Lord Of The Rings EE Joining it all

[micattac]

Hi!

First of, I know a lot has been said about forced elvish subs, etc.
But I feel this is new.
I have done my share of video editing, dvd editing with various tools.
But before I start this, I wanted to here a few ideas.

I have LOTR Fellowship and Two Towers sitting right here. Both are the extended Editions. My preorder for the Return of the King is also already made. Mind you, I have RC2 PAL Editions (of all of them).
So, geek that I am, I thought, for our next screening we want to see all three Extended movies. But wouldn't it be cool if we don't need to get up five times to change the disc (three movies - six discs).
I want to join the six dvd's into one giant dvd. I will use a Notebook or PC to playback thru a beamer anyways.
So how would I start with such a monster thing (ripping of course, but you know what I mean).

Awaiting your great ideas
MicAttAck

[Arky]

I am not into ripping, to be honest, but your question does raise 2 important questions in my mind:


1) why would you buy the superb extended editions, only to spend nine hours or so watching them in drastically-reduced image quality, simply to avoid swapping discs? Wouldn't it be better to enjoy them in full image quality, even if it meant having to swap discs? I know which I'd rather do!


2) If it's just a one-off, then would you be willing to compromise? It occurs to me (and other people, more into the ripping scene, may have other ideas) that you could, theoretically, temporarily rip all the discs to your notebook harddrive (hope it's a big drive!), then use DVD2AVI+VFAPI or VirtualDubMod to serve these, sequentially, to Media Player, via virtual AVI files, queued within Media Player.


It's only the germ of an idea...


Regards,


Arky ;o)

[micattac]

1) I don't want to compress the video
Thanks for your concern. Apparently I didn't frase (sp?) my question correctly. I want to rip all 6 discs to harddrive (9gb x 6) and join them

2) Frameserving or feeding them sounds like a nice idead, but then there's still the "problem" with the forced subs.
Maybe one can rip the subs to vobsub format and rejoin them in VirtualDub. This would sound doable, but then what about 5.1 sound. Does that work with that suggestion. If so, It would also sound feasable to do a quick "hack" to remove the credits right there (I know that I can do that in avisynth with trim). So maybe that sounds like a good idead.

Thanks for the reply, keep them coming.

Cheers
MicAttAck

[PiXuS]

Originally posted by micattac
1) I don't want to compress the video
Thanks for your concern. Apparently I didn't frase (sp?) my question correctly. I want to rip all 6 discs to harddrive (9gb x 6) and join them

[snip]


I think what is confusing is the fact you didn't specify you don't have the intend of NOT burning that "gigantic" DVD! Else, I can't wait for the explanation of how ~113 GB can be sweezed in 4.7 GB without compressing the video.

Hmmm... fractal compression? ;)

[outsideAG]

You should be able to demux the video and audio streams you want with DIF4U, and then stick them in an authoring program, set them to play sequentially, and then author your big (unburnable) dvd.

I tried creating a "super DVD" with DVD-Lab, simpling by taking the same video file, and adding it 5 times, for a total of about 25 gigs, and it authored it without any difficulty.

Once you have the "super DVD" you should be able to playback with the software DVD player of your choice.

[Matthew]

outsideAG's suggestion is best IMO, never tried it myself but so long as the authoring app doesn't stop you creating an oversized DVD then demuxing and reauthoring with connections is a good idea. You'll get a slight pause/discontinuity at the disc changes, but no big deal.

However, like you say the forced subs are a problem. You can extract the forced subs by themselves using subrip or vsrip.exe+vsconv.exe and then set these subs to play by default in your authoring program.

But I'm not sure what subs format dvdlab pro (not regular) supports. Certainly *if* DVDMaestro allows oversized DVDs then it will be fine to use as subrip and vsconv.exe both support outputting Maestro format sons/bmps. Of course, if you don't have access to Maestro...well, damn...

As an aside, I don't think the retail PAL versions have forced elvish subs, they have their own little subtitle stream which is selected by default.

[nwg]

I thought your first post made sense. A big DVD on a HDD.

The easiest way it to use Nero Recode and just use recode main movie to DVD mode. This will create one DVD from all the discs. Set the compression to 0% (100% quality on the scale). Also, use the same audio and subtitle options for each disc. It has a merge titles (discs) into one big title.

If you can allow a slight pause between discs, then use DVD Shrink and it's similar Reauthor mode. Also, select the same audio and subtitle options. It doesn't have a merge feature. You can also force default streams and select the elvish language as the default subtitles. Then the Elvish subs will automatically come up when required.

[micattac]

PiXus - 6 Discs - Dual Layer 9 GB each = 54 GB. I don't need to join the appendixes, which would add another six discs, but that would really not make sense (I guess that's how you arrived at 113 GB).

outsideAG - That sounds good. I can use Adobe DVD Encore at the company I work at (after hours). Since that is a "big" DVD program, maybe it's possible.

Matthew - The "forced" elvish subtitles are established thru User Prohibition settings somehow. They are definitely NOT encoded in the video (because switching to english audio gives you english subs). But they are somehow hidden, because the streams only show up when there really is elvish speaking going on (meaning you cannot select it on the remote of a DVD Player manually). I'm sure something like subrip will catch them, because I read something like that in another post.

nwg: I'm a bit familiar with the Reauther Mode of DVDShrink. That sounds like one of the cheapest ideas (freeware). That way it's also quite easy to cut out the credits. Only the elvish subtitles need extra care and I didn't know that dvdshrink let's you build bigger DVD's than 9gb.

With e.g: DVDShrink I can also leave out the commentary tracks and the synchronised german language track, so the final rip won't even be to big.

So know I'll take a look at DIF4U and Adobe Encore and see what I can do with those. If I don't get anywhere with that I'll probably go with DVDShrink

Cheers
MicAttAck

[nwg]

Originally posted by micattac

nwg: I'm a bit familiar with the Reauther Mode of DVDShrink. That sounds like one of the cheapest ideas (freeware). That way it's also quite easy to cut out the credits. Only the elvish subtitles need extra care and I didn't know that dvdshrink let's you build bigger DVD's than 9gb.

Cheers
MicAttAck

You are right about the PUO thing. If you right mouse click on each dragged title to the left pabe of Shrink's reauthor, a menu appears. The bottom option is set default streams. This can make a chosen audio and subtitle stream the default. It is useful when the PUO's have been taken off and you need forced subtitles.

Shrink will allow any size you want. You just need to ignore the warning that comes up. There is also a 9GB size limit in the preferences for dealing with Dual Layer DVD + discs.

[Matthew]

Originally posted by micattac
Matthew - The "forced" elvish subtitles are established thru User Prohibition settings somehow. They are definitely NOT encoded in the video (because switching to english audio gives you english subs). But they are somehow hidden, because the streams only show up when there really is elvish speaking going on (meaning you cannot select it on the remote of a DVD Player manually). I'm sure something like subrip will catch them, because I read something like that in another post.

I think you'll find the subtitles display because they are to set display by default. PUO(s) are then used to stop you turning them off using the subtitle button on the remote - you must select another valid option (such as english for hearing impaired) via the menu. PUOs are just an optional "safety net" for this situation.

When extracting subtitles from the DVD they will appear and can be treated like any other subtitle stream, the "compulsory" display is just flags in the ifo (unlike with real forced subs, where the vobs contain a per-subtitle flag).