How to approach this specific title

[raddygast]

Hi,

I thought I'd ask the advice of those of you who've been using DVD-RB for ages now. I have a DVD I'd like to back up -- Love Actually. It's pretty huge, as a result of having an AC3 track as well as French, English, and Director's Commentary. On top of that, it has an enormous amount of extras.

Now obviously I am going to strip all Audio languages except the AC3 English and the Director's Commentary (2-ch), and all subtitles but English. As for the extras, there's like 700MB or so of extras that I do *not* want (having to do with the music of the film). But I do want to keep one very long title (1.2 GB) which is the director discussing various deleted scenes, and the scenes are inserted after each little segment where he introduces them.

Now, I tried using DVD Shrink to preprocess but it seems DVD-RB didn't like something about that. I'd love to figure out what the problem is but it's probably beyond my technical skill. What I wanted to do (ideally) was to:

a) turn the crap extras into still images (vastly reducing size to like under 15 MB each)

b) strip out all unnecessary audio and subtitle tracks completely

C) leave the main film and the main extra title (deleted scenes) uncompressed

d) compress the menus to oblivion


I did all that, and then tried to open in RB, but the prepare phase keeps getting stuck. So the natural question is, apart from the menu compression, is there a way I can get DVD-RB to completely blank out some of the extras (which are in their own VTS titleset) while keeping the main one? I'd like to use CCE to re-encode the main film plus that main extra, but I would entertain using Half-D1 or half-rate on the extra.

What I can't see is any option to blank or remove certain titlesets. I know I can get RB to steal space from the extras in general, but I really don't want to waste that 700MB or so of the extras that I don't want (trailers, music videos, and the soundtrack discussion).

Any help here? I guess I may have to buckle down and start learning other tools like IfoEdit, but I really wish I didn't have to. I thought Shrink would be the perfect companion to DVD-RB! Maybe someone can help me with debugging that problem?

[HanSolo00]

Sounds like you need to pick up VOBblanker, MenuEdit, or DVDReMake--these programs will let you blank portions of VOBs, and the latter two will also let you repair the affected menu BOV (Button Over Video.)

I use ReMake on virtually every disc I backup and haven't had any problems in DVD-RB, unless it involves ILVU/seamless branching. In those cases, angle removal with IFOedit first has worked for me.

[sweetness]

you can also use NuMenu4U to reencode the menus.
vobblanker or menushrink to still the menus.

or have a look at «-«-« 2COOL's Cheat Sheets & Guides List »-»-» (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43142)

[raddygast]

Thanks guys.

I guess the main issue for me is... why is the pre-processed DVD screwing up DVD-RB's prepare process? I will experiment a bit more, trying different options in DVD Shrink to see what it is that is breaking DVD-RB's prepare phase. Because you just can't beat th eease of use of Shrink.

However, DVD-RB is absolutely vital to maintain decent quality when Shrink would like to compress something more than 20%. I'm just praying I can get both to play nice.

[pg55555]

One alternative to pre-processing (process with Shrink first and then with RB) is Post-processing: Use RB firs and then Shrink.

The problem with post processing is, in order to maximize main movie bitrate, you have to produce an oversized output with RB (with the TargetSectors setting or with RBOpt) which after post-processing with Shrink fits into a DVD5. But guessing how much to oversize is a trial and see game.

So, my recomendation is:
- Usewith VobBlanker to blank the unwanted titles.

- Check with Shrink how much you are able to compress the menus (with Custom search the max and min sizes you can have) Concert this size difference into sectors by dividing by two. Add this figure to your TargetSectors setting:
So if your uncompresesed menus are 400 MB, and you can compress them with Shrink to 250 MB, the difference would be 150 MB = 75 thousand sectors. So TargetSectors=2330000 (2255000+75000)

- Process with RB. Select in RB the soundtracks and subtitles you want to keep an let it to strip it

- Process the RB output with Shrink, select No Compression for the movie, compress to the max the menus (with custom) and let Shrink to compress in automatic the remaining extras if necessary to fit into DVD5. Backup to Iso file

- burn the ISO with Decrypter

[TheSeeker]

Seriously. If you dont mind spending money buy DVD Remake. I wouldnt leave home without it, its one of the best misc. dvd tools out there IMO. If you dont want to spend money use VOBlanker. Either one will get rid of any or all extras and leave you with a dvd that you should have no problems pluggin into DVD RB.

[raddygast]

DVDRemake is 24.95, the pro version is 39.95. Is Remake good enough?

Does the demo version not do enough? I am having trouble figuring out how it is limited -- says the export test DVD function is disabled. Do you really need this?

[dragongodz]

says the export test DVD function is disabled. Do you really need this?
umm doesnt that mean it wont export(output) a copy with the changes you made so you can use DVD-RB on that ? kind of important no ? :D

i would atleast give VobBlanker a try first since its free, just cost you a little bit of your time.

[raddygast]

Yeah that's what I was afraid of. :)

[sweetness]

maybe these can save you some time vobblanker guides (http://www.videohelp.com/~jsoto/guides.htm) :)