I really appreciated the oppotunity to be able to pick the brains of 3 experts at the same time (Trilight, Eyes` Only and JDobbs). If you guys don't mind, I would like to ask a couple more questions:

@Eyes` Only
In that situation, I'd throw those .m2vs into Scenarist as-is.

I tried that, but as I mentioned Scenarist complained that the scenes are too short and did not allowed me to encode the movie, and CCE did not allowed me to import this file as .avs. Any ideas???

@Trilight
As for the audio, that is easily recreated by using dummy clips (which I have for download at my site by the way) to recreate the structure. You might want to invest some time into learning the way we do our titles. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised how reliable it is to do full backups this way.

I did tried using dummy audio tracks before and did had some success, but how would go about doing the DVDs with the weird sound track I mentioned earlier?
Basically, the VTS has 3 PGCs
The first PGCs has 2 sound tracks:
1. x80 is a 2channel sound track with a bit rate of 196kbps
2. x81 is a 5.1 channel sound track with a bit rate of 448kbps.

The second PGCs is a dummy PGC with no sound track.

The third PGCs has 1 sound track which is a 2 channel with a bit rate of 448kbps.

trying to put the sound track in the first position won't work because of the different bit rate. The second position won't work because of the different sound channels. So I ended up put it in the third position and also put in a dummy sound track in the first PGC to match.
After re-author, I used your method to change the address of the third sound track in PGC 3 to the first position, but the sound did not played.
Any ideas how to fix this and is there a better solution for this kind of DVDs?

[TRILIGHT]

I can't help but feel as if your extraction is wrong or you're being fed incorrect information on the audio. I've never seen an audio file encoded at 196kbps. In fact, I'm not even certain Dolby Digital can be encoded at that bitrate. All 2 channel audio I've seen is 192kbps. Which leads me to the second thing you said that sounds way off. A 448kbps 2ch file. I've never seen a DVD waste 448kbps on a 2 channel file. Your information must be incorrect somehow.

[Xitrum]

Trilight,
The number I quoted might be wrong, but they are in that order, as I only type it from memory, I think the 192kbps is correct as you said but I'm pretty sure that there is a 2ch audio track with a bit rate of 400 and something does exist.

This is a Music DVD by the way, so a 2ch sound track of a bit rate of 448kbps is not unusual.

[influenza]

@Xitrum

The problem you're describing with the audio track is quite common, I had the same problem too with some DVDs (probably the same you're mentioning). The solution is quite easy (I think I got if from trilight). Author the dvd you did. After recompiling open you ifo (of the vob set) in ifoedit and go to VTS_PGCITY and then to the pgc where the sound does not play (actually it does play I gues, but plays the dummy soundless track, if you switch manually to the third track you would have sound). Now you'll see the audio statusses Double click on the track you wnat to play (3) and copy the value. Now double click on track one and copy over this value. Track 2 and 3 can be changed to value 0. This should solve it

Good luck

[drmih]

What purpose do the clips of less than a second serve and are they ever critical? I have been trying this method with a few titles and prior to using the Adjusted method have used ifoedit to strip out these vob-ids. All of the titles played fine both before being re-encoded and after. The only problem I see is if you have a PGC made up entirely of just one of these vob-ids - (PAL MIB II has one) or maybe if the short sequence is a Cell-id as ifoedit doesn't have the cabability to strip out cells (I think).

[Xitrum]

@influenza
The problem you're describing with the audio track is quite common, I had the same problem too with some DVDs (probably the same you're mentioning). The solution is quite easy (I think I got if from trilight). Author the dvd you did. After recompiling open you ifo (of the vob set) in ifoedit and go to VTS_PGCITY and then to the pgc where the sound does not play (actually it does play I gues, but plays the dummy soundless track, if you switch manually to the third track you would have sound). Now you'll see the audio statusses Double click on the track you wnat to play (3) and copy the value. Now double click on track one and copy over this value. Track 2 and 3 can be changed to value 0. This should solve it
I tried this method before on a couple of DVDs and their worked, but it did not work on this particular DVD. I think it might got something to do with the dummy PGC in the middle, which may has a command to tell the DVD player to jump to a particular tracks. I sort of got stucked that why I wanted to try out the new Adjusted cell mode method from JDoobs to see if it work. Because with that method, I assumed DVD2AVI would demux only one sound track for the whole movie and does not complained about different bitrate, and hopefully, Scenarist will not complain when I import the sound track in.

[TRILIGHT]

You're straying again, Xitrum.

