Guide: Trilight's UberGuide for FULL Disc Backups!

[TRILIGHT]

Ok, I must say that it is still not exactly where I would like it to be but it's a start. I tried to make a guide out of a clickable flowchart which documents exactly how I do my own projects from start to finish. It may not be perfect yet but it should go a long way to helping "newbies" understand what all is involved in the process of making a FULL disc backup. The challenge may seem daunting at first but I assure you, once you've gotten a few of these under your belt, there's just no going back. It's the only way to make a real DVD backup. The site, of course, is http://dvdguides.trilight.net I've placed the old guides under, well...old guides. ;) Just in case anyone still wanted to access them for something. Personally, I think they're a bit obsolete. I'm hoping the "UberGuide" will become a "living guide" and change as my project style changes. I hope you find it helpful!

[caprioles9000]

www000tttt wickedd.........and Trilight does it again:) Thnx man ..people should really know what you have been giving back to this community ..all together will all the other admins....thnx to everyone involved in this whole community...i am sure that i can speak for others when i say ....you guys rock:)

[waldok]

HAPPY :

Impressive.
Trilight you are the master.
That's a great idea to use this flowchart format to allow direct access to any given step in the process. And one can see you've put some efforts to it, with all the details and stuff.
I'll follow these steps tonight and see if you really deserve the golden belt.



Enough flattery now.
UNHAPPY :

Where is the god damn printable version ? printing your guide is a pain in a sensitive part :D

Cya on IRC.
Waldok:cool:

[onesoul]

Hey dude ;)
I am sure when one day I have a dvd burner I will find your guides very useful. I just saw through them and it looks very promising. Thanks for the patience :)

[Piece]

thx 4 the guide!

seems like the guide wasn't written 4 dvd noobies (like me). i have some problems at the point when it comes to the scenarist. everything before that worked fine, created dvdimage, extracted all the streams, saved the sub bmp's and encoded the extras + movies. now i dont get forward. i've inserted all video (4) & audio (8) streams into scenarist by clicking on menu "New -> Data...". how exactly do i create the tracks from this now? if i go into the track editor, nothing is there. could u maybe write down the scenarist part in more detail or add some more screenshots plz?

greetz piece

[TRILIGHT]

@Everyone
You're welcome! I'm glad you find the guide useful. I had my doubts about even bothering with it considering so many people seem enamored with movie-only poor quality tools like DVD2ONE.

@Waldok
As I mentioned, the idea behind the guide was to have it be a "living" guide where any part in the process (or the flowchart itself) could change at any moment. This way, things don't become outdated too soon. Printing stuff out is ok I suppose but it pretty much kills the idea of a "living" guide. Believe me, once you've done this a few times, you won't even really need the guide anymore. ;)

@Piece
It took forever just for me to put together what information I did. I guess I didn't really consider that people would not know how to make tracks in the "Track Editor". It's really rather simple. When you're in the Track Editor, all of your assets are in the bottom right-hand corner window. All you do is drag a video asset into the upper window and a track is made. Double-click it and you will see the "timeline" for that track. Drag-and-drop your audio onto it and audio tracks are created for that video.

[fourtyfour]

servus...

Nice work.

But a few questions:

-What does "Das UberGuide" mean?
-Could you make your flowchart one size bigger. My brain works better with big graphics. ;)

[TRILIGHT]

Loosely translated from German, it means "The Super Guide". As for the size, there is a drop down arrow at the bottom of the screen that will let you make it as big or as small as you like. I too would like to see that setting remain constant if you choose one in particular but I've not yet found a way to do that. Sorry.

[caprioles9000]

Trilight ...is there a way to print out your uber guide......i tried but could not succed:(.......any ideas....cause sometimes i like to have things in front of me on paper!!!

[auenf]

Originally posted by TRILIGHT
Loosely translated from German, it means "The Super Guide". As for the size, there is a drop down arrow at the bottom of the screen that will let you make it as big or as small as you like. I too would like to see that setting remain constant if you choose one in particular but I've not yet found a way to do that. Sorry.

you will need to use a script (preferably serverside) and cookies to do that.

