hey everyone, I have a question about re-authoring. I am very much a noob to it, and it all seems very confusing to me. Basically what I want to do is take a disc with TV episodes on it (in this case, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia), rip just the episodes and make a single menu that starts up when I pop in the disc, be able to select the episode or play all, and that's it, just as bare bones as possible. Preferably I'd like to be able to create stills from the original disc's episode selection menu and use that as my main menu. With the original discs there are 6 episodes on the first two discs and then 4 episodes on the 3rd disc. I want to just stretch it out to 4 discs, with 4 episodes per disc (DVD-5's). What program or combination of programs should I use for this purpose, and if anyone has any suggestions, can you point me to where I might find a guide for these programs? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
What you are planning to do is rather advanced. I am planning on doing something like this in the near future. If you want, I can begin a lot sooner than planned and write up a guide for it. If you have a preference of Free Software, I can attempt it using nothing but freeware and open source software. There are a few tricky parts to this. One is you will have to start re-arranging the PGCs starting with disc 2. For example, if you are going from 6 episodes per DVD9 to 4 episodes per DVD5: Original Disc 1: Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 New Disc 1: Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4 All you need to do here is remove episodes 5 & 6 Original Disc 2: Episodes 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 New Disc 2: 5, 6, 7, 8 Here you have to remove episodes 9 - 12 then add episode 5 & 6. Another challenge is that your menu will be referencing episodes no longer on the disc. Disc 2 will not have 9 - 12. Also, it will not reference Episodes 5 & 6. This means you have to edit the menu and import it back into the DVD. Let me know so I can decide when to start this project.
Actually, thank you very much for the offer, but I think I got it figured out for myself! Ripped with AnyDVD then Demuxed the PGCs from all 3 discs into sets of 4 using PGCDemux. Used PGCEdit to get BMP stills of the menus from each disc, and edited them in paint to only have four episodes listed in each menu. I then put the 4 titles into DVDAuthorGUI and added my menu and put in my buttons and highlights as well as set the chapters for each episode in identical fashion to the original disc. Authored with DVDAuthorGUI, now all I have left to do is add my Play All button functionality via PGCEdit and it should be good to go for a regular DVD-5. I'm gonna check it out in Media Player Classic and make sure everything functions correctly before I burn it. Obviously since I only have one still menu with a simple episode selection and play all button it's really nothing fancy, but it should get the job done for what I want! All I wanted was to fit the episodes on a DVD-5 fairly uncompressed (my guess is that i will compress the authored files with Shrink down to around 95% which is fine by me) and be able to select which episode I wanted and the chapters. As you can see, I have been doing a lot of program research lol.
Now that I re-read your post however, are you saying that it's possible to be done without the Demuxing step (well of course, I am sure it is, lol)? Because that certainly seems like the more confusing route but that would be really cool if you did start that guide because I would definitely be interested in learning how to do that!
It can go either way. The way you did it is the easier method which works just fine. I always recommend authoring new DVDs over editing which is what you did. I'll get started on it, but don't expect it any time soon. It usually takes a few hours to get a DVD edited correctly and then another few hours to write up a guide. I am going to spread it out so that I don't burn out doing this. I have about 14 other movies I have to work on within 2 weeks, so it should be finished some time withing that period. What I will actually do is a hybrid method of editing and re-authoring. As you said, it can be done without demuxing.
Yeah, it would definitely be nice to know how to do it both ways. Thanks so much for helping, and I will be eagerly awaiting the guide!
