DVD VR with missing Chapter & Cell Details in IFO

[himadri0327]

I am trying to seek advice from all you guys here who are more experienced and knowledgeable. Please help me with what I should do.

I have a DVDVR (recorded on a Philips DVDR3355/37) that I am trying to figure a fix. The symptom of the playback problem is:
- Loads to the Title Menu ok, I see the 2 Titles and Menu navigation appear fine.
- Both Titles do not play when selected from the Title Menu
- Same playback observation on Philips DVDR3355, JVC XV-NP10, Panasonic DVD-F65 and PowerDVD (on my laptop).
- The individual VOB files play back fine on PowerDVD.
- Here is what the VIDEO_TS folder looks like

VIDEO_TS.BUP 12,288
VIDEO_TS.IFO 12,288
VIDEO_TS.VOB 262,144
VTS_01_0.BUP 75,776
VTS_01_0.IFO 75,776
VTS_01_1.VOB 1,073,676,288
VTS_01_2.VOB 1,073,676,288
VTS_01_3.VOB 1,073,676,288
VTS_01_4.VOB 1,073,676,288
VTS_01_5.VOB 260,734,976
4,555,878,400 bytes


Based on this initial observation I thought the Menu is not linking to the Titles so I looked into the VIDEO_TS.IFO using IfoEdit and I saw the following. I note that VTS_01_*.VOB contains both Title1 & Title2 that I recorded. Not sure why the I see Title3 & Title4 additionally since I know I recorded only 2 titles and recorder created 2 buttons for the 2 Titles in the Menu (I believe this DVDRecorder can only produce Title Menu and Root Menu of each Title is mapped to Title Menu somehow on playback).

• 
  VMG Overview:
  
  Video Manager Menu attributes:
  Video: MPEG-2 720x480 (NTSC) (NTSC 525/60) (4:3) (not specified perm.display)
  SubPicture 1: Not Specified (2-bit rle )
  
  Number of Title Play Maps: 4 (VMG_PTT_SRPT)
  Title 1: VTS_01_*, TTN_1 (Angles: 1) (Chapters: 10) (Start Sector 5120)
  Title 2: VTS_01_*, TTN_2 (Angles: 1) (Chapters: 18) (Start Sector 5120)
  Title 3: VTS_01_*, TTN_3 (Angles: 1) (Chapters: 11) (Start Sector 5120)
  Title 4: VTS_01_*, TTN_4 (Angles: 1) (Chapters: 18) (Start Sector 5120)
  
  Number of Video Title Sets on this DVD: 1 (VMG_VTS_ATRT)
  Title Set 1:
  VTS_1 Video: MPEG-2 720x480 (NTSC) (NTSC 525/60) (4:3) (not specified perm.display)
  VTS_1 Audio 1: Not Specified (Dolby AC-3) 2ch 48Kbps 16bps
  VTS_1 SubPicture 1: Not Specified (2-bit rle )
  
  
  First play PGC: (Programs: 0) (Cells: 0)
  
  Menu Language Units: 1
  Language Menu Unit 1: []
  
  Language Menu Unit 1: []
  Menu 1: [Title-Menu] (entry PGC) (Programs: 2) (Cells: 2) (uses VOB-IDs: 1,2)
  Menu 2: [entry only] (Programs: 0) (Cells: 0)
  Menu 3: [entry only] (Programs: 0) (Cells: 0)
  

However, I am now thinking that the problem lies in the IFO of the VTS.
- The IfoEdit summary of VTS_01_0.IFO seems to say that it has no cell/chapter info. Title1 should have 10 chapters after I hid 1 chapter during editing on the DVDRecorder. Maybe that explains PGC_3 & PGC_4 entries that seems to remember the 11 chapters before/after hiding 1 chapter in Title1):

• 
  VTS overview:
  
  Menu attributes:
  Video: MPEG-1 720x480 (NTSC) (NTSC 525/60) (4:3) (pan-scan & letterboxed)
  
  Title Set (Movie) attributes:
  Video: MPEG-2 720x480 (NTSC) (NTSC 525/60) (4:3) (not specified perm.display)
  Audio 1: Not Specified (Dolby AC-3) 2ch 48Kbps 16bps (ID: 0x80)
  SubPicture 1: Not Specified (2-bit rle ) (ID: 0x20)
  
  PGC_1 (program chain): [Title(TTN): 1] [00:00:00.00 / 30 fps] (Programs: 10) (Cells: 0)
  
  PGC_2 (program chain): [Title(TTN): 2] [00:00:00.00 / 30 fps] (Programs: 18) (Cells: 0)
  
  PGC_3 (program chain): [Title(TTN): 3] [00:00:00.00 / 30 fps] (Programs: 11) (Cells: 0)
  
  PGC_4 (program chain): [Title(TTN): 4] [00:00:00.00 / 30 fps] (Programs: 18) (Cells: 0)
  
  Menu Language Units: 1
  Language Menu Unit 1: []
  
  Language Menu Unit 1: []
  Menu 1: [Root-Menu] (entry PGC) (Programs: 0) (Cells: 0)
  

If my observation above is on the right track, how can I generate/fix the VTS_01_0.IFO such that the cell/chapter info is brought back. In other words, what would be the best way to fix if I want to retain the Menu as is (with the 2 Titles)? I will only want to re-author new Menu only if there is no easy way out of this mess.
- I tried the "Create IFO" of IfoEdit but so far I have not managed to produce the results as desired. Maybe there is a way I have not stumbled upon yet.

[joeg04]

From file sizes I conclude, that the disk was too full for the recorder to correctly update the VTS*.IFO file after editing (~4.3 GiB). There is a warning in the manual under "record to DVD".

I would first check the VTS*.BUP file. If it is correct, then copy it to VTS*.IFO.
If not, I would manually copy entries from the automatically generated VTS*.IFO files ("create IFO") to the wrong file.

The DVD+VR format generally doubles the number of titles (unedited and edited versions). The edited titles normally can be selected via graphical menu, all titles via number buttons on the remote control.