SoundScape
22nd March 2005, 23:32
Hello,
I am using DVDShrink 3.2.0.15, PgcEdit 0.5.1beta1, IFOEdit 0.971 and MenuEdit 2.3.0 to edit and transcode all my favourites movies. Latest movie I am trying to edit is "The Bourne Identity". In my country, DVD contains 2 English Audio tracks (AC3 & DTS) and 15 subtitles. I'll first explain what steps I followed to produce the final, edited DVD and then I'll state my problem. So, first I opened DVD in PgcEdit to kill playback of unwanted material (like Warning screens) and to blank out some unwanted titles (like "Making Of" video) so as to save some space which could be allocated to main movie during transcoding. So far so good...
Afterwards, I opened DVDShrink and in Main Movie, I removed the DTS track and every subtitle except English, Greek, English (Director's Comments) and Greek (Director's Comments). That gives us 4 subtitles in total. Original stream numbers were:
1:English
4:Greek
8:English
11:Greek
I trancoded the DVD, keeping the menus as well as some extras and then I opened main movie's IFO to clean up any mess left behing during transcoding. In VTS Overview, only 1 audio track was present (English AC3) but subtitle streams needed a little clean up as the stripped streams were showing up in the overview.I went to VTSI_MAT and changed the "Language" attribute of any unwanted subtitle to "Not Defined". In VTS_PGCITI, changed "Stream Status" to zero for these subtitles, as well. So, in VTS Overview things looked as follows:
Audio 1: English (Dolby AC-3) 6ch 48Kbps DRC (ID:0X80)
SubPicture 1: English (ID:0X20)
SubPicture 4: Greek (ID:0X23)
SubPicture 8: English (ID:0X27)
SubPicture 11: Greek {ID:0X2a)
Note that in VTSI_MAT, I also changed the "Number of audio streams in VTSTT_VOBS" field from 2 to 1 and the "Number of sub-picture streams in VTSTT_VOBS" from 15 to 11 (since the last subtitle stream number used is 11:Greek). I changed these fields in main movie's IFO as well as in VIDEO_TS.IFO, just to be sure. It's also worth stating that in DVDShrink the "Logical Remapping Of Enabled Streams" options was turned OFF. This was done to ensure that the subtitles menu would still work after the stripping of unwanted subtitles, i.e. DVD would be able to find the remaining streams at the positions they were expected to be.
After the IFO editing, I used MenuEdit to remove (not hide) those buttons reffering to the missing (stripped) subtitles and also removed the button reffering to the DTS Audio track. I burned the edited DVD on a RW disc and tested it first in my software DVD player (PowerDVD). Selecting English or Greek subtitle and then playing movie worked absolutely fine. Moreover, selection of any subtitle stream through the "Subtitles" menu of PowerDVD (while movie was playing) was done without problems. The real problem was discovered while testing the disc in my standalone player, a SONY one. I inserted the disc and jumped straight to the "Play Movie" button (didn't go through the subtitles menu). So, while movie was playing and while trying to cycle through the subtitles, I noticed that only "English" subs were being selected. "Greek" subs were nowhere to be found. The other option of course was to turn subs OFF. I then went to the subtitles menu of the DVD and selected "Greek" subs. Returned to the movie and...magic! Greek subtitles were being displayed. But I soon as I pressed the subtitles button on my remote, I got the message "This function is not allowed by the disc"! In other words DVD player didn't allow me to change subs or cycle through them...
I tried to think of any possible reasons why all the above happened when DVD was played on my standalone but I could not find any solution (otherwise I wouldn't write to you guys, right?). I then remembered that in other DVDs I transcoded, where only English and Greek subs were available (in original DVD of course), things were working fine in both software DVD player and in my standalone. So, I inserted such a DVD in my drive, opened main movie's IFO in IFOEdit and noticed that in VTS Overview subtitle streams were CONSECUTIVE, i.e. no streams had been removed in-between. For example, English stream was number 1 and Greek was number 2.
I guess this is the problem: When stripping streams that are in-between the desired ones and you end up with something like 2,5,8,10, standalone player doesn't like that and only lets you activate the very first subtitle only. As if it can't see past the first sub. If someone has noticed that happening in his DVD and his standalone player, let me know. As I was not able to test my problematic disc in other standalones, it would be of great help knowing how other players behave in situations like the above. And this is another question I would like to ask: How can we be sure that an edited DVD will behave EXACTLY the same in other standalones except ours? I don't believe there is a utility that can check a DVD's compatibility, is there?
Now, what I would like to know is this: Is it possible to check the "Logical Remapping of Enabled Streams" in DVDShrink so that there are no "gaps" between the desired streams and then use PgcEdit to edit the subtitle menu's buttons commands so that the latter can point to the shifted subtitle streams? Will the DVD operate normally or will other problem arise by doing the above?
