Quick and Dirty method to backup DVDs with menu and main mov

[Lighthammer]

Heya folks,

I've been reading around these forums for quite awhile now and I've found this place to be very helpful so I thought I would try and give back to the community somehow.

After playing around with a ton of DVD ripping and authoring tools and trying to follow the guides posted here reguarding DVD5 to DVD±R backup while trying to keep the original menus intact along with the main movie, I found this thread that gave me the inspiration for what i'm about to explain...

Tools I used :

• AnyDVD to decrypt the DVD
• DVDFab to rip the main movie to hard disk
• Nero 6 Ultra Edition to burn the final backup from HD to a DVD±R

I found out that by using AnyDVD or DVDDecryptor and DVDFab to rip only the main movie from an original DVD to my hard disk, I was also able to incorperate the movies working main menu to the final product. using DVDFab, I chose the "Copy main movie from DVD (Strip/Split)" option and pointed it to my dvd-rom drive with the dvd movie mounted. After DVDFab had finished ripping the main movie to hard disk, I went ahead and located the .vob file that contained the movies menu on the original DVD and copied it to the hard disk, saving it to the same directory that DVDFab finished ripping my dvd to. I then deleted the VIDEO_TS.BUP and VIDEO_TS.IFO files that DVDFab created. In this particular case, my menu was located on the VTS_04_0.VOB in the VIDEO_TS Folder on the original DVD, which I then renamed to VTS_01_0.VOB after deleting the original VTS_01_0.VOB that DVDFab had created. I then renamed the rest of the movie vobs to allow the menu to be the first vob. I then used DVDFab to create a new set of video manager files since I deleted the previous ones it had made by using the "Create Video Manager (VIDEO_TS.IFO)" option. Once that was finished, I then used DVDFab to correct the DVD sectors with the "Correct DVD Sectors" option located right under the "Create Video Manager (VIDEO_TS.IFO)" option. Once completed, I used Nero 6 Ultra Edition to burn a VIDEO DVD and added the final dvd backup files to the Video_TS folder.

This gave me a working DVD that contained a working menu and main movie. In this particular case, playing the DVD on my home player, it automaticaly started playing the movie from the beginning, skipping the menu. Hitting the menu button ony my remote would bring the menu up, which was working, and I was able to navigate the menu perfectly. I then navigated to the chapter selection menu and chose a random chapter in the movie and it moved to that point in the movie flawlessly.


It's pretty early in the morning as I am writting this and I realize that It really isnt a guide, more like a half-arsed instructional speech from a complete novice so I ask anyone reading this now, to forgive my vagueness. I will try to get around to creating an acctual step by step guide including skipped over processes.

Thanks for reading and good luck!

[ukcat]

Thanks for that info. I would be interested in seeing your Step by Step guide for this.

[wulf109]

You have not preserved the menu. Preserving the menu means the menu plays first and you select the movie from the menu.
If you want to preserve menus then use CloneDVD.

[Lighthammer]

I kinda like the way it turned out. Many people who make movie backups only really care about the main movie and perhaps a few of the extras and thats all they end up ripping. With the method I mentioned above, you can still do that and have the menu available for use later on if you so wished it. This way the menu never gets in the way of the main movie for those people.

It might be easier to this method in CloneDVD as well, but since I have absolutely no experience with CloneDVD, I am unable to comment about it.

[pippocalo]

Interesting method also because it requires a new authoring of DVD.

Many people infact use other tanscoders that allows to keep menu but not extras and don't know that may be problems. This procedures may be dangerous because some DVD uses in menù options video file that are declared as extra.
In this situation you can lose control of your DVDplayer or if that occurs at the start of DVD will not able to play DVD.
In other words the program in order to keep menù without extras must be able to see what video file will be addressed during your navigation in menù.
This may be an hard job for an automatic program, also because the language inside IFO file it is not so simple and it is not so standard.

Better is :

- keep menù with extras, applying to these the maximum compression levels (still images with DVDshrink)

- use a strategy like this showed in this thread... dirty but working always

- Trace all the file used in menù with a procedure based on IFOEDTI program and DVDplay option.......time expensive but very powerfull

- simply use an automatic program and hope that your DVD will be good....better to make a test before burning with DVDplayer on PC!!!