Analyzing the DVD content

Analyzing what's on a DVD disc

After ripping a DVD you'll have a number of IFO, BUP and VOB files. This page will teach you how to analyze these files in order to be able to make an educated decision about which files to keep and which ones to dump. I will illustrate this on 2 examples: Bait, R2 and Cruel Intentions, R1.

Example 1: Bait, R2:

After the ripping process you will have a number of ifo, bup and vob files. Here's an example from the R2 copy of Bait:

03.08.2001 06:22 <DIR> .
03.08.2001 06:22 <DIR> ..
03.08.2001 06:21 12'288 VIDEO_TS.BUP
03.08.2001 06:21 12'288 VIDEO_TS.IFO
03.08.2001 06:18 2'750'464 VIDEO_TS.VOB
03.08.2001 06:21 79'872 VTS_01_0.BUP
03.08.2001 06:21 79'872 VTS_01_0.IFO
03.08.2001 06:18 14'819'328 VTS_01_0.VOB
03.08.2001 02:08 1'073'739'776 VTS_01_1.VOB
03.08.2001 02:08 1'073'739'776 VTS_01_2.VOB
03.08.2001 02:08 1'073'739'776 VTS_01_3.VOB
03.08.2001 02:08 82'706'432 VTS_01_4.VOB
03.08.2001 02:08 1'073'739'776 VTS_01_5.VOB
03.08.2001 02:08 1'073'739'776 VTS_01_6.VOB
03.08.2001 02:08 587'214'848 VTS_01_7.VOB

The vts_01_x.vob contains the main movie, vts_01_0.ifo is the associated ifo file, vts_01_0.vob is the menu for this titleset and video_ts.vob is the VMG part of the disc with video_ts.ifo as the associated ifo file. For more info about what's on a DVD please refer to the DVD Structure article. As you can see the files are too large to fit onto a DVD-5.

Now fire up VOBRator and load the first VOB file.

As you can see there's a couple of VOB IDs here. Click on one and press the play button to preview it. Repeat this for every VOB ID and then every VOB file and create a list of VOB files with associated VOB IDs to get an overview of what the DVD contains. In our example we have:

Video_ts.vob has 2 VOB IDs, VOB ID1 with 26 cells, each cell is a still screen with a copyright warning, each in another language. VOB ID 2 contains a still with the movie title. vts_01_0.vob contains the menu pages, there's 12 VOB IDs, VOB ID1 is the main menu, a still screen with a musical background, and then there's 3 other menu pages in VOB IDs 2-4. VOB IDs 5-8 are exactly the same as before with the exception that they're in German rather than English, and VOB IDs 9-12 are in Spanish. vts_01_1.vob - vts_01_7.vob contain 3 VOB IDs: ID 1 is the Warner logo, ID2 the first part of the movie up to the layer change and ID3 the 2nd part of the movie on the other disc layer (only Warner does that as far as I know, they also don't write VOBs over the layer so you have 2 VOB files that are not 1GB, the last one and the one before the layer change).

Since VOBRator isn't extremely stable there's an alternative: Load the VOB files into DVD2AVI and press F5 to start previewing. This will bring up a screen where you can also see the VOB and Cell IDs:

As you can see, I marked the important parts of the screen. Timestamps will also tell you how long a certain cell or ID is. The first number in the Vob Cell ID line is the VOB ID, the 2nd is the Cell ID.

You can also use the built-in DVD player in IfoEdit.

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Example 2: Cruel Intentions, R1

