[SCHUMI_4EVER]

Busy trying to get all the home movies off Vids and onto DVDs or just my HDD and I noticed something odd.

My LG Combo DVD Recorder has a function where it "dubs" a video tape onto a writable DVD, it essentialy turns the DVD into a movie/video DVD by doing so. Once I put the DVD into my PC in order to rip the movie to my HDD I noticed something odd though...all the tracks were doubled up...in other words there were two identical main tracks and when I ripped them they both seemed fully capable of functioning separately from start to finnish.

When I wanted to check whether official movie DVDs do the same thing I found that yes they also doubled the tracks up, however when I checked on a movie DVD I had authored myself from my recordings with my TV card only one track showed up.

So I was wondering if anyone knows why the tracks are doubled up and if I need to worry about ripping both tracks or if I can just rip one or the other without losing anything?

 

[masta.g.86]

By "doubled up" do you mean double the PGCs (what it sounds like) or are you saying there are a pair of VOB DVD video files in the video_ts folder?

This phenomenon is very common with episodic (from TV episodes) DVDs where you can have a "Play All" menu item and the ability to watch in marathon mode where the OP and ED are not played between episodes. In short, there are no negative effects to this other than jumping chapters and ripping the DVD may induce some unnecessary confusion.

 

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

I mean that when Xilisoft DVD Ripper (or any other ripper I tried) opens/reads the .IFO files there's seemingly two of every file, so there's two main tracks each like 0:3:04 long and 3.53GB big so they are seemingly identical, but on my personally authored DVDs there's only one main track. (if you're wondering why it's so long it's a recording I made of a Grand Prix a couple of years ago which I am using as a test before I move onto the more important things).

 

[masta.g.86]

Oh, so you're saying that commercial DVDs have (seemingly) 2 of every file? That's normal.

That goes back to what I was saying about multiple PGCs. Consumer-level DVD authoring software generally doesn't allow the user to edit PGCs, instead opting to create a single PGC since the average user doesn't need the more advanced menu editing options that commercial DVD authoring software offers.

 

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

Yeah that's it, so then I don't need to worry about which of the two 3.53GB 0:03:04 files I rip?

 

[masta.g.86]

If they're both the same length, it's usually fine.

The only thing that comes to mind with one possibly being the wrong PGC is in some dual language DVDs that feature a separate OP and ED. Funimation anime DVDs are notorious for this.

 

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

Ah cool thanks
Now I can backup all my tapes (through the use LG Combo Recorder and it's "dubbing" of VHS to DVD) without worrying about losing or compromising anything if I only rip one track (providing of course it's the main track XD).