multiPGC and IFOs

[Fmazzanti]

Hi,

the other day I found this issue and still don't know the proper way
to handle it... maybe somebody can help.

I'm trying to backup The Rock Pal R2. I just want the movie, not the
extras. main movie is in VTS_01 VOBs, while initial logo goes to
VTS_02 and extras and other stuff to VTS_03 to VTS_05. So what I did
was rip the DVD to a folder and reencode the maim movie with
DVD2DVDr. Then I nmoved the VIDEO_TS IFOs and BUPs and VOBs created by
DVD2DVDr to another folder, and put the original ones (those ripped
from the DVD) in its place. I also copied in the VTS_02 complete stuff
and the VTS_0X_0.VOBs and IFOs and BUPs from the last sets. After
that, I made the IFOUpdate trick and got a total of 4.28Gb that I can
fit to a DVD-R.

HOWEVER (and here's where my question comes), when I play the result
on PowerDVD, it starts by displaying a logo, then comes the end movie
credits for half a second, and finally goes to the main menu. Now why
are the end credits showing up at the very beginning? Well I'm not
sure, but I guess this DVD is a multiPGC one (if I understand the
concept correctly), since already in the VTS_01 set there are two
PGCs, the main movie in PGC1 and a second PGC that lasts 1 sec and
that is essentially a black screen. I guess that the original DVD,
when inserted into the player, initially displays the logo, then goes
to the black 1sec screen of PGC2m abd afterwards goes to the main
menu. But DVD2DVDr only processed PGC1 of VTS_01 corresponding to the
main movie, and that's why I get what I get in my backup. Now
considering I would like to keep the original structure of the DVD
without reauthoring (if possible), what could I do to bypass this
black screen corresponding to PGC2? or can I create a separate VOB set
with the black screen and fool IFOEdit or IFOUpdate to reconstruct
properly the navigation structure of my backup copy?

Thanks...

[2COOL]

Originally posted by Fmazzanti
After that, I made the IFOUpdate trick and got a total of 4.28Gb that I can fit to a DVD-R.

Fmazzanti,

Did you do your IFOupdate with these checked?

Options: AutoCorrect VTS Sectors & AutoAnalyze Original IFO
Mode: Adjusted Cell Mode

[Fmazzanti]

Originally posted by 2COOL
Fmazzanti,

Did you do your IFOupdate with these checked?

Options: AutoCorrect VTS Sectors & AutoAnalyze Original IFO
Mode: Adjusted Cell Mode

Uh... thanks in advance, 2COOL, but honestly I don't understand what you say (shame on me :( ). Could you be a little bit more explicit?
I can't tell about your question... AFAIK, IFOUpdate simply asks you for the original IFO and the authored one, so I don't see what do I have to check.
BTW, if I understand the structure of the DVD, since my VTS_01 has two PGC's and (as far as I can tell) second PGC is a simply black screen that doesn't do anything relevant, my goal is to rebuild the navigation structure such that it doesn't need the second PGC anymore, isn't it?
Thanks again...

[2COOL]

Look at the top of your IFOupdate, you should see...

Files___Options___Mode___Settings___Help

jdobbs implemented "Adjust Cell Mode" as a new feature to support Multi-PGCs. Since your PGC 2 is just a blank clip, it doesn't hurt to keep it since you are doing movie only.

What I think you should've done is the same way as DVD2One's method.

1. Move only your movie VOBs in to another folder and create new IFOs.
2. Use DVD2DVDr to shrink your movie
3. Then use IFOudpate in Adjusted Cell Mode.

[Fmazzanti]

Originally posted by 2COOL
Look at the top of your IFOupdate, you should see...

Files___Options___Mode___Settings___Help

jdobbs implemented "Adjust Cell Mode" as a new feature to support Multi-PGCs. Since your PGC 2 is just a blank clip, it doesn't hurt to keep it since you are doing movie only.

What I think you should've done is the same way as DVD2One's method.

