editing a vob

[jippiejajee]

maybe this questions is already ask elswhere in the forum, but can''t find a clear answer.
I have some damaged self made DVD's (yes by the kids) from captures made with DVCII. In most cases it concerns only a few sectors which have become unreadble as result of scratches, rest of disk is fine but the bad sectors cause sometimes that the standalone DVD player stops with playback or a jumps to next chapter skipping remainder of chapter with bad (unreadble) sectors.
What i want to do is copy the DVD files from the damaged DVD over to harddisk and cut out the few seconds containing the bad sectors (the copying works with DVDcrypter setting ignore read errors and no retries, can take some time if many bad sectors are found but if you are patient you get a copy of course missing the bad sectors).
What I don't want to do is re-authoring the disks as in many case I do not have the project files of DVD workshop with the menus and original clips anymore and takes quite some time.
Can you for instance load the damaged vob in Womble and cut out the bad scenes and just copy back the edited vob over the original damaged one and burn the set again to a DVD ? (probably not, but I just ask you before spending a lot of effort in trying)
or is there another simple method to do this without re-authoring

thanks for any comment and suggestions
Jippie

[jippiejajee]

ok as nobody responded I did some trial and error and this seems to work, just for your information

25-10-2003

This guide concerns repair a damaged vob.
Damaged is containing at a certain point some bad sectors as result of scraches or damages on the DVD which can not be read anymore by DVD player and cause freezing of playback or jumping to next chapter.

I downloaded two freeware program from the net Chopperxp and Filemerger.(from DOOM9 website)
Chopperxp is a program which can extract a part of a vob apparently leaving everthing intact.
Filemerger is a program which simply merge two (mpg) files.
What I did first copied the DVD with DVDcrypter in file mode (ignore read errors and retry read errors set to zero) to HD. During the ripping process you will see which vob's has read errors
Then I copied the vob with read errors to another directory and with Chopperxp I extracted the part before and after the bad sectors, this is easy to find as Chopperxp has a preview window just slide the bar and find the damaged part. Normally it is just a few seconds of video you loose.
Then with Filemerger I just join the two extracted vob's together to a new vob,rename it to the original name of the damaged vob and just copied it over to the directory with the ripped files overwrting the original vob. Yes just like that.
Now the DVD will play but in case you jump to chapters you will notice that the playback will not start on the correct point this is becase you chopped out some seconds of video.
To correct this you can use the well known Ifoedit program. Load the corresponding ifo file of the vob you repaired in ifoedit.
click vob extras.
In the window which appears tick only the boxes:
- correct vobunit
- correct ifo tables
- remove P-UOps
- remove macrovision
- adjust vob unit pointers
- adjust audio/subp point
be sure all other boxes are unchecked including the one on the bottom autocopy menu files
click ok
wait until ifoedit has done its job and comes with the window finshed correcting VOBU pointers (can take some time)
click ok
click save (the ifo file you are working on)
click save (to save it in same directory were it was)
click yes (question to overwrite BUP file as well)
click get vts sectors (to update all the sectors in other ifo's)
click ok as many times as needed to update all the ifo's

done

If you know play back the file you will see it that if you hit chapters for example in scene selection menus that they will start at correct points again.

I tried it out on a commercial damaged DVD (Johnny English) which was damaged and it worked. The new DVD prepared in this way plays ok

Don't know what would happen if you cut out a part containing a chapter point....
In the example above I cut only a part not containing a chapter point.

[jippiejajee]

chooper xp and filemerger are in vobeditors section of downlaod page of Doom9, to see them click show all vobeditors

[maa]

A search may have saved you some time here:

Repair a scratched DVD (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58770&highlight=brass+chrome+polish+scratched+small+tip#post353920)

[jippiejajee]

I had read that one maa, but I am not so familiar with DVDshrink (will it work directly on a damaged commercial DVD without hanging ?)
My method works for own made as well as on commercial DVD's. Furthermore I did not understand what exactly will happen in step 7 and 8 in the guide described in that post, remember I want to keep the original menus and do not want to create a DVD which only plays the main movie.
There is one disadvantage in my method and that is ripping process can be a little bit long in case there are many bad sectors (therfor set retry attempts to zero or 1)
anyhow seems there is more then one road to Rome
;)

[maa]

I was just pointing out the amazing sccess one can have actually physically repairing the damage....

[jippiejajee]

understand Ma, but I am a little bit reluctant to attack the DVD with polishing tools etc but I will give it a try next time. I agree it is easier, if it works , then the chopping etc.

[nikmabc]

I had a dvd that was damaged in the middle, lost the last 2 megs of a vob file. Also, the damage was in the middle of a cell. First time, I reauthored the cell, but I lost the audio after the damaged part and the subtitles were not insync. Next I reauthored the cell, but only the part before the damage, then combined it with the part after the damage and that worked.

Then I got a weird idea, I used ifoedit, set it to strip the vobs but I checked everything so it really wasn't striping anything. What it did was create a new set of vobs, and ifo that worked with no sync problems, except for the lost 2 megs.

So, this turned out to be the simplest way I found to correct the vobs and ifo.