DVD9 to DVDR - so easy, why didn't we think of this before..

[mpb]

OK, so here I was following the doom9 guides to rip dual-layer DVDs and make the output fit on a DVDR. I noticed with a lot of the discs I was ripping, the main movie was well within DVDR filesize. It was all the extra crap that was taking up space. The doom9 guides make it clear how to strip out unwanted streams, etc... but what happens when you just want to make a simple working copy and not fool with it?

I decided to find out.

I threw in Austin Powers 2, a dual-layer NTSC DVD. I ripped with dvd-decrypter, in file mode. Threw it all into a VIDEO_TS off the main directory. I used ifoedit to kill the p-uops, since that's easy, and to figure out what each VOB contained.

I then deleted the VOBs with the featurette, music video, deleted scenes, etc. and was left with 4.28gb. I just deleted them. No re-encoding of the movie, no messing with the IFO files, just kill the fluff outright. (Well, ok, I moved it to another drive in case I needed it back).

Burned on a pioneer 104 to a blank, and it worked perfectly...mostly. Burned once with Primodvd and once with Nero. identical result. Apex 1500 plays it perfectly, Playstation 2 plays it perfectly, PC DVD-ROM plays fine of course, and the one jam I ran into was an older (circa 1998) Panasonic DVD-rack system, model SA/DK2. Usually this unit plays decent-quality DVDRs just fine. (And it cannot even read RW media). It started this disc, then spit it out as the main menu came on. Hmmm. It still might work if I burn a different brand DVDR... this player likes the Apple media and hates generics. I hate to bend over for Apple's media prices though.

When you play it on a working player, if you try to access a missing vob, you just get a disc read failure. No problemo, if what you really want is a functional main movie DVD. I did the test once more, with When Incubus Attacks Vol 2, and I had to cut a lot out (it's a fairly full DVD9) but my output always worked, as long as the main movie file was intact, no matter which combination of extras I left on there.

Now, many times with a DVD9 you have a long movie and a nice chore ahead of you... a la Snatch, Gladiator, Fight Club, etc. Gotta go the distance to get those to fit on a DVDR. But if the film itself is about 122 minutes or less, you can very easily and quickly trim the fat and get a playable disc without too much tinkering and without the ridiculously long and tedious process of re-encoding. I hope this information helps any new DVD-ripping folks out there. Feedback from others on this is welcome.

-Mike

[kv5]

Weird shit...... I've just been doing the same thing, only a little different.

I put a post up in the last hour or so showing how I managed to transfer a DVD-RAM disc to DVDR without re-encoding..... and then I got to thinking..... perhaps this could be done with a '.VOB' file.... And YES, it can !!!!!

I ripped the DVD (Forrest Gump 136 mins) using SMART-RIPPER... and selected 'STREAM PROCESSING'.....I then deselected all the rubish just leaving the Video Stream and the English Audio.....I selected within SM's settings to rip to max vob size (To get a single '.VOB' file - XP only I think? - bypasses the 4 gig limit) and set the file size to 6GIG.

I then renamed the single ripped '.VOB' file extension to'.mpg' and went into TMPGenc's 'MPEG TOOLS' ..... selected 'SIMPLE DE-MULTIPLEX'.. loaded in the renamed vob file (Now vts_01_1.mpg) and split the file into an '.m2v' &'.ac3' video and audio......

I then re-encoded the Audio Only..... to 48KHZ 192K Stereo.... and saving the file out with the '.mpa' extension... leaving the original file-name intact..... It only took around 20 minutes to re-encode the audio.
I then deleted the '.ac3' audio file !

Started up SPRUCEUP and loaded in the newly created '.m2v' I had just DE-MULTIPLEXED..... Spruce then automatically grabs the '.mpa' file (Audio) with the same file name......

Created a menu and chapter points and burnt it to DVDR....... 4.3 GIG

Works fine.

Paul ( UK ) 8)

[mboynton]

hey kv5. It is even easier than that. In smart ripper right next to your streams you have three options I think. The middle one is demux to separate file select each stream and click this option for each. After ripping you will have to files one m2v and one ac3. Rename to same name for both and spruce up will auto grab audio. You just eliminated one whole step with same result except for the fact that i didnt reencode the audio which you usually dont have to. hope this helps.

[kv5]

No. I was'nt aware of that........ I'll give it ago this evening..... As you mention..... will cut-out the demuxing process !!!! - Nice One