Good news, bad news and a deadlock

[eddevrs]

jdobbs, this is the first program which is so simple to use and gives such good results (for most movies), I'm very very happy with it!

=until=

I got a movie (The Abyss - Special Edition) which gives strange subtitle results after pre-authoring with DVDShrink (to remove everything but the main movie) and compressing with DVDRebuilder - the combination which should work as I understood in your introduction threads.
This DVD has actually 2 movies in it (old and new one) and this is selected by choosing another angle. DVDRebuilder doesn't accept this as input so I have to pre-author with DVDShrink, which doesn't work like I mentioned before.

=so=

This puts me in a deadlock situation, because you don't accept bug reports when using another program to pre-author, and as long as I cannot provide you with this, the problem will not be solved (I assume?).

Are you still interested in my problem?

[Joergen]

The Abyss SE is reported to not work with even some standalones. The branching/angles have problems.

Did you open dvdshrink, uncheck "combine shared items", and drag ONE of the angles into the disc under reauthor?

Even if you did, those sub problems might be related to the screwball branching that title has.

The Abyss SE R2 is also letterbox and very blurry (OMG, what a *Special Edition*). It is rumoured that a re-release is coming, this time properly mastered.

I wonder what they'll call that one, Special Quality Edition?

PS. The Independence Day got this re-release treatment just this month. The new R2 version is fabulous. I hope FOX has learnt not to convert NTSC blurryness to PAL and release on DVD anymore.

[eddevrs]

Well, this is a big relief!
I've pre-authored with only the longest main movie kept in, in this case the "Combine shared titles" is unchecked and cannot be checked.
I will try it for the third time, and when I don't succeed, I'll wait for "The Abyss TE" (third edition).
Also, I will see if I can repair the subtitles (only a few dutch are missing, and all english ones are replaced by the dutch ones), maybe this will succeed. The pictures are perfect, so I can give it a try.

[writersblock29]

@eddevrs

Do you have Nero Recode? If so, you can just rip both disks to your hard drive using File Mode in DVD Decrypter, then paste it together in Recode using the "Merge Titles" option. Export this project into a folder on your hard drive (using no compression), and leave all your subtitle streams selected. Then you can use Rebuilder to process. I used this method for the extended versions of the first two LORD OF THE RINGS movies and it worked great. Since THE ABYSS has two titles, you may want to use IFOedit on each of your original movie folders to create movie-only versions devoid of anything other than one program chain, THEN piece it all together with Recode... then process with Rebuilder. Sounds like a pain, yes, but in the end, I don't see why that wouldn't work!

(Of course, if you don't have Recode... nevermind!)