I have been searching the web and newsgroups for some basic
instructions on how to author a simple, single-play DVD usind IFOedit,
... and I can not for the life of me find ANY useful information on it.

It seems that everyone uses IFOedit only for ripping DVDs and creating
"backup" copies, which I am not the least bit interested in. What I
want to do is author single-play DVDs using my own DVD-compliant MPEG2
files, and I can NOT find ANY documentation on how to do this using
IFOEdit. There aren't even any instrucitons on how to do this on the
IFOedit web site!! What the #@$%&* ???

Please, .. if someone here knows where I might find a meanigful,
step-by-step guide for doign this using IFOEdit, .. or if they can
give me some quick instructions on using it, I would be most grateful.

Thank you,
- yvan

On 22 Jan 2004 05:52:14 -0800, yvan@ideasdesign.com (Yvan J. Gagnon)
wrote:

I've made a few miniDVDs with IfoEdit.

First you have to demultiplex your MPEG-2 file, because IfoEdit requires
elementary streams. You can do this with TMPGEnc: File -> MPEG Tools ->
Simple De-multiplex. (Of course, I always make elementary streams to
begin with, so I can avoid demuxing.)

Now start IfoEdit and select DVD Author -> Author new DVD. Open your
video and audio streams. Click OK and IfoEdit will create .IFO, .BUP and
..VOB files.

I don't know if the following step is always necessary, but my DVD
player doesn't recognize the miniDVDs unless I correct the start sector
addresses first. Close and restart IfoEdit. Open any .IFO file. Click
Get VTS Sectors. More information about this step:
http://www.mpucoder.com/derrow/calcsec.html

I then use Nero to burn the miniDVD. Works for me.

Here's a guide at DVDRhelp:
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/userguides/120013.php

why don't you use tmpgenc to create your DVD's, tmpgenc +dvd is great

"Yvan J. Gagnon" <yvan@ideasdesign.com> wrote in message
news:cb4ee677.0401220552.1e74431d@posting.google.c om...

Thank you so much for the instructions! I followed the steps you've
given, and ended up with a DVD-RW disc that played in my dvd-rom
drive, -- but that did not play in my set-top player. What's strange
is that I also burned the ISO file to a standard DVD-R disc, and that
disc was not playable at all, neither in my set-top player, nor in my
dvd-rom drive (???)

I know that my set top player can in fact play home-burned DVDs, since
I've done it successully on more than one occassion using this exact
same system, using a commercial dvd authoring application (Encore).

I should perhaps note that in both instances, I used a program called
"Burn4Free" to burn my ISO file to disk. Is it possible that the image
burning process differs from program to program? I have Nero, but want
to steer clear of using any commercial software for this project. Can
you reccommend some kind of free/open-source program for burning ISO
disk images, .. something failsafe?

Also, -- can you reccommend some other free MPEG2 encoding software
besides TMPEG Encoder? Again, .. I know that TMPEG is a great
program, but the MPEG2 license expires after a while, and doing the
"monthly registry hack" is just not an option. Ideally, I'd like to
find something that creates elementary streams, but that has the
ability to output the audio to PCMWAV format. I've tried using BBMPEG,
.... but it only spits out mpeg audio streams. And aside from that, I
am concerend that the MPEG2 files it produces might not be entirely
DVD compliant.

Thanks,
- yvan








erratic <erratic@reply-to.address> wrote in message news:<loTPb.295$fq4.151674@phobos.telenet-ops.be>...

On 23 Jan 2004 04:34:06 -0800, yvan@ideasdesign.com (Yvan J. Gagnon)
wrote:

Did you correct the start sector addresses with the Get VTS Sectors
command? And did you close and restart IfoEdit before doing that?
Apparently closing and restarting IfoEdit is necessary before using
Get VTS Sectors on your newly created .IFO files.

I'm not familiar with Burn4Free, but I assume you did put the .IFO, .BUP
and .VOB files in the VIDEO_TS folder? That's how I do it with Nero 6
and my miniDVDs work.

As far as free software goes, the DVDRhelp guide I mentioned earlier
uses only freeware tools: IfoEdit, ImgTool Classic, DVDDecrypter. But
I've never used ImgTool or DVDDecrypter myself.
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/userguides/120013.php

Well, maybe you can give YMPEG a try. It's a free VfW codec that
apparently can create MPEG-2 files from within VirtualDub (among
other programs). I have never tried it myself.
http://www.motiwala.com/ympeg.htm
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=188636

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 16:24:13 GMT, erratic <erratic@reply-to.address>
wrote:

I have tried it under WinMe, and worked. You need be careful with the
bitrate setting, because it's in bps, not kbps. And it only does
one-pass encoding. Other than that, it's fine.

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 01:20:28 -0800, "Gary" <gary_st2002@Yahoo.com>
wrote:

He is looking for free software (he needs it for a course), and mpeg2
encoding is not free with Tmpgenc.

I did initially, -- exactly as you described, -- only I ended up with
coasters afterwards. On a hunch, I decided to try once more without
doing the VTS sector correction, and lo an behold, the reuslting DVD
disc played in both my DVDROM drive AND in my set top player. I
wasn't trying to create MiniDVDs, mind you, but trying to burn actual
DVD discs using DVD-R media. So it appears that the VTS sector
correction shouldn't be applied when burning actual DVDs.

For my most recent test, I used the newest verion of IFOEdit which
allowed me to save the project as an ISO disk image file. I then
loaded it into DVD Decrypter to burn to DVD.

Hmm, that's true. I almost forgot about that one. I'll give it a try.
Thanks!

- yvan

On 26 Jan 2004 04:28:54 -0800, yvan@ideasdesign.com (Yvan J. Gagnon)
wrote:

That's strange, because according to this website
http://www.mpucoder.com/derrow/calcsec.html
"...you need to correct these sectors just if you want to burn
a DVD-R, and in that case right before burning the DVD-R."

So it has nothing to do with miniDVD, but I guess it's necessary
for some DVD players and not for others. Oh well, never mind, at
least it works for you now.

yvan@ideasdesign.com (Yvan J. Gagnon) wrote:
In Nero, did you chose to burn a DVD-Video disc? DVD-Video requires
that the directories and files be placed in a particular order on the
disc and some DVD players may be fussy and actually require that a
disc meet the standard (imagine that!)

This is probably your problem--does Burn4Free have a DVD-Video mode?