How to edit cell times?

[oofers72]

What tool can I use to edit the cell times of a title in a DVD?

Or for that matter, using other terms.... I want to edit to "End Times" (in hh:mms.ss format) of the chapter..... or you could even say I want to edit the "Entry VOBU Sectors".

I'm seeing all this in PgcEdit, which is an absolutely amazing tool (read: I understand about 10% of it). In the PGC Editor window of that program, I can manipulate how the chapters are mapped, using the pre-existant cells (with their seemingly static times).

But I want to change the lengths and entry point of some of those cells. What I am trying to do is change where one particular chapter starts..... and where I want it to start is not already the beginning of cell.

There is a Create New Cell button, but it only allows you to create a sort of pointer to a current cell ("Pick an existing VOB/Cell ID'). If I create a new cell outright ("Create a new blank VOB Cell"), it creates a new VOB/Cell of "2/1" instead of "1/11" (what I want), and I still can not edit the times themselves.

I also tried Chapter Xtractor, but that seems to be for creating output only. I also tried VOBblanker, but figured I was barking up the wrong tree.

Is there a program that will allow me to edit the cell times?

Thanks in advance.

[Pinstripes23]

Unless you want to use an authoring prog like dvdlab pro, I don't know of an easier way. But I guess you could manually create new celltimes, then mux it back with your oiginal video.


1) Extract everything for a particular title with pgcdemux.

2) And then open up the celltimes with notepad. They are referenced by frame numbers - in particular the end of a cell.

3) Then use vdubmod to open up the videofile.m2v that pgcdemux extracted for you.

4) Go to a particular end time that you want to change by using the slider or pressing ctrl+g and manually typing it in. Make note of the frame number though.

5) Go to your celltimes.txt file and put in the new frame number for the corresponding cell you want to change. Once you're done save the new celltimes.txt.

6) Mux everything back together with muxman(using the new celltimes), and replace to the original dvd with vobblanker.

**Although the celltimes are frame numbers they are referenced by the PLAYBACK SPEED of a video, which would be 25fps(PAL) or 29.97fps(NTSC). If your original video is stored as 23.976fps and pulldown to 29.97fps, then when you do the frame lookup in vdubmod, you would have to account for the difference by multiplying it by 1.25 (29.97/23.976).
(ex. you lookup you want frame# 5000. Then 5000x1.25 = 6250 <--- insert this as your celltime instead.

But if the dvd is stored at 29.97fps or 25fps then you don't have to do the above.

As a reference you can open up the original dvd in pgcedit and use the pgc editor to see where each cell begins and ends for your original celltimes.

[tinker]

There is a software called DVDRemake-Pro. In there you can rebuild DVD the way you want. Set chapters to start at different point, adjust cell time. Make new buttons connection.
Only problem is if you need new button text you will have to create it in outside editor, like Photoshop or similar and import new screen in.
http://www.dimadsoft.com/products.php

[oofers72]

To pinstripe: the funny thing is, I had already demuxed and remuxed, using imported celltimes to begin with. Originally, part of this reauthoring project was to bring the audio levels up to max, seeing as how this is a video of a music performance. I demuxed, maxed the audio, then remuxed.

All was fine until I then used vobBlanker to replace a VTS of the same performance (but encoded at a lower bitrate) with my higher-bitrate, and audio maxed one.

For some reason that I don't know enough about to understand, replacing a VTS of the exact same time length with files that are smaller caused the celltimes I had preserved in the remuxing process to not work properly. This was the problem I originally posted about.

I am going to try your suggestion of demuxing and remuxing and manually changing the celltimes.txt file if tinker's suggestion fails to help.

To tinker: thanks for the suggestion of DVDRemakePro. Just got the demo and it looks promising.


Thanks both for the response. I am consistently amazed not just at the expertise here, but also the willingness of others to help.