What have they done to Wall-E now??

[frankvw]

Hi, everyone,

I have here a local South African release of Wall-E, distributed by NuMetro (which is to the South African entertainment industry what Microsoft is to PC operating systems, pretty much). That means that you have to wade through tons of crap (at least 10 minutes or so) before you get to the main movie, and not only has this nonsense been made unskippable, but to add insult to injury, when you try to skip it, it returns you to the start and you have to sit through the whole thing again! Also, the "copy protection" on the disc means that I cannot play it on my PC without numerous hiccups, and I cannot transfer the movie to my Networked Media Tank for easy and convenient playing. Clearly, ripping and fixing-upping is in order.

Following various forum posts here, I tried AnyDVD (6.6.4.8) and CloneDVD (5.0.1.6) and while both manage to copy the contents of the DVD to harddisk, the rip is full of skips and sometimes brief repetitions. I've tried running some basic stuff (FixVTS, VOBblanker) to see what's going on but none of these fix the problem.

Seeing as two years ago owners of Region 1 copies of this movie had different problems than owners of Region 2 and 4 copies, I suspect that when the (relatively late) release of this movie came out in South Africa, the copy protection was updated, too. Because this DVD is a complete pig's breakfast, both on the file system level and as far as the video structure is concerned. It should not be legally called a DVD - in fact it's a miracle that it does play on most DVD players...

So. How might I fix the skips in my rip? Suggestions, anyone? Thanks!!

// Frank

[MJA]

not sure if dvdfab 8 will help. give it a shot and choose "main movie"

http://www.dvdfab.com/tutorial/DVD-to-DVD-Main-Movie

[levick]

The version released into my end of the world has many dead ends...
The correct title is in fact 53 that belongs to vob 8..Play the dvd first and monitor the actually movie playing...
This version has two angles so that will need to be worked out for your location as well...
You have it on your HDD already which means the protected cells have been taken care off...

[Moontrash]

If you have knowledge in using VobBlanker, strip out all the warnings and stuff you don't want. Immediately that should get you to the menu or the first play title.

If you want to play the title right out of the box, then use PGCedit and set the title to be the first play

my guess is you have some nasty PUO's in there. Sometimes VobBlanker doesn't get them all but PGCedit can clean up the rest if you know how to use it correctly

[frankvw]

If you have knowledge in using VobBlanker, strip out all the warnings and stuff you don't want. Immediately that should get you to the menu or the first play title.

Just extracting the main movie without all the cr@p is not the challenge - I've been doing that for years. Instead my problem is that after ripping, both with AnyDVD and CloneDVD, the VOB files themselves (i.e. when I play them separately, e.g. in VLC or anything else that groks VOB files) are not kosher: playback skips and sometimes experiences brief (half second or so) repeats.

So offhand my guess would be that the VOB files need to be doctored back to standards-compliance...

Just for the heck of it I did run VOBblanker (of which I have no detailed knowledge, I hasten to point out) on the rip and it came up with lots of stuff that it considers 'unsupported' and marks as 'skip'. So no luck there.

my guess is you have some nasty PUO's in there. Sometimes VobBlanker doesn't get them all but PGCedit can clean up the rest if you know how to use it correctly

Nasty doesn't even begin to describe it. I can just see the evil guy who did this sitting behind his desk going "And you WILL sit through all this stuff, whether you like it or not, bwwuuhhahahahahaaaaaaa!" If there's one thing to put me off ever paying money for a legal copy of a movie again, it's nonsense like this. But I digress.

So. Here we are: I have a bunch of VOBs that have been rendered defective by this draconian copy protection scheme. Once I have managed to fix that, I should be mostly there, right?

Incidentally, I also have a bunch of VOB files (from a similarly, but less seriously, maltreated copy of Die Hard 4.0 (a.k.a. Live Free, Die Hard) that play fine by themselves, but every second the movie skips 15 minutes or so forward when the VOB files are accompanied by an IFO file. Surely there must be an easy way to take a movie in the form of, say, 5 consecutive VOB files (i.e. the whole thing is one title / one stream), and massage them back into a proper DVD structure? I've tried IFOedit, but that gives me exactly the same result as the original IFO's.

Life is not easy for a buyer of legal media... If it weren't for the fact that the Internet in South Africa is slower than a carrier pidgeon and that we pay a fortune for every GB of data, I'd just give up on the whole thing and download a bootleg copy somewhere... But since that is no option, I will rip this damn thing - if it's the last thing I ever do...




// Frank

[frankvw]

The version released into my end of the world has many dead ends...