Enf...

[tomos]

i can see the menu's fine, but when i click on:
Take me to Das UberGuide!!

all i get is a grey bar underneath and to the right of the main window (which is blank) :(

[waldok]

Das über-Trilight,

WHat is "a few times", considering Scenarist is involved and I only use Maestro ? You probably meant "a few hundred times" ;)

Anyway, so much for printing the whole guide, I'll manage to print out parts I want to examine at night in my bed...but what about printing the flowchart itself ? It could be used as a handy reminder of the workflow to follow during the backup process.
Do you have any "printable" version available ? I can't manage to print it out from Internet Explorer neither from any tool I tried.

Come on Uber-trilight, I know you can do it ! I want this flowchart as a 2mx2m poster in my office. Quick :D

Waldok:cool:

[Piece]

ok, i moved on in the guide :-) finally i even succeeded in creating a working dvd, but not how i'd like it to be :-(
1. i get warnings and errors with the subs, something about size too big blablalba...
2. adding chapters manually .... i don't understand one word
3. finally i have the authored files and the original from the dvd. what do i have to do in ifoedit now? it don't looks so "straightforwarded" to me :-(

plz help

piece

p.s. do i need idoupdate or ifoedit? is that the same program? doom9 has just linked ifoupdate and that doesn't look like ur screenshot

[TRILIGHT]

@Tomos

You might want to check your browser installation or settings. I'm not sure exactly what to tell you. You have some sort of problem preventing you from viewing XML, Java, or CSS correctly.

@Piece

I'm not sure what to tell you. First, I don't really understand your actual question(s?). If you can tell me specifically what you are trying to do and how it is not working for you, I could more easily formulate an answer for you.

@Everyone who wants to print

I feel that printing the guide goes against the entire idea of it being a living guide that can change on-the-fly. It's only been up for a couple of days now and I've already made 2 changes and 3 additions. More is sure to come as I plan on adding instructions for "Closed Captioning" as well as possibly going back and redoing the movie "Insomnia" to give people a better idea of how to work with VOBID's and how seamless branching works. However, I can see the advantage of having the flowchart in front of you while working on your project and since that section will change less often, I've made a printable GIF file for you. You can download it from the "Tips and Tricks" section on the site.

[Piece]

ok, i try to make it clear. question 1+2 are not so important now.

i have finished everything in scenarist so far and save it to the vobs. next step in ur guide is field "IFOupdate". at first what program is that u use there? the link at doom9.org just gives me a program called IFOedit 0.95 but it looks different. and that's where i am stuck. i have now my authored vobs and the remaining files from the original dvd (video_ts*, *0.vob, all IFO & BUP files). i guess the final step would be to actualize the IFO file. hope my problem is more clear now.

[TRILIGHT]

IFOupdate is a tool written by Jdobbs...

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43105

If you use the search function here on the forum, you can usually find things you're looking for, in case it wasn't on the front page like this one is.

[Piece]

i'm a genius! i finally made it! thx 4 all the help

btw ... some1 should tell the doom9 admins to fix that link to ifoupdate .65 in the download section

[TRILIGHT]

You're welcome, Piece. Glad ya made it. :)

[waldok]

thanks for the GIF flowchart. I'll go get it now. I'm sure my wife will like it as a big poster in our bedroom also... ;)

Waldok:cool:

[TRILIGHT]

Poster eh? I could always give it to you in a hi-res format that would print well in "big ass poster" form. LOL!! I'm just not going to make it for download. I already don't like that the download is 150K. Might not seem like much but it really hurts users on dial-up.

