Southpark - Season 1 Disk 3: Multi-PGC in one VTS, sharing VOB ID's

[rkorkie]

ok, I have been doing this a while, but for some reason this particular title is stumping me. The title is one VTS, with 13 PGC's. The first PGC is 116 minutes (using VOBID 1-5), which obviously contains all 5 episodes one after the other (just like band of brothers, x-files, and the other tv titles I have done). The extras are included in PGC 7-13 using VOBID's 6-12, so I'm fine with that as there is no VOBIB overlap. But, what is stumping me is that PGC's 2-6 are each individual episode and each PGC episode uses a VOBID shared with PGC 1 (ie. VOBID 1-5).

Now I know that might sound complicated, but the bottom line is I am not sure how to proceed here. I read in the guides that if you have PCG's that share VOBID's you need to demux by VOBID. However, I am hoping that I can get away with simply dumixing normally, re-authoring the first PCG only, then try to reassemble the whole thing in Scenarist and use IFOUpdate to re-create the proper mapping. Is this a pipe dream? Do I need to do something special?

I am not even sure what demuxing by VOBID gets me at this stage. Please try to talk in easy-to-understand, DVD-re-authoring-for-Dummies lingo. Thanx again.

Ryan

[Eyes`Only]

What you are seeing is what I've nicknamed the "play all" VTS. Basically your DVD has the option to play each episode separately, or "Play All". If you select to view one, it jumps to one of the pgcs 2-6, if you select to "Play All" it plays pgc1, which is composed of pgcs 2-6. You can reauthor this by two different ways easily:

1) Demux pgc1, don't demux pgcs 2-6. In Scenarist, create pgcs 2-6 in the scenario editor using scenes from pgc1.

2) Demux pgcs 2-6, don't demux pgc1. In Scenarist, create pgc1 in the scenario editor using the tracks that are pgcs 2-6. Create pgcs 2-6 as normal.

You are correct, demux by vobid does not need to be done in this case.

[rkorkie]

Ok, I think I got the jist of what you said. So, I chose step 1 because I already re-encoded the main PGC. So, when I imported all the demuxed assets into Scenarist along with the re-authored clip, I created 13 title tracks with 1 PGC on each. PGC 1 was the main clip, and after I imported the 5 chapters, it had created 5 Programs and 5 Cells. Looked good so far.

I wasn't sure how to create PGC's 2-6, so I just simply right-clicked on each Program, did a copy, then I pasted them into each PGC (2-6). It created one Program and one Cell in each of those PGC's. Seems good again.

When I authored, no errors were produced. Then I ran the whole thing through IFOUpdate, and copied the original VTS_01_0.VOB menu file into the authored structure. I tested with PowerDVD, and everything was completely out of whack, it didn't start out with the menu, and nothing navigated correctly. Any ideas as to where I may have gone wrong? :-)

[Eyes`Only]

I've never used copy/paste. I just drag the scenes one by one from the bottom right 'asset window' into the appropriate titles/pgcs.

[rkorkie]

Ok, I tried that, and it dragged properly without a warning in the Scenarist log window. But, after authoring, still no dice. I think I may have to use your method #2. The reason I say this is because when I author it, it says PGC 1 only uses VOBID 1, whereas the original says PGC 1 uses VOBID 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

I when looking at the IFOUpdate log window, it also says there were timestamp mismatches, amongst other problems. I guess I will try to encode each episode by itself, and see where it goes from there.

Does that sound right?

[Eyes`Only]

yeah i'd give that 2nd way a try then, if you want matched vobids. The first way will give you all the same vobid (1) but it should still work..

[rkorkie]

I'm gonna start pulling out hair. No matter how carefully I try to piece this thing together in Scenarist, and no matter how close I get the VTS_01_1.IFO to look to the original, once I run IFOUpdate on it, it gives me all sorts of grief. The original and the authored have the same number of Titles and PGC's. I even got the VOBID's to be in the same PGC's as the original.

But, for some reason, the length of each title in the authored is way off compared to the original. I think it has something to do with the fact DoItFast4u put "nopull" in the .avs file name and "NODROP" inside the file. Regardless, I performed a 3:2 pulldown on the files after re-encoding them, then set them to Drop-Frame within Scenarist. I'm sure that's wrong but didn't know what else to try.

As well, IFOUpdate tells me the original IFO has 13 PGC's and the authored has 12, but when I look at it in IFOEdit, I definitely see 13 in the authored. So once again, I'm back to square one wondering what the heck I'm doing wrong. Advice advice!!!

[rkorkie]

One more thing, my IFO run through IFOUpdate doesn't have any information about the menu in there like the original has. Thus, when I preview in PowerDVD, it doesn't start at the menu obviously...

[rkorkie]

Ok, after a lot of trial and error, I was having an ID 10 T error. When using IFOUpdate and authoring with Scenarist, don't use Maestro Multi-PGC mode, use standard. Changing that seems to have fixed it so far...

[Eyes`Only]

Yeah maestro mode is for maestro users (not us!). Glad you've got your final project working!