"Stay on target.....Stay on target!!" hehe

[Xitrum]

@Trilight
I'm desperately wanted to backup this particular DVD, but so far has not been successful.
Therefore any helpful suggestions would be muchly appreciated

[jdobbs]

JDoobs?

[Xitrum]

Oop! I'm really sorry to mispelled your name Jdobbs

By the way, I have a suggestion which I personally think would make IFOUpdate more user friendly.

With the options in IFOUpdate, instead of having them listed in a drop down menu at the top, I think it would be more user friendly, if you list them out with tick boxes or radio buttons, like Eyes` Only did with his DIF4U. That way, we can see all the options straight away rather than click on different menu to see different options, also if you make a mistake with a mouse by select/unselect an option because it hidden away, you can't see the mistake, but if you got it layout in front of you then you can see it straight away.

[Eyes`Only]

ooh i second that request. If you want to select 3 checkboxes the way it is currently, you have to check one, let the dropbox close, drop the menu back down, select another, let it close, drop it back down, select the third...

Would be nice to just be able to go click click click UPDATE.

An option to not pop up warnings for each step (this will happen.. do you want to continue?) would be nice too.

[Shamanis]

I have no real complaints about the menuing system. The thing i find most annoying is that whenever you click browse on the authored ifo, it points to the original and then if you click browse on the original its then pointing to the authored one. If it remembered the same path for each button, it'd save me frustration in locating my files. (mainly when i'm doing multiple updates one after another).

One minor little request... can we have a CLI added for the chaptering. I'd love to be able to have "IFOupdate -MaestroPGC -infile "C:\mydvd\VTS_01_0.IFO" -outpath "C:\myoutputfolder\" or such, so i can automate several VTS chapter extractions at once.

[jdobbs]

Ok.

1. I agree with the warnings, it can get annoying. But rather than make them go away -- I will put an option to "Skip Warnings." I personally like to know before a program changes the contents of 6 or more IFO files...

2. I completely agree with the paths not being saved properly. I've reminded myself to fix that several times, and versions just keep coming and going without the change.

3. I don't want to put the checkboxes on the main screen. I get a headache when I look at a really busy interface. And judging by the number of options that have been added since this started, I could eventually fill a whole screen with tickboxes. I may move it to a dialog.

4. I'm working on a CLI from an earlier request.

I'd like to make a lot of other changes, but it seems that my real job (the one that pays the mortgage) just keeps getting in the way!!

[TRILIGHT]

Originally posted by jdobbs
I'd like to make a lot of other changes, but it seems that my real job (the one that pays the mortgage) just keeps getting in the way!!

Damn! I can relate to this ALL too well! ;)

[Shamanis]

well, your doing a fantastic job. Without IFOUpdate, we'd all be in a pickle... or reautoring every menu... *shudder*. So, anyway, just wanted to say thanks and give you a thumbs up... damn... no emoticon for that.... how bout a cheesy grin instead :D

[jdobbs]

A new version (v0.65) of IFOUpdate is attached. This one has two minor version updates (v0.64 was an interim test version). Here are the changes to this version:

1. Finally added code to keep track of the path for the Original, Newly Authored, and Backup file paths so you do less directory browsing.

2. Added a "Disable Warnings" switch to the Options Menu. If this is set there are no warnings before modification to IFO files. Error message will still print.

3. Added command line interface so IFOUpdate can be used from a batch file. I warn you ahead of time -- this mode sets the "Disable Warnings" flag every time it is used. When a parameter is not provided, IFOUpdate uses previous values in many areas (just as it did when in GUI mode) Also, all commands are handled in the order you place them on the command line -- so for example if you set -c after you've done a -e you may have chapters in a different directory than you originally intended. If you execute -u the program makes IFO updates. So it should normally be the last command in the path. If you put it first, you may update the wrong IFO. So DON'T BLAME ME if your incorrect command line accidentally changes a group of IFOs without any warnings. Update follows all the "Auto" options you've set in the "Options" menu. CLI mode follows the usage convention below and is not case sensitive:

-oifofilepath #path to the orignal IFO file
-nifofilepath #path to the newly authored IFO file
-bpath #path for backing up IFO file
-mm #Adjusted Cell Mode
#replace the second "m" with
S for standard mode
M for multiple PGC mode
A for adjusted cell mode
C for Cell Only mode
-cchappath #path in which to store chapters
-em #export chapters
#replace m with any combination of characters containing
M for "Maestro File"
P for "Maestro -- Multiple PGCs"
I for "IFOEDIT File"
Z for "IFOEDIT (FILM)"
C for "CCE Chapter file"
F for "CCE Chapter (FILM)"
S for "Scenarist Chapter"
D for "Semicolon Delimiter"
A for "Adjusted Mode..."
V for "VOBID Authoring Files"
X for "VOBID (Scenarist)"
-u #Update - just like clicking "Update IFO"

4. Added "Chaps for VOBID (Scenarist)" checkbox in the "Save Chapter Files" dialog. Creates one file for each of chapters, cce, and cce-film for those who are not happy with having to deal with individual files for each VOBID. I plan to remove the option that creates multiple files in a later version unless someone asks otherwise.

