Two ripped DVDs shrunken and burned to one DVD disc with basic menu

[jeffshead]

I am trying to put two separate movies onto one DVD disc and have a menu to choose which movie to watch. One movie is a store bought DVD and the other DVD is a capture from a VHS using a stand alone recorder.

I want to remove all original menus and extras from both DVD’s so when the new disc is inserted, the menu I create will auto play and I can select which movie to watch without trailers and all of the other garbage.

This is what I have tried so far:

The simplest way was for me to rip with DVDDecryptor and remove the extras and shrink with DVDShink, but there is no menu to select each movie.

I then started from scratch and imported the VOB’s from the files created by DVDDecryptor into DVD Workshop. I created my menu and then completed the project and exported my new DVD files. I decided to play the files before shrinking them with DVDShrink. All was fine until I noticed, during playback, that there are small gaps or freezes where the VOB’s/clips end and start. I researched this site and found out the VOB’s/clips should be joined into one large file before being imported into DVDWorkshop 2.

I started from scratch again. To join/merge the VOB’s I used Womble’s MPEG Video wizard with all of the setting to default in hopes of not re-encoding video and sound. I tried to import the resulting file into DVDWorkshop 2 (even tried Pinnacle Studio) but received an error message that said there is a problem with the audio or no audio. I tested the file with three different PC video players. Media player will not play the file. Cyberlink PowerDVD is very jerky and freezes. Nero Showtime is the only player (program) that will play the file. The file made from the store bought DVD has this problem. The file made from the VHS capture will play in all players. I even tried to export as an .avi file, but I received an error message from Womble that said Womble limits AVI exports to 3GB.

I then tried Boilsoft’s MPEG joiner. I got the same results as I did with the Womble mpeg’s. I tried Womble again and changed the settings so the sound would be re-encoded from AC-3 to Layer 2. The resulting file will play in all software players and import into the DVD authoring apps, but there is another problem. I still notice where the VOB’s were joined. The video does not stop and start as before, but it is as if a couple of frames were dropped. However, audio and video are still in sync. The file that was created with Boilsoft’s MPEG Joiner is the same. I noticed this with the file created from both the store bought DVD and the file created from the VHS capture.

Man, what a pain in the butt! It has taken a few days and countless hours just for me to get to this point. Now I am stuck. I have searched all through this site but I have not been able to pinpoint what I am doing wrong. Can someone please help me?

Question1:

How can I merge the VOB’s into one file and have no loss of quality and not be able to tell where the originals were joined?
*Is there a setting in Womble I am not aware of?
*I tried the MPEG GOP fixer. It made no difference.

Question 2:

Is there any other (simpler/better) way to accomplish this task without going through so many steps and spending so much time using so many different apps?
*If not, am I using the best software for the job?
*Do I have to join VOB’s if I use different authoring software?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

Jeff

[greymalkin]

Jeff,

You should be able to do everything you want with DVDShrink and TDA. TDA is a simple wizard-type DVD Authoring program and has a 30 day fully functional trial.

1) - Rip/Shrink the files in DVDShrink. There is an option somewhere in there to tell it to make a single large file instead of splitting it @ 1gb.

2) Now that you have the 2 files properly shrunk, go into TDA and insert them both in the project. There is a menu section and there you can pick a custom menu which will allow you to choose movie 1 or movie 2. you can also set chapter points as you wish before this point.

3) TDA will author the dvd to your HD and you can test it out in your software players. If you're happy with the result..burn to dvd.

[psx_pirate]

no need to make 1 single file ..... just rip the main movie from each disk with dvddecrypter ... load the first movie into tda ... click add new title and load the second movie ... now go to create menu and decide on your menu style/images/buttons etc when ur happy click output and let tda do its work ... when complete check the size of the newly created VIDEO_TS folder ... if larger than 4.38gb run it through dvdshrink using the full disk function ... burn with your chosen software (or let shrink create an iso file to burn with dvddecrypter) ... enjoy

[jeffshead]

First off, thanks for your replies.

Both of you recommend TDA over DVDWorkshop?

Just so I am sure psx_pirate, TDA will not pause between clips if I do not join them?

I went on the website and saw there are different versions of DVD author:

TMPGEnc DVD Author 1.6 and TSUNAMI MPEG DVD AUTHOR PRO
(http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tda.html)

Is the older version better than the new one?

Which one should I purchase?

Thanks again,

Jeff

[greymalkin]

either one will do...actually the pro version will shrink the movies for you. Now that I think about it I think the pro version will actually make a single large mpeg file if you choose to import from dvd-video. Technically it shouldn't matter as psx_pirate said but I've had some freaky issues before like you where the fragments don't join smoothly..hmmm..so you could do everything in TDA Pro. Again, You can download the pro version and try it for 30 days. I'm going to change my process a little bit and TDA Pro might be all you need.

1) Put DVD 1 in. Open TDA Pro and choose DVD-Video as the type of file you are going to import. A window will pop up saying something about how it's best to save the mpeg stream to HD first..say yes you want to do that and then a window will pop up with all the video streams on the dvd. Pick the biggest one which will be the main movie. It will copy the mpeg file to your HD.

2) Put in DVD 2 and repeat step on. NOTE: If the 2 videos are not the same resolution or are not the same audio type you will want to add the second dvd video as a second track. Otherwise TDA will warn you about this.

3) continue with making the menu and authoring..you will have the ability to tell TDA Pro to shrink the video....hit ok and wait.......

Once it's done you should have what you need....test on your pc then burn on a dvd rw and test on your tv.

[jeffshead]

Thanks you two.

I ended up using TDA 1.6 and DVD-RB Pro. Beautiful results. I read about the difference between Trancoding (Shrink) and encoding (DVD-RB) and decided to encode since the TDA DVD file was way over the DVD-5 size limit.

Sincerely,

Jeff