pgcedit & strange acting dvd

[dblake2]

i been playing with pgcedit & following one of the how-to guides to remove warnings/logos from beginning of dvds.

been successful with a couple of them but run into a strange problem with one of my 24 disks.

these dvds have all been backed up to my hard drive using anydvd.

following the usual procedure with pgcedit, it gets into a neverending oscillating loop between 'pre commands:' and '1 LinkPGCN PGC 10'.

playback symtoms are strange with the unedited copy of this disk:

burned to dvd & played in my my stand alone player it plays fine but goes thru the usual 2 min of warnings & logos im trying to get rid of.

played on my computer with powerdvd it sez 'wrong region code' & stops.

played on my computer with vlc it does just what im trying to accomplish, skips all the warnings & goes straight to the episode menu.

any dvd experts have any ideas in this?

[manono]

any dvd experts have any ideas in this?

No, since you didn't tell us what you did or even point us to the guide you used. All you told us was the end result of what you did.

The usual procedure for removing unwanted extras is to open the DVD and run the 'Trace'. When you get to something you don't want go (up at the top) PGC->Kill PGC Playback. Resume the trace, eventually get to the menu, continue through the menu and movie and eventually back to the menu, killing PGC playback along the way of anything you don't want. You can also take a side trip through the extras and setup menus and remove extras and disable buttons. Of course, that only stops them from playing. To actually remove the junk from the DVD you have to run it through VobBlanker or FixVTS.

[dblake2]

Yeah that’s what ive been doing following this guide:

http://jean.laroche.free.fr/SkippingStuff0.4.3.1/index.html

it worked great til I got to this 24 disk, I start the trace, get to the 1st black screen,delete it, goto ‘next pb’ & it gets stuck in this never ending loop as described above, going back & forth between the 'pre commands:' & the line below it.

i should add ive just started messing around with this & dont know that much about the dvd details tho ive made & burned a lot of them usually using anydvd, clonedvd2 & videoredo.

[dblake2]

ok, ive been looking at this closer trying to follow this:

http://jean.laroche.free.fr/Jumping0.4.3.1/index#MOVIE

did finally find the main menu but now stuck on step 3 in the above guide, when i play the virtual dvd using trace it gets to that pgc10 & loops, yet it plays fine on a reg dvd player.

Regarding the above loop, closer examination shows why:

The pre commands section in vmgm pgc 10 sez: ‘1 (JumpSS) Jump to VMGM PGC 10’

So its telling it to jump to itself.

Now what?

[manono]

Yeah that’s what ive been doing following this guide:

http://jean.laroche.free.fr/SkippingStuff0.4.3.1/index.html

it worked great til I got to this 24 disk, I start the trace, get to the 1st black screen,delete it, goto ‘next pb’ & it gets stuck in this never ending loop as described above, going back & forth between the 'pre commands:' & the line below it.

That guide was written by the developer although the GUI has changed quite a bit since then. Are you saying that even before you did anything to it you couldn't ever get to the menu?

If so you'll actually have to redo the commands. If not, then one thing you can do is to skip directly to the menu, bypassing anything before it. There's a guide for that which maybe you've seen:

http://download.videohelp.com/r0lZ/pgcedit/third_party/blutach/How_to_use_PgcEdit_new_macro.htm

You trace to the menu, make it red (right-click on it and 'toggle PGC pre/post breakpoint'), begin the trace again and trace back to the menu and then PGC->Jump to PGC upon DVD insert.

Or, another way is to use VobBlanker instead. Open the DVD, find the garbage, and just blank anything you don't want. There's a guide for it too:

http://www.dvdr-digest.com/articles/article_vobblanker_page1.html

That might be the easiest way for you.

The pre commands section in vmgm pgc 10 sez: ‘1 (JumpSS) Jump to VMGM PGC 10’

You can double-click on it and have it jump to something else (or just remove that command). Or redo a previous command so it never goes there to begin with. But you had better know what you're doing before messing with the commands.

[dblake2]

Using trace I found the pgc where it was telling it to jump to the looping pgc & poking around in edit mode found the jump to title menu bit, saved & now it goes right to the title menu.

Not bad considering I dont know what the hell im doing.

Still, the user guide didn’t work like it did for the 1st 2 disks. Seems the region code bit threw it a curve.

I looked at the 1st two disks & didn’t see anything about region code.

I thought I had it, but burned to dvd & played on my stand alone player it still goes thru the intro stuff. but not when played on computer!

Ill reburn it & maybe try going thru the user guide with the edited pgc version

thanks for the suggestions manono.

ok, got another screwy problem. when its burned to dvd using clonedvd2, the intro stiuff comes back. but playing the files used to burn the dvd on the computer, it jumps right to the menu.

Ill see if I can burn it with imgburn.

[_Al_]

Just some info. AnyDVD can skip playback of short titles up to 10 min long, length is set by user in 0.5 min increments.

[r0lZ]

I've replied to your thread about this problem at Doom9.

[jman98]

Oh Dear Lord! I think I'm about to faint! You actually got a helpful response in the Doom9 link from someone who understands your problem instead of the usual sycophantic ravings of "Program ______________ is perfect and it's not working for you because you're an idiot". Enjoy it while you can, dblake2. That doesn't happen often over there.

[manono]

Now now, jman98. That's very unfair, especially to the developer of PGCEdit who is very helpful at whatever forum he's posting. As hard as it may be to believe, even I have been known from time to time to offer friendly advice on Doom9.

[dblake2]

hey _Al_ that IS very informative.
didn't even know that was there, i should look at the settings more closely.
have you used that extensively? any problems?
i particularly like the 'remove annoying clips' bit.

[_Al_]

I noticed this in settings, have set it to 2 minutes and those short slips are gone so I guess it is working, but I re-wrap rips immediately into mkv's so I have not extensively tested functionality those rips, but it should work. Not sure what is happening in menu, I guess you click a button and it just does nothing if that particular title is one of those short clips. (I vaguely remember it happened). Those annoying clips at the beginning are gone for sure.

[r0lZ]

hey _Al_ that IS very informative.

Yes, it's what I suggested in the Doom9 thread. I don't have and don't use AnyDVD, but I remember when I used it in the past. It does by default many things, and since it must work for all players, it modifies the IFOs and VOBs on the fly, when they are read by the player. That means that you cannot analyse the behaviour of a DVD or a player when AnyDVD is running, as you don't play the "original DVD". For the same reason, it is highly recommended to disable it when you decrypt the DVD to hard disc, as otherwise, you'll get a modified copy, and you cannot be sure that it works as expected.

Maybe there is an option to turn off all patch options at the same time (except the CSS and region code patches, often necessary). If it's the case, perhaps you can use it to disable everything that could cause navigation problems, and copy the DVD with AnyDVD only. I don't know.

Note also that many decrypters (including AnyDVD) remove the PUOs (Prohibited User Operations, aka UOPs) by default. It's also something I don't like. Some PUOs are irritating and should be removed (such as the PUOs that prohibit skipping the studio logos and FBI warnings), but other PUOs are very useful and should be left untouched. For example, a game without the original PUOs may not work well, or it may be too easy to cheat. Or the irritating "multi angle" icon can appear when a multi-angle title is played with some players if the Angle Change PUO has been removed. So, I highly suggest to disable the option to remove the PUOs in the IFOs (but usually I remove them from the VOBs) if your decrypter has an option to do it, and remove some of them manually with PgcEdit, when you know what you are doing.