1. Move only your movie VOBs in to another folder and create new IFOs.
2. Use DVD2DVDr to shrink your movie
3. Then use IFOudpate in Adjusted Cell Mode.

Aha! Now I understand better... thanks. I'll give it a try, either tonight or tomorrow. However, you say it doesn't hurt to keep PGC2... well I can't keep it (or don't know how to keep it), because when I encode with DVD2DVDr, I must select what PGC to encode. The program then generates VOBs and IFOs, n this case containing PGC1 only.
Thanks you're pretty helpful ;)

[2COOL]

I forgot to put in step 1a.

1. When creating new IFOs, check options "Create 1 PGC Only" and "Create Chapter for each cell".

This solves your DVD2DVDr problem with using 1 PGC as both PGCs are combined.

[Fmazzanti]

more news. Yesterday I did a very fast test and had partial success.
Now everything plays fine... almost! When I put the resulting DVD in my standalone, it first goes to tile/vhap 2/1 (logo) and then searches for title 10 which is definitely not there, and freezes.. This title 10 is the same it was looking for everytime before you told me what to do. The nice thing is that if I press the next chapter button on the remote, then it goes to title/chap 3/1 which is the main menu and from them on everything seems to play smoothly (although I believe chapter points are somewhat screwed up).
So now maybe the best thing to do would be to tell VIDEO_TS to start right at title/chap 3/1 instead of 2/1 as it wants to go.
Could I achoeve this goal by using something like what you posted in
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43403
but replacing VTS_01 by VIDEO_TS? Or is there a simpler way to do it (although that one looks pretty simple)? Or is it impossible?
Too many questions for too little knowledge (mine).

[2COOL]

Fmazzanti,

I hope I understood your current situation.

Are you keeping your menu now?

If so, what happens you jump to your root menu in First Play PGC? If not, put a Jump to Title 1 instead to play your movie upon DVD insert.

[Fmazzanti]

2COOL,
I guess we missunderstood each other :p I wanted to keep menus rom the very beginning. Trouble is that, as I said, navigation structure seems to be broken on the final product.
SO I changed as you say First Play PGC to jump to the root menu. I did that by changing the precommand in PGC command table... the result was that upon insertion on the standalone it goes to title/chap 2/1 for half a sec. ad afterwards get's lost at tile 10, which does not exist on the DVD! The player then stops... if a press the 'skip to next chapter' button then it goes to title/chap 3/1 (a logo), and then back to title/chap 2/1 which now shows the root menu... from then on everything seems to work ok.
So what can be happening there? How could I solve this initial stop problem? BTW, everything works fine in powerDVD as expected...

[2COOL]

Fmazzanti,

I'm beginning to envision your navigations. To bypass your logo, go to your Title's VTS_PGCITI / VTS_PGC_1 / PGC Command Table. Add the number of post commands to your number of pre commands. This will bump up all your post commands and change them to pre commands. Do this for your other Title 10.

[Fmazzanti]

Danke, I'll try this. I guess I can also try your newest guide to bypass stuff and go stright to the root menu, right?

[Fmazzanti]

Hi again,

well in the end I managed to make this damn DVD backup work! That was
only possible with the help of 2COOL. In the end the complete process
that lead to success was the following:

