Help Swapping a chapter, while keeping menu

andy

I would like to swap a chapter(toasts) from my wedding video with a more complete one that the videographer eventually sent me afterwards on a seperate DVD. Ideally, I'd like to keep the menu structure and everything else, but just switch the shorter one for the longer one. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in Advance.

Bobstopper, you can probably do this with vobblanker, provided your chapter is an exact cell. Do check that, open your DVD with vobblanker, double click on the VTS and the PGC where the chapter resides, and look at the list of cells in that PGC. One of them will have your chapter (you can double click each cell to preview it). If you find that your quot;toastsquot; chapter is contained in 1 cell, you can select that cell and click quot;replacequot;, then select the VOB to use to replace that chapter. This will work if the chapter is 1 cell both in your original and the modified DVD.
If the chapter spans more cells, it will be OK if it's the same number in the original and the modified one (you'll have to repace each cell that make up the chapter).

jeanl

Hello and welcome to the forum,
have you already tried anything in particular to do this task that didn't work out?

I'd quot;suggestquot;, and you may save yourself a lot of hassle,  you simply add the new chapter as a new title to the DVD; think of it as the studio trailer on commercial DVDs that typically come as a dedicated title as well.
Use PgcEdit to add a cell-command Jump in front of the old chapter (via a dummy VMGM menu) to this new title, then jump back behind it if the long-toast-chapter is finished - again using a VMGM dummy-menu as a quot;bridgequot; between the two titles. You may add all these dummies within PgcEdit.
This way you woudn't need to touch (demux, remux, etc) the original VOBs at all, the new toasts-szene must not match exactly the main video streams, but there'll be a little quot;gapquot; on play back. Of course, the new chapter should be the only thing in this quot;intermediatequot; title. You may cut out the szene with various tools available here for download.
You may also use PgcEdit to modify the chapter menu (button) to play the new quot;toast titlequot; instead of the old chapter.

Have fun,
CirTap

@jeanl: I though of that one, too, but what about different audio streams in the two DVDs, or if adding the longer chapter exceeds 1GB limit size? Will VobBlanker take care for the latter?
Hence I though using a bit of quotgcEdit scriptingquot; is probbly less cumbersome, esp. if the amount of cells don't match either.
CirTap

Yes, you're right, the vobblanker solution will only work in the simplest case. I think (but I'm not sure) that vobblanker takes care of the 1GB limit, but problems no doubt would arise if the audio streams were different. I was guessing that the replacement chapter would be just a longer version of the original one...
Jeanl

Let's hope for Gobstopper it is as simple as that and everything matches perfectly, so he can use your suggestion

CirTap

Thanks for all the suggestions. I will attempt it either tomorrow or the day after and let you all know how it goes. Thanks goodness for Doom9 !
           Gobstopper

I had to hunt around for the DVD with the extended toasts, sorry for the delay. I just tried VOBblanker. The  Toasts chapter on the complete wedding DVD was only 1 cell, but on the DVD containing ONLY the longer toasts chapter, it is comprised of 9 cells.
The main difference between the 2 is that longer one contains toasts that were cut out in the complete wedding video. I will download PCGedit and look for some guides to try out the suggestions you mentioned. I guess the other possibility would be to somehow combine all 9 cells into 1, does anyone know of an easy way to do this?
                        thanks again,                           Gobstopper

Well, combining all 9 cells into one requires demuxing (using for example PGCDemux, which you'll find on the vobblanker web site), and remuxing (using for example muxman).
It should be pretty straightforward, and it's a good exercize!
When you demux, demux by PGC, and select the PGC that contains the toasts only. This will create 1 audio and 1 video stream.
When you remux, if you don't specify chapter points (which you shouldn't) muxman will create just 1 larger cell from the audio and video streams you will have created with PgcDemux. Simply select the video stream, and the audio stream, select the output folder, and click start. This will create IFOs and VOBs, the larger of which will contain your remuxed video, in just 1 cell.
Then you can use vobblanker...
jeanl

I actually found a way to do this in VobBlanker alone yesterday without the need for a demux/remux.

I simply replaced a title in a newly created DVD with the original one.  Now, the new DVD had different VCIDs to the replacing title.  Well, to my surprise, VobBlanker put the whole movie into each VCID and I lost all the chapters - vexing for me but exactly what Gobstopper wants!

So you end up with a movie with length of # of cells x whole length of title.  Simply delete the duplicated cells in PgcEdit's cell editor and you're there.

Regards

blutach,
umpf - If we consider this a quot;featurequot; of VobBlanker , I wish I had understood anything of what you were saying *lol* but
I just can't clearly picture of what happened in your scenario -- seems like I need some more coffee ...
Is this what you had ...

