Bad DVD Menu

[Phantom_E]

A friend of mine edited a bunch of video we shot into a movie.
His software(IMovie) messed up the DVD menus.
It won't work properly on a standard DVD player.
It will play correctly with PowerDVD on my PC.
My idea was to build new menus with the editor I have.

Tried DVD Shrink to extract files. It will not read the disk correctly either. It's about the same results as a DVD player.
DVDShrink did pull 2 (of 7) segments out.
Any ideas on what might get the remaining segments.

I need to convert(rename?) the DVD files(VOBs?) to something that my software will recognize as Mpeg2.

I think AviSynth will convert the Vobs.
I used it to do cleanup on the raw video, but I haven't yet got AviSynth to read the VOB file.

Is there a better way to go about this process?
Is there some way to just copy and rename the VOB files to Mpeg2?

Any sugestions appreciated.

TIA

[Stingrey]

Hi,

If you just want the MPEG2 stream out of the VOB files try out PVAStrumento (http://www.offeryn.de/pvas_2_1.htm).
Yust open the Vob file and select demux.
PVAStrumento will extract the MPEG2 and AC3(or whatever Sound you have) Streams to two new files (Video/Audio).
After that you can mux the files with whatever you want to whatever you want.
For that i would prefer TMPEGEnc (http://www.tmpgenc.net/).

[Phantom_E]

Thanks for the suggestion. I will try this.

I did figure out how to at least play the VOB files.

The original intent was to write several titles, what it seems to have done is merge everything into one title and call the various segments chapters(or at least that what my editor calls them).

One potential problem is that the VOB files don't seem to be entirely sequential.
Is this possible? Or am I just doing something wrong?

I found parts that don't seem to be there when running in PowerDVD as well as what appear to be interleaved segments.
I'm guessing that all the chapter (segment?) ordering info is in the IFO file. Is this correct?

Are there any good technical descriptions of IFO files?
I found some info on this site, but its pretty basic.
I did find an editor, but still have to get all the pieces installed.

My friend is an artistic wiz, but kinda klutzy with computers.
If he didn't live several hundred miles from me I would just go see if I could fix up his software.

[Dimmer]

Originally posted by Phantom_E
The original intent was to write several titles, what it seems to have done is merge everything into one title and call the various segments chapters(or at least that what my editor calls them).

One potential problem is that the VOB files don't seem to be entirely sequential.
Is this possible? Or am I just doing something wrong?

I found parts that don't seem to be there when running in PowerDVD as well as what appear to be interleaved segments.
I'm guessing that all the chapter (segment?) ordering info is in the IFO file. Is this correct?

Are there any good technical descriptions of IFO files?
I found some info on this site, but its pretty basic.
I did find an editor, but still have to get all the pieces installed. You should have mentioned what software do you use yourself and whether your computer is a Mac or PC. Most of the software mentioned here is available only for PC.

You are correct that the chapter ordering is done in the IFO file, and yes, chapter is the right name for the segments. Just so you know, if the chapters are not ordered sequentially in the VOBs you'll notice a short pause between them when playing on a regular standalone player. One a computer it will be too short to notice.

Although you can rename .VOB files to .MPG, the two are not the same thing and therefore some software won't recognize it properly. However, many software players like PowerDVD can play VOB files as is. Either way, VOB files contain MPEG-2 video and audio streams, which you can extract using the process called demultiplexing (demuxing). For a home-made DVD, you can perform this procedure straight from the disc onto hard drive.

VobEdit (http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/Vobtools/Vobedit06.zip) is one of the programs that can easily demux entire DVD back into video/audio streams. Open VTS_01_1.VOB in VobEdit, select Demux All Video Streams and Demux All Audio Streams, click OK. It will go through all VTS_01_1.VOB, VTS_01_2.VOB, ... VTS_01_n.VOB files saving MPEG-2 video and audio into two separate files, which you can use however you want.

If you find that the video segments in the output files are not in the correct order, try repeating the procedure selecting the option Split on New VobID. VobEdit will split the output files into portions that you might be able to rearrange back in the correct order. Otherwise, you'll need to perform the process in two steps. First, select the demux options CellID and Demux Complete Title Set, which will produce many small VOB files that can be rearranged any way you want, then demux each of them same as above.

In case you have VTS_02_1.VOB, VTS_03_1.VOB, etc. files, you'll have to repeat the procedure for each of them.

Note that the output will contain audio and video in the separate files, which should be fine for most of the DVD authoring programs. Should you need to multiplex them together in one file, use TMPGEnc as mentioned above.

This site (http://dvd.sourceforge.net/dvdinfo/index.html) contains very good but very technical info on IFO files, not sure how helpful you'll find it.

[Phantom_E]

Originally posted by Dimmer
This site (http://dvd.sourceforge.net/dvdinfo/index.html) contains very good but very technical info on IFO files, not sure how helpful you'll find it. Way cool!! :cool: :cool: Just the kind of thing I need. This will keep me off the streets for a few days:D

Originally posted by Dimmer
If you find that the video segments in the output files are not in the correct order... I was afraid of that.
Now that I have the IFO editor running, it appears that there are so many chains that the real menu problem is likely to be simple buffer overflow(There is almost 70K of IFO file here). Might be a possible upgrade opportunity for DVD_Shrink. That program seemed to have pulled out the first chapter correctly and most of the second, but couldn't see the remaining chapters.

Any alternatives that work like DVD_Shrink?

It would take forever to put all the bits and pieces I found back together again. I think my best chance is to shift the IFO chains around. Or Road Trip.
I do notice the hesitation you mentioned. Where it flips between VOB_XX_1 and XX_3, for example, is noticable even on PC. I had thought that this was some sort of quirk in the production software.

Thank you very much for all your help.
And I thought this would be a simple task :rolleyes:

PC: Intel 3.0E, 1G DDR400, .5T storage, Win2K
Studio 9 with analog video digitizer, AviSynth