Removing nonexistent titlesets from IFO with IFOEdit?

[dave2003]

It feels as though this ought to be a very straightforward and simple procedure, but I was unable to find any explanation of how to do this despite an exhaustive search of this site and forums.

Problem: Using the combination of DVD Decrypter and IFOEdit, I am able to successfully back up my DVDs, keeping the main movie only while discarding unwanted extras. However, until recently, I had been creating new IFO menus by choosing the appropriate option in IFOEdit. This time 'round, I decided to try keeping the original menus, and so far as I can tell, the resulting video plays back as I had hoped. Note that I have only tested playback from a software player thus far though. The one minor nuisance I have is that all of the titlesets (there are nearly 20) that refer to nonexistent VOBs still exist in the VIDEO_TS.IFO file, so it's still possible to attempt to switch nonexistent titles/chapters during playback. Is there an easy (or other) way I can simply delete these referenced titlesets from the menu IFO file in IFOEdit, short of creating new ones from scratch (and thus forfeiting the original menus)? I tried using the "delete playback" function, but that didn't accomplish what I wanted; in fact, I'm not quite sure what it does.

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can lend me here...

Dave

[jeanl]

Dave,
It seems to me you're going about it the hard way. If what you're trying to do it keep the movie, keep the menus, and get rid of all the extras, then you should use either:
- titlesetblanker (which will blank entire VTS, VTSM or VMGM)
- vobblanker (which can blank parts of a title, down to individual cells)
- pgcedit (which can blank individual PGCs).

These tools work well and normally produce good compliant DVDs. In general, if you're missing vob files, things could indeed go really bad. I'm not sure there's an easy way to fix that.
Jeanl

[dave2003]

Originally posted by jeanl
Dave,
It seems to me you're going about it the hard way. If what you're trying to do it keep the movie, keep the menus, and get rid of all the extras, then you should use either:
- titlesetblanker (which will blank entire VTS, VTSM or VMGM)
- vobblanker (which can blank parts of a title, down to individual cells)
- pgcedit (which can blank individual PGCs).
[

Thank you for the feedback. I had originally been using the following guide at Doom9 for stripping the unwanted extras and keeping the main movie: http://www.doom9.org/mpg/ifoedit-menustripping.htm

This has thus far worked perfectly for its intended purpose. The only variable I've added now is the inclusion of the main (root) menu. This is essentially just for cosmetic purposes and does not include any essential functionality (unless the ability to turn on subtitles from a graphical menu is considered essential ;-). However, I tend to be somewhat of a perfectionist and want the graphic intro anyway. Unfortunately, manipulating video content (DVD or other) is new territory for me. So, in case I didn't make it clear in my original post, playback (including the interactive main menu) is behaving perfectly. The only thing I want to remove is the titleset entries from the main menu IFO file, which I assume is responsible for the titles (beyond title 1) and corresponding chapters to being available for selection using e.g., the context menu in PowerDVD, or drop-down menu in IFOEdit's built-in DVD player, etc.

These tools work well and normally produce good compliant DVDs. In general, if you're missing vob files, things could indeed go really bad. I'm not sure there's an easy way to fix that.
Jeanl

Well, I wouldn't really say that I'm *missing* VOB files, since I intentionally removed them. More important, there are no referenced VOBs from any of the IFOs that I want to access. I could of course rip them again from my original source DVD if necessary, but the reauthored DVD already has all of the content on it that I want. At this point I may be repeating myself. Not being an expert in this area, I want to be sure I'm clearly explaining the problem.

Thanks again for the tips. I'll take a look at the programs you've mentioned to see if they can help me with this.

Dave

[jippiejajee]

Dave

In case I strip a DVD and keep the original menu's and as you said there will be references in the menu's to the no longer existing vobs or parts of them.
I that case I use the proram menu edit. With that program you can simple disables the buttons you want in the menu's. The text will still be present but you can no longer activate them anymore

[dave2003]

Originally posted by jippiejajee
Dave

In case I strip a DVD and keep the original menu's and as you said there will be references in the menu's to the no longer existing vobs or parts of them.
I that case I use the proram menu edit. With that program you can simple disables the buttons you want in the menu's. The text will still be present but you can no longer activate them anymore

Thanks, I'll give that a whirl. I did manage to remove and/or change the extra references using the combination of IFOEdit and PGCEdit, albeit in a willy nilly sort of approach.

Dave

[dave2003]

RE: MenuEdit

I just downloaded the free version to try out. Ouch! Why doesn't it sequently read the file instead of trying to slurp the *entire* VOB in memory?

[blutach]

Dave,

A couple of things.

1. With menuedit, make sure you're picking up the menu. That's the one with VTS_X_0.VOB. BTW: The registered version of Menuedit is much better as it actually shows you what each VOBID contains.

2. What I believe jeanl was trying to get across is that you should start with a full DVD and use tools like PgcEdit to blank titles you don't need. These don't just delete the VObs, they replace them with tiny 10k blanks. Thus, if, by some error in programming, you happen to reference a "deleted VOB", it will not stop the playback of the DVD for want of its absence.

Regards