DVD Shrink NOT Shrinking??

Did you remove any audio?

Sometimes that helps to reduce the file size. If not, then you could always shrink it again.

Only LPCM audio?

/Mats

Shrink + very latest Any DVD. Do movie only and one audio. No problems for me. The menus and extras suck any way.

That's an ARccOS disc, isn't it? I wonder if that has something to do with the problem. Maybe run it through FixVTS or VobBlanker, then try again with DVDShrink? Just a guess.

To elaborate: Ever since DVDFabDecrypter came out, there have been intermittent problems with DVDShrink accepting the output of DVDFabDecrypter. Maybe it doesn't accept the files at all, maybe Shrink throws an out-of-memory error when it chokes on the junk left behind when decrypting an ARccOS disc. (ARccOS uses bad sector protection that players simply ignore, but increases the difficulty in decryption. Along with some other legerdemain, but in a nutshell...) A new version of Fab comes out supposedly fixing this problem, but the next ARccOS-protected disc that comes out- Hey Presto! The problem's back.

All I'm suggesting is give FixVTS or VobBlanker a try. BTW, FixVTS was made specifically to improve the compliance of DVDFabDecrypter output so DVDShrink can deal with the files.

Well, it's a Columbia release, so it's almost certainly ARccOS. And I recall some threads recently about some folks having trouble ripping it.

Hey, I dunno, it was just an idea. Thought I explained why the suspicion occurred to me: i.e. the past history of DVDFabDecrypter and DVDShrink, blah blah. Probably nothing, but you never know until you investigate. (With either FixVTS or VobBlanker, just load the VIDEO_TS.IFO and hit process, that's it. Not that hard. Suit yourself. ) I'd be tempted to get the movie to play with the protection, but I hear it's a real stinker. :P

So... try the usual troubleshooting? Reinstall DVDShrink, system maintenance, etc.

This DVD Shrink problem is well known. It is caused by the fact that the VOB IDs in the VOB files are not consecutive. DVDFab Decrypter is unable to reorder the VOB IDs, and cannot be used to properly rip a DVD that must be processed by DVD Shrink.

The best way to completely remove the ARccOS protections is currently to use the PSL2 plugin for PgcEdit. It uses DVD Decrypter to rip the DVD very quickly, and FixVTS or VobBlanker to fix the VOB IDs problem, and has several other advantages, such as removing completely the fake cells from the VOBs. It's the only way to rip an ARccOS protected DVD and finally have fully compliant files on your hard disc! The plugin is even able to launch DVD Shrink automatically to verify the rip!

On the other hand, DVDFab Decrypter has several drawbacks. It removes completely the PUOs, which is generally not a good idea. More important, it is unable to make the difference between an intentional ARccOS read error and an error caused by scratches or dust, and that's very dangerous! It doesn't remove the crap in the IFOs, so some players are unable to play correctly the resulting DVD. And it is very very slow!

Copying or ripping the files with AnyDVD or DVD43 running in the background is even worse! You should never use those tools when ripping!

Thank you, r0lz. Now we have a good explanation of the how and why. It oughta be a stickie.

Funny, I have the plugin and posted maybe two weeks ago on the DVDShrink stickie about that method. (Learned about it at the Digital-Digest forum). Slipped my mind completely. Gunna have to get that movie after all and have a try.

Thanks also for your work on PgcEdit!

To r0lZ,

Aside from your obvious vested interest in promoting PGCEdit, can you explain the following

1. Why removing POUs is a bad thing, and does it apply to all POUs or only certain restrictions ?

2. Why DVD Decrypter with AnyDVD is not a good solution. I have been using this method for sometime now without any problems. DVD Shrink always opens the discs, where as other tools, especially Vobblanker, have left me with unusable garbage that nothing will load ?

This is not a go at PGCEdit. which seems to have a multitude of uses, but rather curiosity and substantiation of your statements.

Originally Posted by guns1inger

1. Why removing POUs is a bad thing, and does it apply to all POUs or only certain restrictions ?

Well, there are many usages of the PUOs (BTW, PUO, or PUOp, not POU! PUO=Prohibited User Operation.) When they are used to prohibit skipping a logo or FBI warning, they are obviously annoying, and should be removed.
But some PUOs are also used to inhibit some functions that can make the DVD to crash. For example, the Angle menu PGC is often used as the target for call or jump commands, but if you call it with the remote, it will lead to nothing playable, because the GPRMs used to control the navigation are still not properly initialized.
Another problem: if a menu is made of several pages (or programs) in the same PGC, the Previous and Next chapter buttons must be inhibited, or the user will jump to another menu or even the same menu but in another language when using those buttons on the remote.
With some players, an icon is displayed on multi-angle PGCs to inform the user that he can use the Angle button to select the angle. But most of the time, the angles are only used to display some credits in a particular language. In this case, the right angle is preselected by a VM command, and the user should not change it. If the PUO is removed, the icon will be displayed, and it's very distracting.
And I can continue the list of problems if you wish!