[tlian]

Hi,
I try to use the Das UberGuide to recreate the DVD, these are my
process. (Before, I always use default PCG demux)
1. Use DoItFast4you to demux by VobIds, it generates 2 large
one and 4 small mpv files.
2. add the generated AVS files for the large m2v files to CCE,
3. exports to cce.ecl
4. generate the chapters file using
IFOUpdate's "chapters for VOBID authoring"
5. add the chapter files to each section in the cce.ecl file
(after the "encode_last" line of each VOBID)
6. import the cce.ecl to CCE and encode.

Since I have slower machine, I want to try how to do the manual chaptering before continue with second pass, So I do the following,
7. add the 2 generated CCE_07_V01_1.16~9.mpv.m2v and
CCE_07_V02_1.16~9.mpv.m2v to the scenarist
8. add the 2 assets into the track editor, and add the audio.
9. usually, I export the scenarist script and use scencap to add
chapters, but in this case, what should I do here?
10. I skip step 9, then add the two track to the scenarist
layout editor, but the result has only one chapter per vobid

Can someone help me how to add the chapter manually. The ScenChap seems to be working for PGC based demuxing only


Thanks
tlian

[TRILIGHT]

You should be placing scenes where they belong on the track and then when you drop it in the scenario, you'll see those scenes as chapters. I understand the guide is a bit lacking in this respect but it will be resolved by the end of the weekend. By the end of the weekend, I should have all of my notes complete for the example title I am including (Insomnia).

[technolog]

I'm sorry if this is a bit 'newbie' but in Trilight's Uber guide he says 'import avs scripts into CCE' but I cannot figure out for the life of me how to do it.

I've tried searching the forum for 'avs AND cce' but after reading the first two pages of 'hits' I hadn't come anywhere near to an answer.

I'm assuming there is an intermediate step that isn't mentioned. Previously I've used VFAPI on the d2v file to generate an avi which I can open in CCE - is this still valid or is there a better, higher quality method?

Can some kind person take pity on me and nudge me in the right direction please.

By the way, I'm using CCE 2.62

Technolog

[tomos]

dont you just right click in the white central area and choose all files intead of 'avi files' and open the avs file

[tlian]

@TRILIGHT
Thanks for your great guide, hopefully you have time to
fill in the detail especially the chapters for vobids demuxing.

@technolog
Do you demux the asset using DoItFast4You? it generates the
AVS files for you


tlian

[TRILIGHT]

You're welcome, tlian! This information will be included at the bottom of each page and will be titled "Insomnia Notes...". It will provide a full explanation of how to make a full backup of the disc "Insomnia". Some may find they would like the notes all in one place so I'm going to make my notes a document available for download as well. I should have it up on the site by the end of the weekend.

[technolog]

@ tomos

That was the first thing I tried, but I get a CCE error message dialog saying 'this is not an .avi file'

@tlian

Yes, I use DIF4U and I've got the .avs file - it's how to get it into CCE (ver 2.62) that I don't know.

[student]

Hi TRILIGHT and everyboby else.

First of all I would like to say thanks to TRILIGHT for this great guide. I am doing SVCDs with DVD2SVCD for about ayear. But now I've just bought a DVD burner so I was looking for guides to do DVD to DVD-r. I think its a great guide and I am giving it a try right now.
I have a few stupid Q though:---

1. Why do I need to extract VTS's with (DIF4U) when I am going to keep everything that is on the original DVD and

2. HOw do i decide which VTS to extract and which not to.

Ok I am stuck here. what happened that i ripped the DVD(before I saw this guide) in file mode with all the files selected. But when I saw this guide i just created an iso image(from those files) and mounted on virtual deamon drive. Its plays fine in the player but when i start my project in DIF4U,it starts dvd decrypter and comes up with the erroe message "UDF Parsing Failed Reason:Function 'UDFFindPartition' returned
So what do I do now. Please dont ask me to rip the dvd again because I can't.

Thanks in Advance.

[waldok]

You have to install Avisynth first.

Check the CCE guides in doom9 page.

WAldok:cool:

[technolog]

I installed Avisynth (after CCE was already installed) and CCE still doesn't let me open .avs files.