That would be Region 4, wouldn't it? I've read a few horror stories about that particular version of Wall-E, yes....

The correct title is in fact

53 that belongs to vob 8..Play the dvd first and monitor the actually movie playing... This version has two angles so that will need to be worked out for your location as well...
You have it on your HDD already which means the protected cells have been taken care off...

What I'm worried about is that there may actually be data from the VOB's missing. Reading the DVD itself with older rippers (e.g. DVD Decryptor) didn't work since on the file system level the disk has been thoroughly stuffed up with invalid blocks and what not, but both AnyDVD and CloneDVD got around that. But the video stream (i.e. the VOB files themselves) in the rip are now somewhat broken; there are numerous skips and the occasional brief repeat while playing.

// Frank

[frankvw]

The version released into my end of the world has many dead ends...

That would be Region 4, wouldn't it? I've read a few horror stories about that particular version of Wall-E, yes....

The correct title is in fact 53 that belongs to vob 8..Play the dvd first and monitor the actually movie playing... This version has two angles so that will need to be worked out for your location as well...
You have it on your HDD already which means the protected cells have been taken care off...

What I'm worried about is that there may actually be data from the VOB's missing. Reading the DVD itself with older rippers (e.g. DVD Decryptor) didn't work since on the file system level the disk has been thoroughly stuffed up with invalid blocks and what not, but both AnyDVD and CloneDVD got around that. But the video stream (i.e. the VOB files themselves) in the rip are now somewhat broken; there are numerous skips and the occasional brief repeat while playing.

// Frank

[jman98]

Can you try the free DVDFab and see if it has better luck than AnyDVD?

Disney is notorious for their unfriendly copy protection. They use ARCCOS which uses multiple bad blocks as a way to defeat some ripping programs. DVDFab can handle ARCCOS.

[Kerry56]

Though FixVTS hasn't been updated for years, you might try running the decrypted movie through it and see if playback improves.

[HemLok]

Well, when making backups a user should always be using the latest versions of the software available. AnyDVD 6.6.4.8 is not up-to-date seeing that the latest release is 6.6.8.3 official/6.6.8.6 beta. Updating should be the first thing you do. We are also not talking about Elaborate Bytes' version of CloneDVD since that is still version 2.9.2.8. I'd recommend updating to the latest version of AnyDVD and then playing back the disc from the DVD drive and seeing it playback is proper. If it is then use the ''Rip Video DVD to Harddisk...'' option and see if playback from the HDD is correct. If the problems still exist I'd suggest submitting the necessary info to the developers of all the software involved so they can update the software to handle this disc.

[fritzi93]

Though FixVTS hasn't been updated for years, you might try running the decrypted movie through it and see if playback improves.

I'm thinking that was effective on the North American version. When Wall-E first came out (2008), it took an update to DVDFab and/or AnyDVD to deal with it at all. To get DVDShrink to open it and re-map it correctly required running FixVTS, IIRC. I don't think this is a decryption problem, since it's an older disc, and I can't see "new" protection being put on a disc that's been out two years. The North American version when it was released was everything the OP describes, i.e. forced trailers, dummy cells, the whole thing, a real pain to backup.

Wall-E was the subject of several threads at the time of release, but evidently you have tried a search. That was one of the last DVDs I ever backed up, shortly afterwards I went to Blu-Ray.

[tinker]

frankvw you are right. AnyDVD will rip almost anything, but if you run your rip through PgcEdit or DVD Remake you will see lots of commands in red, which will mes up your playback later. I usually fix the rip with Remake getting rid off what I do not need and fix commands. No problem after that.

[Moontrash]

try this..i like the FixVTS route, so run anydvd and then use RIPIT4me (dvd decrypter installed ofcourse) and see if that doesnt help you some. It should get rid of quite a few things.

I havent experienced any of those sorts of issues. I guess the South Africans ought to be the ones hollywood contacts to stop backups

[maca]

I was just about to suggest RipIt4Me and then saw that moontrash did the same. This is the only program I've found that can maneuver through the puzzle of strangely authored DVDs.

[frankvw]

OK. Thanks for the advice so far, everyone! This is where I stand now:

- The most recent version of DVDFab got me a good rip of Die Hard 4.0, but strangely enough not with my two year old LG Lightscribe DVD/RW drive. It looks like DVDFab 8 can only handle my ancient Liteon CD/DVD combo reader. With the Lightscribe all that DVDFab can make out is the DVD title, but that's it. No content details appear in the list, and trying to rip will only result in "Error 700", "Error 102" and similar helpful messages.

