Authoring issues force chapter by chapter play

[orion940]

Hi, I have a DVD with "production issues". It will not pay the full film. When I get the menu, there is the selection for Full Film and Chapters. Only chapters works and then 1 at a time. Full Film never even highlights. I have to play chapter 1, it stops, then I have to choose chapter 2 and play it, etc. etc. All I want to do is be able to play the whole thing. It's this way on the DVD, ISO, files, so it's a bad authoring to begin with.

So do I use a re-authoring tool and do it that way or can I edit IFO files easily? If I missed an item about this already in this forum, let me know.

Thanks for any help.

O.

[filmboss80]

It sounds like the so-called "chapters" are actually separate title sets, i.e. multiple individual movies instead of a single movie with multiple chapter points. If so, it was poorly authored and you should go back and raise the issue with the amateur who produced the disc.

There are many ways to deal with this, but none are terribly simple. The least complicated way to go would be to use the reauthor mode of DVDShrink, and place each title set in order, one after the other. This should get them to play in a single flow without stopping, although there may be a split-second freeze where one title set ends and the next begins.

(Note: Even though "shrink" is in the software's name, you can still make this without shrinking/compressing the movie.)

[Alex_ander]

It is still quite possible that those chapters are actually chapters and are organised to play that way using cell commands. An example of such an official DVD: Mark Knopfler / Emmilou Harris concert 2006. The same physical blocks are organised there into 2 versions of playback: play all + play individual tracks. So I'd explore the DVD structure first (DVDRemake) to decide what to do. Maybe disabling cell commands and setting seamless attributes for cells could do the trick.

[orion940]

Guys,

Thanks. In looking for DVDRemake, I found DVDStyler which will run on Linux. It did a quick job of reauthoring it. It works for what I have. I was hoping something easy, but it didnt work out that way.

O.