Looking in the Avisynth plug-in directory - there are no files. Do I need a plug-in for CCE?

technolog

[Eyes`Only]

The .avs support is native in CCE 2.5. The only way you can use an .avs in cce 2.62 is to encapsulate it with a payware app called link2. I recommend going to cce 2.5 as that's what most of us are using. Just a thought. I wouldn't pay for link2, but then again I don't really like the author either.

[technolog]

Thanks Eyes`Only.

So why was .avs support dropped from a supposedly newer version of CCE? Is version 2.5 better (in terms of quality or features) than the later versions?

Also is there any reason (quality or speed) why I shouldn't carry on using VFAPI to generate an avi for CCE to do its stuff on?

technolog

[student]

Hi I managed to solve the first two problems myself but I still dont know how to go with the DVD ripped with file mode(see post above).

I have another problem now. In one of the output avs script from DoItFast4you i get two files with .AVS-no-cce files and thus CCE wont encode these scrips. What I am doing wrong here. I tried that particular VTS set with both vobid and PGC extraction with no success.
PLease help.
Thanks in Advance.

[Eyes`Only]

technolog:

I'm not a member of Cinemacraft's staff, consequently I have no idea why they would drop .avs support, unless they never intended to have it in the first place. 2.5 is much faster in my opinion, although there is rumor that 2.6x+ are higher quality. I personally have tried both and they both give a great result, so I don't think you'll be missing anything by using 2.5 like all of us.

I would recommend you don't use VFAPI. It will drop your CCE speed by at least 1/3. ie. CCE speed of 1.8 will drop to 1.2 or so with VFAPI. Yuck.

student:

Those .m2vs that go with that .avs are too small to worry about. Just use the original .m2v (no transcoding necessary) in Scenarist.

In order to create a DVD Spec compliant .iso, you have to use a utility like imgtool. A regular .iso creating util will never work. It has to be able to structure it perfectly in UDF format.

[Doom9]

actually, it's wrong to assume CCE 2.50 had native Avisynth support. By the time it came out AviSynth was not very widely used, and the fact that the extension isn't listed as supported format should tell us that we're just lucky that it works. In fact, CCE 2.62 has another file reading mechanism allowing for better support of large files (4+GB, OpenDML and such) and somehow that broke AviSynth compatibility. AviSynth support was officially introduced in v 2.64 when Cinemacraft apparently realized that AviSynth had become a serious video processing option.. apparently us hobbyists aren't the only ones using AviSynth to feed CCE.

If you have a CCE version not capable of handling avs files, then as Eyes' mentioned your best shot is Link2 which unfortunately isn't free. If VFAPI works for you, fine, except the speed you're not loosing anything (of course, AviSynth is more flexible so if you're into filtering and stuff - yuck - then you might not want to miss the added functionality).

@student: it's a personal preference which VTS you're going to process and which not. As you may have noticed there's a treshold in DIF4U you can set, by default VTS sets smaller than 200MB won't be processed. By processing a VTS you'll normally at least reduce the size by half, so depending on the size of a VTS this might have quite an impact on the quality of the main movie. So basically you decide by the size of a VTS and by your personal taste. I would normally process a VTS that is larger than 1 GB, and depending on the number of VTS sets below 1GB also those (in order to keep my main movie as good as possible). Process or not process a VTS is in the end making the tradeoff between faster processing time (less work) and quality of the main movie.

[student]

Doom9 Thanks for the reply. All the above problems are solved now. Now I havw advanced to the Scenarist and I have a very complicated VTS. This particular VTS have 32 PGCs.
1. The first PGC only have video
2. The 2nd PGC have video and one 2chAC3 id82 audio
3. The 3rd PGC have only video
4. The 4th PGC up to 8th PGVhave video and two 2chAC3 id82,83 audios
5. And the rest from 9 to 34 PGCs have video and one 2chAC3 id82 audio

So how do i go about dummy files in this case ,please help.

