Removing 2 episodes from a 4 episode dvd

[Direwolf]

Is there an easy way to do split a DVD9 into 2 DVD-Rs and preserve menus for both discs, e.g. episode selection?

I want to preserve video quality and not compress the DVD9 into 1 DVD-R.

I've heard about DVDRemake for Windows that can do this. Is there a way on the mac?

Thanks.

[terryj]

of easy ways, I do not know.
with a little work, you could accomplish this
using DVD Studio Pro and Toast,
or ffmepgx and Toast.

[Frobozz]

You want to keep the existing menu even though it has links to episodes that aren't on the DVD? Why not create a new menu with just each disc's content?

[Direwolf]

It seems like a lot of trouble to do what I asked...

So I used YadeX to rip each episode as a single VOB. And then I used Sizzle 0.1 to put 2 episodes onto a single DVD (no menus). The disadvantage of this procedure is that the chapter markers for each episode are lost.

BUT, whenever I fast-forward through the finished DVD-R, it starts to fast-forward and then it skips to the next chapter! It doesn't fast-forward properly at high speeds. If I fast-forward at 2x speed, it's alright and does not skip. Why is that?

[Direwolf]

So, is there any reason why fast-forwarding doesn't work with the way I authored the dvd? (described in previous post).

[Spoffo]

Here's and ugly but workable way to do it; First make TWO copies of the complete 9gb VIDEO_TS folder on your hard disk. Now, make a tiny (like 1k) text file with Text Edit or whatever. Next, change the file extension on this to .VOB and, just to be safe, delete the file type and creator tags in GetInfo (tho it shouldn't make a diference)

Now, look at the file structure of one of those VIDEO_TS folders and identify which specific .VOB files belong to which episodes. There should be a set for each episode, numbered sequentially. For example, the first episode might be VTS_02_1.VOB, 02_2 and 02_3, and the second might start with 03_1 and so on. (The easy way to do this is to set VLC as the default app for all files with a .VOB extension. Then you can just double-click each file to get a quick look-see in VLC.)

Once you've figured out the file structure, go into one of your two copies of the folder and replace all the VOBs for half of the episodes with copies of your little 1k "dummy" VOB, being very careful to preserve the exact same file names and structure. When you're finished, the directory for the folder will look exactly the same, but the VOBs for half of the episodes will have shrunk from 1024MB to 1kb.

If you play this folder, you'll see all the intro material and the full menus, but if you select one of the episodes you deleted, you'll get a black screen for a couple of seconds and then it will return to the menu (on most players, that is. On a few players you'll get a freeze and either press "menu" to get back to the menu or maybe just have to note not to select a non-existant menu item.)

Of course, to complete the process, you go to your other copy of the original folder and replace all the VOBs for the OTHER half of the episodes with the dummy.

You should now have two folders that will each burn into a single layer disk, or at worst require a very slight compression with DTOX to do so.

[Direwolf]

So, is there any reason why fast-forwarding at speeds higher than 2x doesn't work? This problem occurs with the DVD-R and with the .img on the hard drive (created with Sizzle 0.1).

Please advise.