Code:
authored DVD / VTS_01_x.vob (e.g 4 chapt, 8min total)
chap  VCID  time 1   1/1   00:02:00 2   1/2   00:02:00 3   1/3   00:02:00 4   1/4   00:02:00

Code:
original VTS_02_x.vob (e.g 2 chapt, 10 min total)
chap  VCID  time 1   2/1   00:05:00 2   2/2   00:05:00
... and done:
a) VobBlanker: select quot;VTS_01quot; -gt; [Cells] -gt; [Replace] quot;VCID 1/2quot; with quot;VTS_02quot;
= the single 2min quot;VCID 1/2quot; became a 10min cell made from quot;VCID 2/1quot;+quot;VCID 2/2quot;
or
b) VobBlanker: select quot;VTS_01quot; -gt; [Replace] with quot;VTS_02quot;
= all 2min cells became 10min cells each made of quot;VCID 2/1quot;+quot;VCID 2/2quot;, thus resulting in a movie still having four quot;chaptersquot; but each 10min long, loosing the fact that VTS_02 only had 2 quot;chaptersquot;

please confirm or if neither applies, please elaborate
Thanks.

CirTap

The title I had to replace was something like 33 cells:  1/1, 2/1....2/32

From memory, the new DVD I created had 33 cells but not the same VIDs...I think it was 1/1, 2/1, 3/1 etc.  Or it may have had fewer cells.  I should have kept the log.

I did not do a cell by cell replace, but rather a full title replace.

Now, I think of it, I had 33 cells, each with the same VCID ... 1/1.

VobBlanker put the whole movie in each VCID, so I had the movie 33 times!  This seems like what Gobstopper wants (easy to eliminate the other 32 versions with PgcEdit's cell remove function).  In fact, if he starts with just 1 cell, I suspect that VobBlanker will put the whole title in it.

Regards

ok, thanks. I bet there are few movies one wants to watch 33 times in a row
(thinking aloud) so the original number of cells (33) had different VCID, but after quot;replacequot; they all had the same (first VCID presumely).
how huge did this VOB came out??

does one know if quot;original-title.vobquot; and quot;replace-title.vobquot; must have the same no. of cells? or always more - or less? IIRC there was a note in the manual, but related to replacing single cells not the whole title.
I think I gotta play with this, mess up a bunch of vobs. Could be a handy feature if the result is predictable  I still have this idea to layout the whole DVD in PgcEdit using blank cells and have sth. like a quot;templatequot;, then misuse VobBlanker to push the real stuff in. My first attempts didn't work out as I expected as I had trouble with IfoEdit, but that's another story ...

Have fun,
CirTap

VOB was same size as the replacing one - cells were reused (32 times).  77 hours of title LMAO.

I'm sure jsoto explains the algorithm somewhere in the help file.  I just came across it yesterday by accident and then stumbled across this thread ==gt; the confluence of 2 accidents!

Talk soon.

PS Anything happening in the other place?

Regards

You can insert new cells into PGC using DvdReMake Pro (may be it can be done with PGcEdit, don't know). It is one of the quot;smartquot; actions, i.e. it will adjust whole disk navigation so that it plays just like before. So all original menus will work. Then you can replace each inserted blank cell with what you need.

But actually it is better to replace whole title. It is possible that during multiplexing some audio from a cell was multiplexed into the next cell. When you move only first cell to another disk there may be audio glitch at the end.

What Vobblanker does is:

Replacing PGCs:
- Checks the Video Attributes and warns if needed (*)
- Checks the Audio Attributes and warns if needed
- Adjust the Sub indexes control if the video AR changes
- When replacing, warns if the number of cells does not match and:
--- Extends the last cell to fit the cells in excess in the replacing PGC
--- Outputs blank cells to fill the cells not present in the replacing PGC

Replacing Cells:
- When replacing, warns if the number of cells ijn the replacing VOB is higher than one, and
--- Extends the cell to fit the cells in excess in the replacing VOB, making one quot;bigquot; cell.

Note:
(*) There is a bug in Video Attributes in 2.0.1.0 and previous, fixed but not released
There is another bug when replacing reused cells. Still not fixed.

jsoto


Originally Posted by jsotoWhat Vobblanker does is:
Replacing Cells:
- When replacing, warns if the number of cells ijn the replacing VOB is higher than one, and
--- Extends the cell to fit the cells in excess in the replacing VOB, making one quot;bigquot; cell.

This is exactly what's needed for Gobstopper! Since you're replacing 1 cell with 9, vobblanker will enlarge the original one to include all 9 cells. So there's no need to demux and remux. You can simply use vobblanker to replace the original cell with the cells in the modified DVD... Simple...
jeanl

One last comment...

Replacing Cells VB does not manage more than one file. So, if you have a big cell in 2 or 3 files, join them previously (i.e., with a DOS  copy /b file1+file2+file3  filejoined)

Replacing PGCs does manage a set of VOB files

jsoto

yep, looks like no problem is left unsolved lt;ggt;
actually a very nice ... erm feature? :-)
if there'd be a chance to use images for stills rather than 1-cell vobs only, VobBlanker would turn into a true VobBuilder
@jsoto: your tools are excellent! chapeau!

CirTap

I knew this technique all the time folks - that's why I recommended it

Regards