My method is to strip all PUOs from the VOBs when ripping, but I don't strip them in the IFOs. Then, I use the PgcEdit's Filter PUOs function to remove selectively some PUOs in some domains. Usually, it is safe to remove most of them in the title domains (except the angle and menu call PUOs for the reasons explained above.) Since the VMGM is almost always used to store logos and FBI warnings, I remove all PUOs from it. But I leave all PUOs in the VTSM menus.

It is possible to remove the PUOs in the VOBs only with DVD Decrypter, but you cannot do that with DVDFab Decrypter.

Originally Posted by guns1inger

2. Why DVD Decrypter with AnyDVD is not a good solution. I have been using this method for sometime now without any problems. DVD Shrink always opens the discs, where as other tools, especially Vobblanker, have left me with unusable garbage that nothing will load ?

To properly patch the IFOs to remove the ARccOS protection, DVD Decrypter must know where the bad sectors are located. The method is to analyze the cell commands in the PGCs of the titles. If there are jumps from cell to cell, the title is marked as potentially ARccOS protected, and the rip begins. When a read error is encountered in a VOB file, the location of the bad sector is checked, and if it appear to be in a potentially protected title, that title is (partially) patched to remove the protection, and the bad sectors are replaced by blank sectors (filled with zero, which is illegal but better than nothing.)

When used in conjunction with AnyDVD, the problem is that AnyDVD do almost the same work, replacing the bad sectors with dummy zeroed sectors. It is therefore impossible for DVDD to discover where the read errors are located, and it cannot patch the IFOs.

Furthermore, AnyDVD (as well as DVDFab Decrypter) is not smart enough to analyze the IFOs. Therefore, when a read error is encountered, it replaces it always with a dummy. If, per chance, this error is not intentional but is caused by a scratch or some dust, the VOB file will be incomplete, with some illegal sectors in a part of the file that is played! This it totally unacceptable.
This is why DVD Decrypter is currently the only good method to rip a DVD.
But the new generation of ARccOS is not always rippable directly with DVD Decrypter, because the read error type has changed. DVDD needs a PSL file to work properly in this case. It's the job of the PSL plugin to create it, by analyzing the IFOs. And the fake cell commands, and more important, the fake cells are also removed totally, and the VOB IDs renumbered properly in phase 3 of the plugin. After that, the DVD is loadable in any application, including in the picky DVD Shrink. You will never experience the strange behavior of the compression ratio slider in Shrink.

Note also that an obvious advantage of the plugin is that his method is not based on the analysis of the read errors in the VOB files. For this reason, it should work with all protected DVDs in the future, and doesn't need constant updates like DVDFab or AnyDVD.

VobBlanker has crashed with some kind of DVDs, because of a bug which is fixed now. Anyway, it is best and faster to use FixVTS during the last phase of the wizard. VobBlanker is currently not able to process multi-angle or interleaved titles properly.

Thank you. That was all I was looking for. Sorry for the typo - it was 1 in the morning and 30 degrees C here at the time. (heading for 42 today)

JollyDin: Thanks for the reply. I can assure you the members appreciate feedback on what works and what doesn't.

Your feedback was useful specifically because some ARccOS discs have appeared that VobBlanker has trouble with, and FixVTS is a likely alternative. I haven't yet gotten any of the more recent ARccOS discs, in part because the movie reviews have been generally bad. But I guess I'll get one to play with.

The other thing is because, unfortunately, novices won't be willing to put forth the effort to understand what a real expert like r0lz has to say. They might, however, be willing to try something like FixVTS.

I've done the DVDDecrypter and PSL2 file method a few times, which entails exporting the file, manually editing it per the DVDDecrypter log, and importing that, then re-ripping the disc. The method r0lz suggests makes it a good deal easier, as the PSL2 plugin for PgcEdit has a wizard that automates the job.

On another couple threads, I suggested that method to some n00bs and it was like speaking to a vacuum. They knew better, of course, an attitude that makes veterans kinda cranky.