Keeping the good stuff, ditching the rest

[Havok26]

I'm currently working on doing a DVD to DVD copy of a DVD-9 (the movie "Alien: 20th Anniversery Eddition"). Now, being a good forum goer, I read through the various tutorials and tried to do things on mine own. This is what I want to do: Remove all the extras (director's commintary, pictures, special scenes etc.), keep only english 5.1 and english subtitles, keep menu system (with chapter sequences in-tact), and then downsample the video to fit on a standard DVD+R. I ran in to a series of problems attempting to do things according to tutorials, things just didn't seem to coincide with one another. Unfortunately, thanks to the 5 day wait period here, I have forgotton the specifics of my problem. If need be, I will go through again if it will help you help me. I have copied the entire disc over to my HD. The ifo's go from VTS_01_0 to VTS_13_1. Of course the same goes for the vob files. Just from playing the VOB files seperately, I have determined that the only series I need to keep are VTS_01_xx, VTS_02_xx, VTS_06_xx and VTS_07_xx, the rest can be pitched. I did try getting fancy with the tutorials and using Vobrator with IFOedit to get rid of some stuff in VTS_02 that I didn't want, but that's where things got really messy so I'm not going to worry about it. Now, unfortunately I can't just delete these ifos and their corresponding VOB files because VIDEO_TS.IFO still references to them. Is there any simple way I can just remove the refernces to these files in the VIDEO_TS.IFO so that I can move on with downsampling the video (programs don't like it when they look for something and can't find it). I already moved the files to a different dirrectory and the movie still plays fine. I tried goofing around with IFOedit (in addition to all the tutorials) to do this but failed. I would appreciate any help, thanks.

[molman2003]

You can do all of this with DVD Shrink as it allows you to select which parts of the movie, extras, menus, whatever you want keep, and then 'shrink' them to fit a dvd-r.
There is a link on the main news page along with guide.
It is now at version 2.3.

I have used this prog to shrink all my movies, episodic or otherwise and then I use Nero to burn them to dvd-r.

Steve

[surreal120]

Havok, molman is right about DVD Shrink, but then - at least, as far as I understand - you won't be able to keep your menus and the quality will not be as good as with using something like CCE SP or even ReMPEG2. At first, I spent a good week banging my head against a wall in frustration with the guides and started to feel like they were all wrong - but don't give up hope, b/c they really do work! I finally got a DVD backup working great following the Reauthorist guide, so maybe try starting there.

Anyway, to answer your original question a little better: you were asking about removing certain VTS sets with IfoEdit. One thing you want to be sure of is that these don't contain anything that is "supposed" to play on the original DVD - such as company logos or copywright warnings. In this case, you have to be a little careful about how to remove them and should take a look at these two guides by 2Cool:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=245500#post245500
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=50245

If using all the features of the DVD that you want to keep, none of the titles or menus in these VTS sets actually gets played (which you can tell by using DVD Play in IfoEdit) then I have actually had success keeping only the IFO, BUP and VTS_XY_0.VOB, getting rid of the other VOBs and MAKING SURE TO DO GET VTS SECTORS in IfoEdit. You will also probably have to burn with ImgTool DVD burner and uncheck the reallocation option at the top. However, I have been told that this may not always work (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=55756).

I hope that help! Let me know if you have any other questions/problems.

[molman2003]

I agree with surreal, shrink is excellent for keeping the main movie and any extras (sometimes this will spread acroos 2 discs), but I have had succes keeping all the menus but i had to make them static, they still work and are fully selectable but they are just static.

Re-authoring is the best way but for me it is just to long-winded a process.

By the way surreal, can you have a look at one of my posts when you get chance, you may be able to answer it.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=55509

Steve

[Havok26]

Thanks for the info guys, I'll give some of your ideas a try and see what I come up with. BTW, what do you mean molman that your menus are static?

[surreal120]

Will do.

[molman2003]

When I say static, I mean motionless, stationary, but only to a point.
When you select 'still pictures' in shrink, it compresses that selection so that it will appear very jerky (a bit like bad lag in an online game).
It will appear to jump frames instead of playing them smoothly.

The menus will still work and are still selectable so that when you click 'play movie' it plays the movie.

Hope this is what you wanted.

Steve