VobBlanker v2.0.0.2 - Main movie didn't play

[foobaz]

I'm posting this in the hope that it will alert others to a problem I had when keeping the main movie and blanking most of the remaining VTSs with VobBlanker v2.0.0.2. I just leave all the default settings checked including 'Change post into precomm (Safely)'. I auto-blank (Alt-t) the non-movie VTSs and then process. Usually this yields great results. Well not this time. It turns out that this particular movie had an absolutely labyrinthian program structure including 145 menu PGCs. In addition I got an error message when loading it into PgcEdit:

Warning: There are 6 discrepancies in some VMGM/VTSI_MAT tables.

Do you want to run the "Fix number of streams" macro to fix them?

I chose 'No'.

When I tried to play the movie, it wouldn't play. Instead it went back to the main menu. I finally found that the problem was that there were 4 Title PGCs for the main movie, two for the German version w/o subtitles, and two for the German language with English subtitles version. If this isn't anomalous enough, the first PGC of each pair is called when you play the movie but the second one is called when you access a scene from the scene selection menu. They all reference the same video content. Now PGC 3 is the German with English subtitle version that I would watch. Well, VobBlanker blanks all but the first PGC in this case. So PGC 3 and 4 were blanked - there was a jump over all the pre-commands to the post-command moved by VobBlanker to the end of the pre-commands which leads back to the main menu. So the movie is inaccessible.

To prevent this I could just manually 'keep' these PGCs in VobBlanker or in this case, just check the 'Use Input Folder' box and then process only the VTSs I want to blank.

Just thought I'd report this to help someone else who may have this or a similar problem.

[r0lZ]

Thanks for letting us know.

Although not usual, I've seen this kind of authoring several times. The Matrix is a well known example of complex authoring. It uses a similar method to play the movie normally, or with the white rabbit option.

The warning in PgcEdit might be produced by the blanking of some titles, but this problem is often present on original, unmodified, commercial DVDs. Although harmless, it's better to fix the problem, specially if you want to process the DVD with DVD Shrink. It is related to the number of streams defined in the tables not matching the real number of streams.

[foobaz]

Thanks for letting us know.
Although not usual, I've seen this kind of authoring several times. The Matrix is a well known example of complex authoring. It uses a similar method to play the movie normally, or with the white rabbit option..

Yes but that is a case of multiple angles so you would expect some complexity. The way this DVD is authored just in order to show or not show a subpicture is much more complex than it needs be. And why the separate PGC for the scene selection? Doesn't make sense. Anyway it was easy to circumvent.

The warning in PgcEdit might be produced by the blanking of some titles, but this problem is often present on original, unmodified, commercial DVDs.
Yes it was present on the original.

Although harmless, it's better to fix the problem, specially if you want to process the DVD with DVD Shrink.
I figured I'd leave it since the original played fine and I didn't plan to use DVD Shrink.

It is related to the number of streams defined in the tables not matching the real number of streams.
Yes exacty. The table indicated 8 streams when there was only one. Go figure.