5. Added a "Settings" Menu item. Added "Save Current Size an Position" so the program will remember the size and position you've chosen.

I've tested these changes, but please check them out yourself before assuming everything is bug-free.

jdobbs

[jradams]

have you found a way around the multi pgc dvd's that have like:

pgc1 00:01:00
pgc2 01:45:32
pgc3 00:00:15
pgc4 00:06:21

When using multipgc mode the audio doesnt synch up and when using adjusted cell mode it doesnt work either. Just wondering what can be done when I ran into a dvd like this setup and still use maestro instead of scenarist :)

[jdobbs]

Still no solution for the sound problem... sorry.

[trigger638]

I am kind of new to all this so there is a grave possibility that I have made an error. Let me start by providing some details.

The main film contains 40 PGC's. There are 42 vob id's. Vobid 1 and 2 contain the entire film, start to finish. Vobid's 3-42 are all stills. The first PGC calls vobid's 1,2 and 3 in that order. All of the rest of the PGC's simply call a few cells in either vobid 1 or 2, followed by one of the stills. Each of the PGC's contains one still as the last vobid (hence there are 42 id's as 1 and 2 contain the film and all 40 PGC's contain a still).

Because of the massive amount of stills at the end of the stream I broke out by vobid, as trying to simply go by chapter points will not work as a majority of the chapters would be off the end of the video stream.

I recreated the Title/PGC/Chapter/Cell structure exactly as it was reported in the original ifo by InfoEdit. I used the Chaps for VOBID (Scenarist) from adjusted mode for both CCE and the scenes in Scenarist. I was using 0.65.

After everything was compiled I replaced the original vob set (no not the ifo or the _0 files) with the authored ones. I fired up InfoUpdate, and recieved the following error when attempting to update the original ifo:

ERROR: The new IFO file has more cells than the original. ABORTING.


Something does not add up with this. I opened the original and the newly authored ifo files side by side and the structures and cell counts were exactly the same. I even went down each PGC chain in each file and checked the cells to make sure.

I am certainly stuck as I cannot understand how this could possibly happen when I recreated the structure exactly. By the way I have re-authored this 3 times now (in the event that I may have made an error) and each time I tripple checked both files for cell accuracy and each time they reported exactly the same cell count.

I have a copy of both the author'd and the original IFO files. I will refrain from posting them unless they are requested.

Thanks in advance.

[mike4692]

I to have had a similar problem doing bad company (R2),

1. I first put ifoupdate into adj cell mode
2. saved the resulting CCe and maestro txt file and chp file
3. vfapi the d2v file
4. import to cce
5. add the txt file to the saved ecl file
6. encode to m2v
7. import the ac3 audio and m2v file into meastro
8. import the chp file that ifoupdate created
9. compile a single pgcwith no play list
10. swap the original vobs with the new vobs maestro created
11. made sure they were named correctly
12. run ifoupdate in adj cell mode
13. error original/new cell count dont match ABORTING

what am I doing wrong
:confused:
bad company has 2 pgc's

[jdobbs]

@mike4692

Check step 8 and make sure all the chapters were actually imported...

There are way too many possible things external to IFOUpdate that can cause these unmatched chapter problems. To assist in debugging I plan to add an option in the next version to output the tables to a text file for debugging. That way it will be possible to post the tables and figure what happened...

The only way I can figure out what happened now is to get a copy of your two IFO files -- but there are fears here that posting IFOs might be construed as copyright violations.

What I can say is that in almost every one of these that I found so far (with a couple notable exceptions), the problem was in the authoring. In Adjusted mode IFOUpdate analyzes and determines how many cells to author in its preprocessing of the Original IFO. It writes those to the .CHP files. When doing the update, it runs that exact same routine (against what should at that point be an unchanged original IFO) and compares the number of cells being read. If they don't match -- something is wrong.

That doesn't mean there is no room for errors (bugs), though.