Thanks in Advance.

[TRILIGHT]

From the information in the guide concerning the use of dummy files, it should be apparent. However, if you still require further explanation, you might want to check the information I will have on the dummys when I post the advanced "Insomnia Notes" information. It shouldn't be long now.

[student]

Ok TRILIGHT ,thanks for that.
Ok as i can understand i should add the dummy files as follows:---
1. In PGC 1 i add 4 (2chAC3) dummy audio files with IDs 80,81,82,83 respectively.
2. In PGC2 i add 3 (2chAC3) dummies with IDs 80,81,83
3. In PGC3 same as PGC1
4. In PGC4 to PGC8 2 (2chAC3) dummies with IDs 80,81 AND
5. PGCs 9 to 34 3 (2chAC3) dummies with IDs 80,81,83

Is this Right?

[TRILIGHT]

Sounds pretty close to me. The thing you need to be careful of is making sure that the channels and bitrate of any given audio on one stream line up with the same number of channels and bitrate of audio on that stream in a different track!

Another thing to note is that you do not need to use dummies on tracks that had no audio to begin with. You can leave all audio off of that track and you will not have a problem.

[TRILIGHT]

Ok, I've finally posted the "Insomnia Notes" Advanced Guide! You can access it by clicking on the "Das UberGuide!" link on the main page and it is accessible via the UberGuide intro page. It's a first draft and, as I stated, was written as "notes" so please keep this in mind. If you feel something is left out, it's probably because you do not yet have a grasp of the basics. I've included a WHOLE LOT of ADVANCED information in there so be prepared! ;)

[student]

Hi Again,
I have advanced a little bit more into the Scenarist. Can we use the Scenarist v2.7 Pro od we have to use Scemarist v2.6 NT only? Can someone also point me to a good Scenarist step by step guide?

I am sorry but I have to ask. Do I need to put all the VTSs into the scenarist even the ones I am not encoding or doing anything to them(i mean cause they are small enough). Also when i start a new project in scenarist "in the option for how many video title sets would you like" do i have to set the number to the same as the number of total VTSs on the original DVD OR the number of VTSs i am processing with scenarist that the number of VTSs i've made changes to (reencoded etc.) OR set the value to 1 to do all the vts one by one. Also if I set the value to 2 or more then when going to the next screen it asks to set the aspect ratio 4:3 , 4:3 (pan and scan) and 16:9,if i select one fron them say 4:3 ,but my VTSs could be one 4:3 and the other 16:9. How do i go about that.
I really need to learn a great deal about Scenarist so please be patient with me and dont get angery and point me to the right direction.

Thanks in Advance.

[Doom9]

Both versions will work just fine. In fact, for me v2.7 always crashes so I went back to v2.6.
As for step by step.. both Trilight's guides and my own (http://www.doom9.org/mpg/multipgc-guide.htm and http://www.doom9.org/mpg/ifoedit-cce.htm) should go into enough details so that you can follow them. I have another Scenarist guide (http://www.doom9.org/mpg/scenarist.htm) but this one is more if you create your DVDs from scratch.

You only have to recreate VTS sets that you're going to process (I know I mentioned that in my guide.. hasn't been too long since I wrote it ;), plus you actually want to recreate all VTS sets you're processing minus the one for the main movie in a first phase. This allows you to better calculate the bitrate for the final movie as you already know how big your extras will be in the end (that's also part of the guides). As for the DAR don't worry, the project settings seem only to apply to menus and Scenarist will take the correct DAR directly from your assets (if in doubt check the asset properties).

Since you're new at this might I suggest you read the 2nd of the guides mentioned above (ifoedit-cce.htm) a couple of times? It explains a relatively simple case which might help you get started (Trilight's one and my new one deal with a more complicated case and may thus be less suited to help somebody get started with this).