Directory of F:\VIDEO_TS

23.06.1999 16:31 <DIR> .
23.06.1999 16:31 <DIR> ..
23.06.1999 16:31 34'816 VIDEO_TS.IFO
23.06.1999 16:31 850'962'432 VIDEO_TS.VOB
23.06.1999 16:31 34'816 VIDEO_TS.BUP
23.06.1999 16:31 71'680 VTS_01_0.IFO
23.06.1999 16:31 10'113'024 VTS_01_0.VOB
23.06.1999 16:31 1'073'739'776 VTS_01_1.VOB
23.06.1999 16:31 1'073'739'776 VTS_01_2.VOB
23.06.1999 16:31 1'073'739'776 VTS_01_3.VOB
23.06.1999 16:31 65'368'064 VTS_01_4.VOB
23.06.1999 16:31 71'680 VTS_01_0.BUP
23.06.1999 16:31 71'680 VTS_02_0.IFO
23.06.1999 16:31 10'113'024 VTS_02_0.VOB
23.06.1999 16:31 1'073'739'776 VTS_02_1.VOB
23.06.1999 16:31 1'073'739'776 VTS_02_2.VOB
23.06.1999 16:31 1'073'739'776 VTS_02_3.VOB
23.06.1999 16:31 64'161'792 VTS_02_4.VOB
23.06.1999 16:31 71'680 VTS_02_0.BUP
23.06.1999 16:31 32'768 VTS_03_0.IFO
23.06.1999 16:31 419'840 VTS_03_0.VOB
23.06.1999 16:31 650'242'048 VTS_03_1.VOB
23.06.1999 16:31 32'768 VTS_03_0.BUP
23.06.1999 16:31 20'480 VTS_04_0.IFO
23.06.1999 16:31 419'840 VTS_04_0.VOB
23.06.1999 16:31 196'007'936 VTS_04_1.VOB
23.06.1999 16:31 20'480 VTS_04_0.BUP
25 File(s) 8'290'709'504 bytes
2 Dir(s) 0 bytes free

video_ts.vob is the VMG part of the disc with video_ts.ifo as the associated ifo files. vts_01_x.vob is the main movie in 16:9 format with vts_01_0.vob the associated menu VOB and vts_01_0.ifo the associated ifo file. vts_02 is the same but in fullscreen format. vts_03_1.vob contains a making of sequence and vts_04_1.vob an outtake scene. For more info about what's on a DVD please refer to the DVD Structure article. As you can see the files are too large to fit onto a DVD-5.

Now fire up VOBRator and load the first VOB file.

Video_ts.vob has 13 VOB IDs: ID1 is the TV format selection screen (widescreen or fullscreen), ID2 the Columbia Pictures Studio Logo, ID3 the FBI copyright warning sequence, ID4 the same followed by a "this version of the movie has been modified from its original format..." screen. ID5 contains the trailer, ID6 the making of featurette, ID7 a music video, ID8 another music video, ID9-ID13 deleted scenes. In vts_01_0.vob we have VOB ID1 which is the main menu, ID2 which is the subtitle selection menu (basically you can turn them on or off), ID3 is the set of scene selection menu pages and ID4 the special feature menu pages. vts_02_0.vob contains exactly the same except for that the associated ifo file has a DAR flag of 4:3 instead of 16:9 (which means that the studio didn't bother to make 2 sets of menus.. when you select the fullscreen version all your menus will simply be smaller horizontally). vts_03_1.vob has 1 VOB ID that contains the long making of (called Creative Inventions), and vts_04_1.vob contains another deleted scene which obviously didn't fit into video_ts.vob. Both vts_03 and vts_04 also have a menu VOB that contains some of the pages the main menu contains and I don't understand why this is even needed.

You can also use the built-in DVD player in IfoEdit.

IfoEdit will also tell us something about the disc structure: As you can see, both vts1 and vts2 have 28 chapters so they must be the main movie file. They also have 2 audio tracks, the regular English one and a commentary track by the filmmakers. Furthermore you can see that vts1 is 16:9 and vts2 4:3.

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Using the built-in player

Start IfoEdit and load video_ts.ifo, the main IFO file on every disc. The DVD will then play as usual. Make sure that you have all files ripped to your harddisk and that you have not performed any operations on the files yet.

As you can see you can navigate the DVD as usual, change language tracks, subtitle tracks, jump to chapters, etc.

Start playing every feature that you want to keep on the final disc. There's no need to play the full disc, just start playing everything you need as this will then give you a list of what files are to be kept upon exiting the player.

Once you've played everything you want to keep in the output press the Exit button.

As you can see, in this session you played items from Title 1 and Title 2. This means that vts_01_x.vob and vts_02_x.vob have to be kept, other vts_*.vob files are not necessary in the output and can be deleted.

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