DVD video has Too Long GOP, What To Do

[Brent212]

I have a commercial DVD that I've ripped to my HD and backed up. The back up plays fine on all standalone DVD players that I've tried it on. I'm in the process of authoring a DVD with clips from several DVDs, including this one. I'm using TMPGEnc DVD Author (TDA). In the "Source Setup" menu, when I import the DVD files that were ripped to my HD, it gives me an error saying that the GOP is too long and that the max allowable for NTSC is 36. I can choose to ignore the error, but when I do this the video for this clip on the final DVD that TDA produces pauses briefly every 1 to 2 seconds.

I've scanned the ripped VOBs, that I'm importing to TDA, with Womble MPEG-VCR's GOP Fixer tool and it doesn't find any errors. I've tried demuxing with both Womble and regular TMPGEnc, and both remuxing with those programs before importing the file into TDA and leaving them separate and importing the audio and video separately into TDA. I get the same result each time.

I tried using DVD Shrink to make a DVD of just the clip I want from the ripped DVD, and importing that into TDA, but it gives the same "GOP too long" error and the same thing happens in the output.

So I guess if there's no way to just "fix" the original DVD files (which I'm not convinced actually have the error that TDA says they do) without re-encoding them, I will have to do just that.

I actually just had an idea that might work, although I'd appreciate a confirmation. When using DVD Shrink, I haven't been compressing the video at all, since I've been producing a DVD of a clip that's about 10 minutes long. Instead of setting the compression to "No Compression", what if I set it to something like 99%? Won't it then transcode the original VOB files and hopefully produce ones with the correct GOP length, which could then be imported into TDA without issues?

[redwudz]

I usually ignore that most times and it's never caused any problems, but here's one discussion: https://forum.videohelp.com/topic268989.html#1303959

I believe for NTSC the maximum GOP length is 18. Maybe with pulldown you would have 36.

Yes, you would probably have to re-encode to change their length, but someone with more experience with this problem might have another idea.

[dostka]

I had this problem with one clip on a DVD I just authored using TDA. I went back to the "Source" Tab, clicked on the particular clip, then clicked "edit". On the edit screen I clicked "Clip Properties". In that screen, I noticed there was a check box labelled "Consider source as XDVD format MPEG file". There was a check mark in this box, so I unchecked it. After that I no longer received the error message, and the DVD turned out fine.

I know this answer comes 5 years to the day after the initial post (weird timing, that), but hopefully this will help future users who come across the same problem.

[Junkman]

... I know this answer comes 5 years to the day after the initial post (weird timing, that), but hopefully this will help future users who come across the same problem.

... and almost one year to the day, your post resolved my issue. Thanks!

[jman98]

... and almost one year to the day, your post resolved my issue. Thanks!

We're glad it helped, but if everybody did what you did every time they got help, some of our threads would have hundreds or more posts that only say "Thanks". If you got helped years later, don't unnecessarily add to these old threads to just say "thanks". If you don't have critical information to add, just leave them alone.

[Junkman]

... and almost one year to the day, your post resolved my issue. Thanks!

We're glad it helped, but if everybody did what you did every time they got help, some of our threads would have hundreds or more posts that only say "Thanks". If you got helped years later, don't unnecessarily add to these old threads to just say "thanks". If you don't have critical information to add, just leave them alone.

Seriously? You could have just PM'ed me that response and not added to the thread again if you felt that way. The error is still relevant and I'm sure that the thread will help someone else.