[student]

Thanks, I think ifoedit-cce.htm guide is very good fo me to understand Scenarist.
In this DVD I have 5 VTSs
VTS_1 is the main Movie, VTS_2 is only 34 Meg, VTS_3 is Extras(34 PGCs) about 3 Gig its actually bigger then the main movie, VTS_4 is about 280 Gig and VT_5 is about 18 Meg.
VTS_1 I havent as you say encoded yet.
VTS_2 and VTS_5 are small enough to keep as is on the original DVD, &
VTS_3 and VTS_4 are to be reencoded and recreateed.
So as I understand in Scenarist i set the no. of VTSs to 4. This will give me 4 VTSs icons(with golden disc in the middle) in the scenario editor tab. and then i drop the redpective video and audio assets into the titles.
a VTS in Scenarist = VTS on dvd
a title in scenarist = A PGC on dvd
a track in scenarist = a pgc on dvd

Thanks.

[TRILIGHT]

Originally posted by student
a VTS in Scenarist = VTS on dvd
a title in scenarist = A PGC on dvd
a track in scenarist = a pgc on dvd

This is not correct. There are color-coded pictures on my mine and Doom9's guide explaining what is what concerning PGC's, VOBID's, etc.

[student]

But is the rest of my post correct? That i set the number of VTSs to 4 while creating new project in the project wizard. Or should i do ove VTS at a time?
I think i choose the wrong DVD (ICE AGE)for my first DVD to DVD-r authoring. I just found out that in VTS3 in PGCs 13,14,&15 there are 5 angles(cells) on each one of them.
So you think i should leave this one for the time being and start again with some other simple and easy DVD. I am in Australia and so all dvds are PAL and most of the dvds here have only one or two Audio streams(one main 6 ch ac3 and one 2 ch ac2) and only one subtitle stream.
Thanks.

[student]

Hi Again,
Sorry guys I had to write here to know more. I left "ICEAGE" and started on a simple one. The main movie VTS is a single PGC but when i extracted it i got two M2V files and only one AVS script file. Why there is two m2v files from a single PGC? If i see this in ifoedit ch 16 have two cells:--------
[ch 16] [Pg 16] [Cell 16] [V/C Id: 1/16]
[Cell 17] [V/C Id: 1/17] Layer Br.
Do I just ignore the other m2v(168 Meg) and just encode the one (3.99 GB)with the AVS sript file created.

Any help is good,

Thanks.

[Eyes`Only]

sounds like you're trying to demux on a hdd formatted with FAT32. That filesystem is limited to 4gig max file size, so the rest of the m2v carried over into another m2v.

I recommend you upgrade to NTFS. That multiple file stuff will get annoying.

[student]

Oh yeah how can i be so stupid, but doing this first time is really making me crazy.
My VTS2 have 3 PGCs,
and PGC1 have uses VOB-IDs 1,3
PGC 2 have 2,3 and PGC3 have 1,2,3
So it should be extracted by vobid right, but when i do it gives me 2ch.AC3-0byte file which scenarist wont take.
But hang on on this DVD vts1 is the main movie. and vts2,vts3,vts4 are only 90,19,8 megs respectively so i really dont need to extract them at all. So as i understand i just encode the movie(VTS1) and copy the other respective BUP,IFO and VOB files directly from the DVD to the final Scenarist project folder. Is this correct?

Thanks in Advance.

[Eyes`Only]

demux by pgc. I really hate that the guides are starting to mention vobid.. it's confusing many ppl. that vobid3 is one frame. just demux by pgc and author.
Then you have two options:

1) add the first chapter of pgc1 and pgc2 to your scenario as pgc3.

or

2) add the first chapter of pgc3 as pgc1, and the second chapter of pgc3 as pgc2.

It works either way. You just have to understand what's in an .ifo.

[TRILIGHT]

The guide CLEARLY states...in great detail...exactly when it is and is not appropriate to demux by VOBID. I just don't know how much more detailed I could possibly explain it than it is already explained. I can't force people to read and comprehend. ;)