DVDMaestro, multiple PGC-s, 99+ chapters - how can I make it?

[dumb13]

Folks,

I am trying to back-up my son's favourite DVD, and run into a problem detailed below.
(This title is the "50 years of Ferrari", what he watches into at least once a week...)

This DVD has only one title set (VTS_01_1...8.VOB), with 4 (four!) hours long video in it. No subtitles, no extras, only one AC3 audio track, and a simple menu for navigating between the 110 (!) chapters.

Those 110 chapters are broken into five PGC-s, as follows:
PGC1: 1....32 = 32 chapters in it
PGC2: 33...66 = 34 - " -
PGC3: 67...93 = 27 - " -
PGC4: 94..110 = 17 - " -
PGC5: 111 (seem to be dummy)

After the basic steps (DVD2AVI, demux DD audio, create VFAPI project, etc.) I have successfully reencoded the huge .m2v with CCE, imported the chapter points into DVDMaestro using IFOUpdate's MULTIPGC-MAESTRO.CHP, created the five playlists and assigned the chapter points to the playlists, than saved the project.

Now, everything seems fine (even the audio is in sync), and when I press the "Compile" button, receive the following message from Maestro:

"Too many combined chapters and end actions in movie"

than the compiler exits.


If I decrease the number of chapters right down to 99, the compiler successfully performs the job, IFOUpdate does the magic, but in the final product I have no access to the "eliminated" chapters, playback goes black and stops (IFOEdit's DVD player says "DVD Warning: An illegal navigation command was encountered.").


So the question is the following: is there any way to override this 99 chapters limitation in Maestro, or another tool is needed - obviously someone once has authored this DVD!


Badly need any hint - before the original disk gets totally worn...
Thanks and Regards

dumb

[mpucoder]

The 99 chapter limit is not a Maestro (or Scenarist) limitation, it is a DVD limitation. You may have as many as 99 chapters per PGC, and 99 titles per disk.
If you'd like to know why the limit is there, it is for the player manufacturers, so the displays are required to have only 2 digits for these values.

[dumb13]

Originally posted by mpucoder
You may have as many as 99 chapters per PGC, and 99 titles per disk.

Thank you for the explanation.

In the meantime I did some more investigation, and have compared the original VTS_01_0.IFO to the one that came out of Maestro, and to the "IFOUpdated" final one.

What I have found was that Maestro's IFO ifo contains all 99 chapters in PGC1, instead of the 32, selected in PlayList1, while the other PGCs show the correct number of chapters, as set in PlayLists 2...5.

Now I would need some more help: what did I miss in Maestro?
PlayList1 seems OK, still the compiled IFO shows wrong info for PGC1.

I think the solution lies somewhere here, but could not really find it in Maestro (using v2.9, build 2915a)

Anyone can please point me to the right direction?
Thanks and Regards
dumb

[jdobbs]

Here's your problem: The original had less than 99 in each PGC, but in Maestro, you can't get rid of that annoying first Playlist that contains everything. IFOUpdate removes it when it does the reverse update... that doesn't help while you're authoring.

[dumb13]

Originally posted by jdobbs
... but in Maestro, you can't get rid of that annoying first Playlist that contains everything ...

Thanks for the response, jdobbs - this is what I was afraid of...

For me this "first playlist containing all chapters" seems to be a really stupid limitation of Maestro - though I have to admit there are not so many DVD titles out there with 99+ chapters...

Now I go back and start the whole authoring part in Scenarist, hopefully I can make it (myself not being experienced with Scenarist, and Scenarist not being user friendly enough) with the correct multiple PGCs.

thanks and regards
dumb