Shorthand Version: Cannot play the "Clean Audio" (Non-directors commentary) version of my movie. If I do, the video will not play on Windows Media Center for the Xbox 360, and while it plays on the PC, I am unable to move the time-slider forward or backwards (Fast Forward/Rewind),I am forced to watch the video where it is at the present time.
So how am I going about this? I have AnyDVD's Rip DVD program along with DVD Shrink. The ripped video is made into a single VOB file and renamed .MPG so it could be read on my Windows Media Center for Xbox360. Doing this allows me to skip the encoding process (for converting to .AVI or .WMV etc) which could take hours of time I don't have.
The videos play perfectly on the Xbox. So whats the problem? They play the films commentary for the audio. I went into DVD Shrink's options and after several test renders, I pinned down the film audio to "AC3 5.1-ch English". However, if I set the video to play this audio stream and disable the others, the video will not allow me access it in Windows Media Center (saying "Cannot play Video") and on the PC, it will load but not allow me to move the "time slider" (as described earlier).
So like I said, the conversion to .MPG works, its just not working when the film's audio is selected but works fine with directors commentary.
Illustrated Version: Here are the exact steps I preformed using the aforementioned steps:
Figure 1. I turn DVD Shrink on, locating the ripped DVD file.
Figure 2. The DVD File Contains these folders. But DVD Shrink allows me to select the whole directory (as shown in Figure 1).
Figure 3
1. Now that the DVD is loaded into the program. I change the type of DVD to "Re-author" (#1).
2. Doing this allows me to customize what is inside the DVD and what isn't (like titles, menus, that sort of stuff).
3. I then go to (#2) and browse through the individual parts of the DVD (not shown) and select the main movie, "Title 1" (#3).
4. After this, I make sure the audio is set to "AC3 5.1-ch English" (#4) because the other channels (IE: Both AC3 2-ch English audio versions) contain director commentary.
5. I then (to be safe), right click the preview window (#5), select audio, and made sure that the type of audio selected would be the correct audio selection.
Figure 4.
Next I right click on the film itself, selecting Properties and then going into the "Set Default Streams" dialog box. I disable "Let my DVD Player decide which audio stream to play", because I'm assuming this is the reason director commentary always plays when not specified. So I select the second option, "Play the following Audio Stream", selecting the audio stream I found to be the non-commentary one.
Figure 5.
I enter DVD Shrinks Preferences, traveling into the output tab . I make sure the exported video contains as little files as possible by disabling, "Split VOB files into 1GB size chunks".
Figure 6
I'm finally ready to begin the rendering process.
-I select "Backup!" to begin the backup procedure. (#1).
-I check the input and output directories making sure everything is correct and in order.
-I begin the Encoding process. This only takes a few minutes.
Figure 7
-Once complete, I select the main file: "VTS_01_1.VOB" and rename it to "VTS_01_1.MPG".
-I open Windows Media Player and begin to play the video.
-Notice (#1), I cannot move the blue slide bar. The video can be watched, but the video cannot be fast forwarded or rewound in any way, it must be watched from its current position.
Figure 8
Notice the exact same video on Windows Media center on the Xbox 360, it doesn't even open.
Instead of renaming the single .VOB to .MPG from DVD Shrink, I have also used a program called VOB2MPG. The program only encodes a portion of the video, leaving the rest non-existant. Each time I choose to encode with that program, the filesize is dramatically different each time. (Sometimes 50MB, sometimes 1.3GB)
When I do this exact same process with the audio files: AC3 2-ch English, the video works perfectly fine - the slider can be moved across the movie (fast forwarding and rewinding), and it can easily be read by Windows Media Center - but again, this is director commentary and I don't want director commentary. I am willing to purchase new software if I have to. But I want to stress: That I do NOT want to reencode the VOB files to some other format because that will take hours per DVD and I have hundreds to backup. I simply want to rename the VOB files .MPG and be on my way since its a proven format that works and works well. Theres gotta be something I'm doing wrong with DVD Shrink, if you guys could shed some light on this I'd really appreciate it.
Open the file with VLC and try to seek through the movie.
VLCs codecs are self contained - not depending on the system codecs.
Since the difference is between stereo and 5.1, I wonder if you have AC3Filter installed.