- Wall-E is putting up more of a fight. DVDFab is unable to read Wall-E in my old drive (which I find not too surprising) and being unable to handle the new drive at all, DVDFab is not going to work. So I tried the most recent version of AnyDVD, but that gave met he same results as I have had so far: it does rip the DVD, but I'm left with lots of skips in the video stream.

So I am now going to to what Moontrash and Tinker suggested, which is to run the AnyDVD rip through DVDRemake, RipIt4Me and what not. Stay tuned.

Again thanks for the suggestions!

// FvW

[frankvw]

Halftime review:

After plugging away at Wall-E for a few hours, I've gone through DVDFab, AnyDVD, IFOedit, FixVTS and VOBblanker. None of these do the trick. Possibly because DVDfab does not like my one DVD drive and my other drive is so old that the serial number is in Roman numerals - maybe on better hardware DVDfab would have done the trick. But sadly, for me it doesn't. AnyDVD does manage to rip the DVD but keeps giving me VOB files full of skips.

Then I tried RipIt4Me - and I will admit that I did not expect that to get anywhere at all, development on it having been discontinued in 2007 and it being little more than a shell around DVD Decryptor, which is even longer in the tooth. Wrong! Which once again proves that assumptions are the mother of all stuff-ups. I ran RipIt4Me in 'main movie only' mode just to see what happened (yes, I know that's not the way to do it but it was a trial run only) and to my surprise it rips the DVD without leaving any skips in the VOB files where they used to be after AnyDVD was through with them!

So after all this f'ing around with the latest version of what is considered by many to be the best in mainstream commercial rippers, RipIt4Me seems to do the trick better! (For me, at least.)

Unfortunately the rip is not quite correct yet - it goes totally bonkers as soon as one of the multi-angle features kick in. This movie uses multi-angle for language support wherever written messages have to appear in the image. At these points there are still skips, after which the audio language suddenly has changed to Hebrew or Hindi, or something similarly useful.

Coming to think of it, that may be one of the factors in my having trouble with it: on the box and the disk label it says Region 2, which includes South Africa, but the disk itself appears to be Region 2 and Region 5. Which makes sense, sort of, because Region 2 includes South Africa and Egypt but the rest of Africa is Region 5. (Which is why in most African countries the DVD players are mostly "Region 0" anyway, and many of the disks are either Region 2 ones or bootleg copies which are regionless to begin with, but that's another story. <g>)

So. Now I'm ripping it in full disk mode. But that gives me a rip 65GB in size, since it looks like they've doctored the file system to make that happen (and I'm finding forum posts from others who have had the same experience. So I guess I'll leave this to run overnight (I've got space on my server) and then tomorrow see what we can extract from the 65 Gig rip. Because I'm now seeing it as a challenge, and I will rip this bladdy thing come hell or high water.

To be continued...

// FvW

[MJA]

did u check this link ?

http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/718139

[tinker]

It's not going to work. This is a new encryption and Rip It is too old for it. You will have to fix it manually after this rip. Try to make AnyDVD active and than rip it with RipIt4Me. It may work.

[frankvw]

did u check this link ?
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/718139

Yes I did. The poster stated that Ripit4me didn't work for him because 65gb was too big for him. I've got a spare terabyte hanging off my server, so I decided I'd give it a go.

// FvW

[frankvw]

It's not going to work. This is a new encryption and Rip It is too old for it.

We'll know for sure tomorrow.

You will have to fix it manually after this rip. Try to make AnyDVD active and than rip it with RipIt4Me. It may work.

We'll see. I will get there in the end.

// FvW

[frankvw]

Nope - it hasn't worked. Tinker was right. The full rip (all 65GB of it) now has the correct languages at all multi-angle points... but no I'm back to having skips.

OK. Next experiment. I'm now considering this a challenge. Onward!

// FvW

[levick]

Your hoping to get "just" movie to transfer over to your media streamer? No menus etc
You may have to break the movie down to transport streams and rebuild it...

Can you tell me what set of vobs are in fact the movie? The rest are all fake and the ifo's will be trying hard to make you life impossible.

[frankvw]

Great success!

Well - the hard work finally paid off. Woohoo! What did the trick eventually was (of all things!) RipIt4Me, which left me with 65 gigs of duplicate files. Then a run with FixVTS, followed by CloneDVD to reduce it to a 4.7GB image containing the movie only. (At 100% quality, incidentally... because on the original DVD the movie itself does not even quite fill one layer. Go figure.)

Thanks to everyone here for the suggestions and feedback! It really did help. Great going, guys!

// FvW