Hey, just a little update. I finished the first part of the guide. It was taking a little longer to write up so I wanted to give you a status. I think I will rearrange it though. I have editing the PGCs first, but the menus should really be done first, or at least the menu templates. I use Photoshop to do menus because I can make layered files. Gimp works just as well and the process is virtually identical. The only difference is that Gimp is Free and Photoshop costs a small fortune . Oh, and with the menus, I will try and edit them without using authoring software. I have never done this, but I think it is possible. I am not sure how familiar you are with IFOEdit, but it is used a lot in the process. So far the guide shows a Disc 1 edit. As I said, Disc 1 would be among the easiest since all the episodes are already on the disc, so it is only a matter of removing an episode. I forgot one thing about it though, and that is that stripping VOB IDs takes a long time. I will have to see if I can do this a different way, otherwise each disc will take 1 - 2 hours to edit (really the PC will be processing the VOBs for a long time). If I can clean up the guide a little bit, I will upload the incomplete version. I am not sure what the total guide length will be when complete, but right now it is at 23 pages (mostly screens). The incomplete version would basically show you how to do Disc 1 and Disc 3 in your case.... and now that I am writing this, I just realized that I have no idea that the structure of your movie looks like... Can you take a screen shot of the structure, either in PGCEdit or DVD Decrypter? For the guide, I used Sliders which has the following structure: VIDEO_TS --Warnings and other garbage VTS_01 --PGC 01 (Episode 1) --PGC 02 (Episode 2) --PGC 03 (Episode 3) --PGC 04 (Episode 4) --PGC 05 (Episodes 1, 2, 3, & 4) VTS_02 --PGC 01 Garbage VTS_03 --PGC 01 Garbage VTS_04 --PGC 01 Garbage I chose it on purpose because it is the hardest to re-author, but it may not help you if your DVD has a simpler structure until later on in the guide when I show the alternative method of re-authoring by changing the structure. On the first part I am keeping the structure in tact (but editing like crazy), so the new DVD will be: VIDEO_TS --Empty VTS_01 --PGC 01 (Episode 1) --PGC 02 (Episode 2) --PGC 03 (Episode 3) --PGC 04 (Episodes 1, 2, & 3) The alternative (sort of authoring a new DVD) would be: VIDEO_TS --JumpTT commands VTS_01 --PGC 01 (Episode 1) VTS_02 --PGC 01 (Episode 2) VTS_03 --PGC 01 (Episode 3) The "Play All" would be accomplished with arguments.
well actually with the disc in question I had to return them fairly soon after I had originally posted so I actually just made the discs via the demuxing method with PGCDemux and edited my menus simply in paint and then used DVDAuthorGUI to re-author and then used PGCEdit to add my play all buttons and that seemed to work just fine. But actually, I do own the first season of the series on DVD which also has the same 3 discs for the season, so I could take screenshots of that one and I bet it would be quite similar...I do remember the structure being really complicated looking as it had a lot of dummy menus and VTS sectors. In other words, I no longer need to copy this show in particular, however it would be awesome to use your guide to help me in th future as I am sure that I will come across other shows that I will want to split in the same manner.
Sounds good! As is now, the guide shows how to perform the editing in disc 1. Disc 2 would not be much different since the method I used for the menus can also be used for the episodes in Disc 2. This actually means that no demuxing would be needed in the entire project. I just have to remember to experiment to figure a way to skip one of the IFOEdit steps to save a ton of processing time. The method of creating a new menu for the DVD is the simplest and probably the best. Sometimes keeping the identical menu structure and swapping edited menus can be incredibly tricky and can cause the DVD to freeze up or have corrupted playback.
Alright man, I got a screenshot of the structure for that Always Sunny In Philadelphia disc. This is the first and second season (Disc 1) as opposed to the Season 2 discs I wanted to copy originally, but the structure is very similar
Pretty much the same structure as sliders. The only difference is that this one does not have a "Play All Title" so it is one less thing to worry about. Hopefully the guide won't end up being too confusing. I am at 83 pages right now. Gonna take a break cause I kind of worked through my bed time I showed Disc 1 and Disc 2. Disc 2 got a little crazy (probably because of lack of sleep). I kind of improvised cause I usually do not leave the structure in tact for every disc since it gets a little complicated. For Disc 3, I will show the easier method which is making a VTS for each Episode. I am pretty sure almost anyone can do that method no problem since it only requires basic DVD knowledge and no messing around with IFOEdit. Anyway, I will take some time off from this, like 5 days. Then I'll finish it off and create a PDF
@ JaguarGod I too, would be very interested in seeing your guide upon completion. Please keep us informed.
