Episodes becoming a nightmare

[music_mogel]

Ok now i am trying to back up my angel and band of brothers DVD to DVD-r and i'm starting to have problems.
I found an idiots guide to doing such a thing here www.neophile.net/~hammer/index.htm
I followed it to the letter till i got to vobedit now the problem i have is at step 3 if you look ...
I opened 2nd part of first episode in order to join the vobs of second episode so wen i open the first vob file i am supposed to save it BUT!! i am not given any save options so i am stumped cos i can't go any further wot am i doing wrong or in my case is there an idiots idiot proof easier way to do it OS xp prof

[Baldrick]

Have you tried with latest dvd2one where you can copy the entire dvd and not just the main movie?
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/userguides/141024.php#dvd9dvd2one

Or try instantcopy or dvd95copy
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/userguides/141024.php#dvd9

[Faustus]

With Band of brothers I did each episode using DVD2SVCD with special settings. AFter that I added 2 episodes onto each disk with a simple menu to select which one you want. A pain but it worked.

I too hope episodes get easier, I know DVD2ONE will squish onto one disk but there is like 4 hours of video on each BOB disk... I shudder to think of the quality.

[Baldrick]

Okey...4 hours may be a bit much for one dvdr. How about use dvdxcopy then? splits to 2 dvdrs? Wouldn't it be easiest. Or use http://www.dvdtoolbox.de/down.htm (freee) that can also split to two dvdrs.

[music_mogel]

Thanks guys....
Have tried new dvd2one but backup failed towards end

[SaSi]

Episode disks tend to be tricky and time consuming, mainly because they have too much content you need to keep.

This is what I am doing after a backup of the episode disk on HD:

1. Rip the episode disk 4 times (once for each episode) with Smartripper, doing a direct stream copy of the video stream, the one audio stream I want to keep, and the subtitles stream I want to keep (optional). Set the max vob size to 4000 and set Smartripper to create a single VOB file for each episode.
The second rip process is across two different HSs so that things get fast. Each episode rip lasts 1 minute.

2. Feed each VOB file to Mainconcept encoder and select the appropriate settings (for aspect ratio,etc), and encode for VBR with 200kbps min, 3100kbps avg and 6000kbps max. This gives me a re-encoded video stream of approx. 1Gb for each episode. Each episode takes approx. 20minutes.
Mainconcept allows batch processing, and this is very handy. An alternative can be Tmpgenc, but is very slow at almost 1:20 per episode best speed for good quality.
Also, avoid encoding audio and video together. Makes every endoder I tried slower than doing this separately.

3. If I need subtitles, I rip the VOB file created for each episode using SubRip 1.16. I select output for Scenarist. The reason I rip the secondary VOBs (rather than the original backup of the DVD) is that this way I get the timline for the subtitles correct, while in the original DVD all 4 episodes tend to be part of the same VTS and start times for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th episodes are the end times of the previous one. A mess to re-set to proper times.

4. To get the audio, I rip (again!) the secondary VOBs (with SmartRipper) asking to demux the audio stream to a separate file. This is ultrafast (15~20 sec per episode) and gives me an AC3 file for each episode.

5. To make fancy things, you can rip some other parts of the DVD (like intro video, background for menu, etc). It's up to you.

6. To author the DVD, you need an authoring program. Without subtitles, I would recommend DVD Workshop 1.2 It's the fastest way to get to the finished product. With Subtitles, I would use either Scenarist or DVDMaestro. Some time ago I tried using IFOEdit, and I made a mess out of it and dropped it. You can add scene change points (can't actually call them chapters in an episode). Doesn't make sense to try using the original chapter points as there are usually too few (3~6).

If you read this and think: "way too complicated", I would agree with you for the first time. If you try it once or twice, you will really understand what's behind creating a DVD and movies with extras will become a snap. No more difficult movies.

Also, episodes come in numbers. This means that (given enough HD space) you can streamline the work and things get really fast.

It's taking me 2-3 hours for a disk, out of which I'm needed infront of the PC for 20 min. or so. And when things get a bit boring, I log onto DVDrHelp.com

[/i]

[music_mogel]

Thanks will have a fiddle with that one

[jeex]

i was able to backup my futurama season 1 & 2 discs using ifoedit & dvd2one (1.11)..

first thing i did was strip out 2 of the audio streams (foriegn language) using this guide http://www.geocities.com/ecarril/StripAudio.html

then i took it in to dvd2one and did it fulldisk.. came out good. quality was good, no problems navigating the disc or audio streams (it used to lock you to english #1 while it was playing)

[tinkerbellsmyhoe]

why would you take the time to strip out the unwanted audio tracks when you could just go straight to dvd2one and only choose the audio tracks you want?

[jeex]

because that option wasnt available in v1.11

[scottvf]

I use Tmpengc DVD Author to convert each episode into .mpg files. Then use the same program to create my own menu. *note- When you finally output your creation to a dvd folder (VIDEO_TS) It will say warning bitrate excedes maximum rate. Just click ignore. Then use Nero to burn.
Works Great !

[tinkerbellsmyhoe]

makes sense.
i have an episode disc that is all in 1 vts set.
i need to strip out a few "chapters" in this set. can i do this with ifoedit?
i have fooled around and looked for some guides. but so far no luck. i can follow the ones i have seen but it hasnt come out.
i would like to keep the menus since each clip is only 8 mins long...there are quite a few on the disc. if i used dvdshrink it would be a mess finding things.
when i strip something out using ifoedit and then play it back the "stripped" video is still in the set.
any idears?

[Renegade6]

SaSi, good idea. Something I will try.