1- Ripped with DVDDecrypter.
2- Ran InstantCopy on it with menus at 100% and no extras to see
exactly what space do I had for the main movie.
3- Encoded the movie with DVD2DVDr which delivers good old CCE quality
;)
4- Then I simply copied all IFOs, BUPs and VOBs created by Instant
Copy but the main movie VOBs to the folder conatining the stuff
generated by DVd2DVDr. That folder in the end contained the VOBS of
the main movie encoded with DVD2DVDr, and all other stuff generated by
Instant Cooy. However, I copied the VTS_01.IFO file created by
DVD2DVDr to another folder as I had to use it afterwards.
5- Now I had problems with Title 10 (as I said in past posts). I did
the 2COOl trick, that is, I added the number of post commands to the
number of pre commands in VTS_PGCITI/VTS_PGC_1/PGC Command Table. That
definitely solved my navigation problems.
6- But that was not the end, 'cause the original IFO's assigned more
chapters/cells to VTS_01 (where the movie was) than those created by
DVD2DVDr. I guess that was because the original DVD had 2 PGC's on
VTS_01 while the one created by DVD2DVDr has only one PGC. So I had to
kill the last unwanted chapters and I did it the way it is explained
in 2COOL's 'Inserting chapters Only at Each Episodes Starting Point',
that is, by setting zeros in VTS_01_0.IFO / VTS_PGCITI / PGC_VTS_1 /
PGC Program Map Section at the last programs. But that was not enough,
because the remaining chapters were set at the wrong positions
(chapter 1 was ok, chapter 2 was slightly out of place, chapter 3 was
a little bit further aways from its right posistion and that problem
was progressively increasing with increasing chapter numbers). So what
I had to do was to correct chapter positions. This was done
editting VTS_01.IFO/VTS_PGCITI/VTS_PGC_1 and correcting values in Cell
Playback at every Cell_#:entry point sector. That was not THAT hard
because my movie has 22 chapters (=22 numbers to edit) and the
appropriate values were already written in VTS_01.IFO generated by
DVD2DVDr.
7- Not done yet, as my DVD2DVDr encode kept only 2 audio tracks, so I
had to correct languages as described in 2COOl's ' Correcting Language
Buttons After Stripping Audio(s)' guide.
8- And last but not least, since I did not include extras in the final
product I removed the button extras from the main menu using MenuEdit.

That made it... just bunt and worked.
Now my conclussion is that... I would have better stayed with the
Instant Copy version of step 2 :):) No, seriously speaking, that was a
nice exercice for somebody like m who knows less than one bit about
DVD hacking. Actually this was the way to learn a bit about this, and
that's the main goal, isn't it?
Of course you see 90% of the work was done just because 2COOl took his
time writting nice guides. I'd like to thank him here for doing this
job. As you see, there's people who really uses them!

Yet I have a question: regardng that thing about adding the number of post commands to the number of pre commands... could you please explain a little bit whay this solved the problem? That's the only point I do not understand.

[2COOL]

Originally posted by Fmazzanti
Yet I have a question: regardng that thing about adding the number of post commands to the number of pre commands... could you please explain a little bit whay this solved the problem? That's the only point I do not understand.

Fmazzanti,

I'm glad I was a great help for you!:D

To answer your question is pretty simple. Before your Title plays, it has to execute the pre commands first. Then it plays your Title video which is contained in the cells. After your video is done playing, it navigates to your existing post commands and executes those. From there, it jumps to where it needs to jump.

So instead of waiting for your post commands to execute after your video play, why not just make those pre commands? This way, it jumps to the same place it needs to jump and at the same time, you didn't even give your Title's video an opportunity to play, which is good news.:D

[Josh]

Did you try the guide on Doom9 about backing up the main movie only, stripping the movie only with ifoedit? That guide works great if the movie can fit on 1 DVDR.

[Fmazzanti]

Well yes... I tried that long ago and it worked. However, that is a 'main movie only' guide, which means that upon insertion on the player it goes stright to the movie. Now my goal was to keep menus, reencode the movie and still have a working structure... and this taking into account that the original title containing the movie was multiPGC while the encoded one had only 1 PGC. In that sense, the methods described in that guide are useful when you face 'simpler' situations. However i must say that some of the ideas written there can still be applied.

[Fmazzanti]

Just a short question.
The trick of adding #post commands to pre commands makes it work flowlesly... but I wonder if that's a safe procedure that produces perfectly compliant DVD's. I mean, now I'm backing up another movie that has in VTS_01 PGC1 containing the main movie and PGC2 to PGC6 with crap logos and warnings. Now I want to repeat the procedure I did before, that is, encoding the main movie with DVD2DVDr (which produces the porper IFOs for the main movie but contains just on PGC) and do this trick to have a working DVD. Will this work on *every* standalone?