Save menu & Time!

Ok....I call it the Rip 'n Swap Process..... Not sure if its been posted before.....but here is my approach. NO ENCODING, Reauthoring OR STRIPPING REQUIRED!! therefore....u get a Movie c/w menu in about 45 min from rip start to burn finish with a 2x disc. this works for those movies that either have extras that take it over the 4.37 limt ...or have 2 versions of the movie....and u can remove one. Now that covers a LOT of movies. Lets Discuss The One, or NEW Best Friend. Both of these carry full screen & widescreen versions. U rip the FULL DVD (files mode in Smartripper), leaving out the Widescreen version (if u want full screen) . So ....in THE One leave out vobs 01_1 to 01_3. Now its still too big.....ok kill VOB 05_1, as its some kind of extra. Cool ...heres the trick ....replace the VOBS u did not copy (VOB04_1 to 04_3) and the deleted VOB 05_1, with a small vob file....but renaming it to the same filenames as the missing ones. The small vob can be anything ....heck u can make one saying "Feature Not available", or use any small vob from the same disc. Once u have done this ...GET VTS Sectors in ifoedit .....and burn the baby .... If u get a DISC terminated with errors during initialise (Prassi) ..no worries...the disc still good....but u missed out a file somewhere ...the file count MUST be the same as the original disc. As i said before....this approach can be used with any movie whose main menu & movie vobs are less than the 4.37 GB ....now u don't have to fiddle with ifoedit and the menu to keep it. Also ...dont forget vobsplit if u need to trim just the end credits to make the main movie fit. U can save up to 300MB that way. For this invaluable tip, I will happily accept paypal contributions.......or oreo cookies.:D

Mosaic Sounds like a very easy and quick way. Hats off to you! I would assume this method would work even if you need to transcode the main movie or strip out some audio tracks. Still a beginer at this but seems logical. For me it would be easier then figureing out what vob ids were played to keep the main menu.

Well, I just tried the method out with The Sweetest Thing and it did not seem to work right for me. The lay out of the dvd is VTS_01 THROUGH VTS_05 are pretty much previews for other flicks. The movie is in VTS_06_1.VOB-VTS_06_4.VOB with the menu in VTS_06_0.VOB After that there is more junk through VTS_14_1.VOB The last one seems to be nothing but a black screen when played with Power DVD. I just took that one vob and renamed it for all the other VTS_XX_1.VOB files except for the main movie. But when I try to play in Power DVD nothing. I did not change any of the VTS_XX_0.VOB filres. Should I have? Thanks a bunch Oh yeah I also ran get VTS Sectors on all 14 ifo files doing VIDEO_TS.IFO last.

Will be doing The Sweetest thing tomorrow 

Will let ya know...

Sounds great. I will wait to see your results. I wonder if it has to do with the previews. Like the dvd needs them since it starts with them. Who knows? Good luck!

a friend of mine who's quite an expert in dvd just pointed out to me that u need to delete playback of the replaced vobs in thier respective ifo's before u get vts... just a step i think forgotten by the person who wrote this tip/guide

Delete playback eh? 

And how do u go about doing that?

in ifoedit, i gues by selecting the pgc and clicking on delete playback