That's all for now, thanks for taking the time to read this rather long post. Any help is much appreciated. Take care![COLOR=royalblue]
I am using DVDShrink 3.2.0.15, PgcEdit 0.5.1beta1, IFOEdit 0.971 and MenuEdit 2.3.0 to edit and transcode all my favourites movies. Latest movie I am trying to edit is "The Bourne Identity". In my country, DVD contains 2 English Audio tracks (AC3 & DTS) and 15 subtitles. I'll first explain what steps I followed to produce the final, edited DVD and then I'll state my problem. So, first I opened DVD in PgcEdit to kill playback of unwanted material (like Warning screens) and to blank out some unwanted titles (like "Making Of" video) so as to save some space which could be allocated to main movie during transcoding. So far so good...
Afterwards, I opened DVDShrink and in Main Movie, I removed the DTS track and every subtitle except English, Greek, English (Director's Comments) and Greek (Director's Comments). That gives us 4 subtitles in total. Original stream numbers were:
1:English
4:Greek
8:English
11:Greek
I trancoded the DVD, keeping the menus as well as some extras and then I opened main movie's IFO to clean up any mess left behing during transcoding. In VTS Overview, only 1 audio track was present (English AC3) but subtitle streams needed a little clean up as the stripped streams were showing up in the overview.I went to VTSI_MAT and changed the "Language" attribute of any unwanted subtitle to "Not Defined". In VTS_PGCITI, changed "Stream Status" to zero for these subtitles, as well. So, in VTS Overview things looked as follows:
Audio 1: English (Dolby AC-3) 6ch 48Kbps DRC (ID:0X80)
SubPicture 1: English (ID:0X20)
SubPicture 4: Greek (ID:0X23)
SubPicture 8: English (ID:0X27)
SubPicture 11: Greek {ID:0X2a)
Note that in VTSI_MAT, I also changed the "Number of audio streams in VTSTT_VOBS" field from 2 to 1 and the "Number of sub-picture streams in VTSTT_VOBS" from 15 to 11 (since the last subtitle stream number used is 11:Greek). I changed these fields in main movie's IFO as well as in VIDEO_TS.IFO, just to be sure. It's also worth stating that in DVDShrink the "Logical Remapping Of Enabled Streams" options was turned OFF. This was done to ensure that the subtitles menu would still work after the stripping of unwanted subtitles, i.e. DVD would be able to find the remaining streams at the positions they were expected to be.
After the IFO editing, I used MenuEdit to remove (not hide) those buttons reffering to the missing (stripped) subtitles and also removed the button reffering to the DTS Audio track. I burned the edited DVD on a RW disc and tested it first in my software DVD player (PowerDVD). Selecting English or Greek subtitle and then playing movie worked absolutely fine. Moreover, selection of any subtitle stream through the "Subtitles" menu of PowerDVD (while movie was playing) was done without problems. The real problem was discovered while testing the disc in my standalone player, a SONY one. I inserted the disc and jumped straight to the "Play Movie" button (didn't go through the subtitles menu). So, while movie was playing and while trying to cycle through the subtitles, I noticed that only "English" subs were being selected. "Greek" subs were nowhere to be found. The other option of course was to turn subs OFF. I then went to the subtitles menu of the DVD and selected "Greek" subs. Returned to the movie and...magic! Greek subtitles were being displayed. But I soon as I pressed the subtitles button on my remote, I got the message "This function is not allowed by the disc"! In other words DVD player didn't allow me to change subs or cycle through them...
I tried to think of any possible reasons why all the above happened when DVD was played on my standalone but I could not find any solution (otherwise I wouldn't write to you guys, right?). I then remembered that in other DVDs I transcoded, where only English and Greek subs were available (in original DVD of course), things were working fine in both software DVD player and in my standalone. So, I inserted such a DVD in my drive, opened main movie's IFO in IFOEdit and noticed that in VTS Overview subtitle streams were CONSECUTIVE, i.e. no streams had been removed in-between. For example, English stream was number 1 and Greek was number 2.
I guess this is the problem: When stripping streams that are in-between the desired ones and you end up with something like 2,5,8,10, standalone player doesn't like that and only lets you activate the very first subtitle only. As if it can't see past the first sub. If someone has noticed that happening in his DVD and his standalone player, let me know. As I was not able to test my problematic disc in other standalones, it would be of great help knowing how other players behave in situations like the above. And this is another question I would like to ask: How can we be sure that an edited DVD will behave EXACTLY the same in other standalones except ours? I don't believe there is a utility that can check a DVD's compatibility, is there?
Now, what I would like to know is this: Is it possible to check the "Logical Remapping of Enabled Streams" in DVDShrink so that there are no "gaps" between the desired streams and then use PgcEdit to edit the subtitle menu's buttons commands so that the latter can point to the shifted subtitle streams? Will the DVD operate normally or will other problem arise by doing the above?
That's all for now, thanks for taking the time to read this rather long post. Any help is much appreciated. Take care![COLOR=royalblue]