Reauthor a DVD to play all

[burgherboy]

Hi everyone, I am new to this forum and want to say thanks in advance. I've benefited from many previous threads here.

I have a different problem with a DVD. The DVD consists of a start video, menu and a series of clips. When you play the first clip, normally you'd expect when it is over, the next one will start. However, I am redirected back to the menu.

Is there any way I can add a command that would allow the clips to play in one loop?

Thanks!

[v491138]

This is interesting. I've no help myself, but there is another thread where the asker has exactly the opposite problem.

[burgherboy]

Yeah, it is rather different. This DVD is my kids', (its The Complete Goofy, from Walt Disney Treasures). You can see from the reviews of the DVD on Amazon that everyone was stuck with this problem. Basically, you have to hand select every short film you want to play on the DVD.

[jman98]

This is an excellent thread. The good news is that I know that this absolutely can be done. The bad news is that I do not know how to do it. However, I think if you rip the DVD to your PC you can use either PgcEdit or IFOEdit to make the desired change. Hopefully a more experienced person can give you the proper steps but at least I've told you the software you need to be looking at.

Note that Disney DVDs are rather notorious for their bad sector type copy protection. You may need to use DVDFab (there's a free version that should work fine for your disc) to correctly rip it. Of if you own AnyDVD (no free version of that) it will also work fine.

[picrade]

It can be done but it is not a simple procedure.
Basically you need to re-author the DVD, add a menu item "Play All".
Then make a new play list to play the clips sequentially.

You need a DVD authoring software like DVDMaestro and a good knowledge of DVD authoring.

[manono]

Nah, you can do it as jman98 suggests, by editing the post commands for each track using PGCEdit so that it goes to the next track rather than back to the menu. And as jman98 also suggested, Disney DVDs are fairly complex and it may not be a simple procedure.

Basically you need to re-author the DVD, add a menu item "Play All".

He just wants that they all play sequentially, so he doesn't need to start all over again creating a new Playall button. He just has to modify the menu commands as they are now. That's how I make music compilation DVDs - whichever song I choose to start with, after it's done it'll play all the rest after it before returning to the menu. And you don't need an expensive authoring program like DVDMaestro to accomplish something as simple as what he's asking. It can be done using freeware.

[picrade]

Maybe I misunderstood what he wanted to do.
I assumed he wanted to keep the existing menus and add the option of a "Play All" feature.
For that you practically have to re-author the DVD, edit the menu, etc.


If all he wants is to have a movie only disc (no menus etc.) that plays all the titles sequentially then he
can use re-author mode of DVD Shrink and add all the titles one by one.

[manono]

If all he wants is to have a movie only disc (no menus etc.) that plays all the titles sequentially then he can use re-author mode of DVD Shrink and add all the titles one by one.

Oh, that's a good idea. I should have thought of that myself. Since it's for his kid and since I think he just wants to make it easy for the kid and anyone else to watch the different titles in sequence, that should do nicely.

[burgherboy]

Thank you for the replies everyone. I will try the DVD shrink thing. However, just for my knowledge, is there anyone that knows IFOEdit well enough to show how editing the commands is done? Thanks!

[manono]

It's much easier to edit menu commands using PGCEdit. I do it all the time. There's still a learning curve, but much less of one than if using IFOEdit.

[usually_quiet]

DVDs use a simple programming language, but there are many different ways to do the same thing so there is no quick fix that will make any pre-authored DVD behave the way you want. If you do not have a background in computer programming figuring out what to do will take much more effort on your part than using the DVDShrink method.

PGCEdit has a trace function that should let you find the command that returns to the main menu. You would replace that with the a command that plays the next title. Tracing through the commands used when the menu button for the next title is pressed will help you figure out what to command to use instead of the one that returns to the main menu.