Combine two titles into one file?

[Gene Poole]

I'm converting my DVD collection to MKV for use with my WD TV Live and HandBrake is just wonderful! I'm using the CLI version with Gentoo Linux and having great results.

I've got a few DVDs (i.e. Das Boot) where the main movie either spans two sides of the disk, or two disks. I can rip the disks to my harddisk to access both titles at once, but I can't find a way to combine two sources into a single mkv.

I tried DVDFab's "merge" option, but it just makes two titles on the same disc so I've got the same problem.

I tried MPEG Video Wizard 5.0, but it takes several hours of additional decode/encode and I can only seem to get one audio stream and no VOBsubs (important to have subs in Das Boot).

Is there some way to do this? It's not a big deal having two files for a movie, but it confuses other users of the HD TV Live (i.e.my wife).

[TedJ]

What you're after is something that can perform a seamless merge/join on the two titles prior to encoding. The only utility I have personal experience of that does this is called DVD2One (DVD2OneX aka DTOX for Mac), although I'm sure a quick google search will find others.

[mduell]

Assuming the streams you want are present in each half and consistently identified (same audio stream identifer, same vobsubs stream identifier) you can just concatenate (cat in *nix, copy in Windows) all the main movie VOBs together and feed that to Handbrake. The time codes will be screwed up in the concatenated file but HB will still read through it and the output will be fine. I just did this for all three Lord of the Rings movies; nice 2-2.5GB output each with the High Profile preset less AC3 passthrough.

[TedJ]

I don't think that concatenating the VOBs preserves the subtitles, as required by the OP - it certainly won't preserve the chapters.

[Deleted User 11865]

I don't think that concatenating the VOBs preserves the subtitles, as required by the OP - it certainly won't preserve the chapters.

It should preserve the subtitles, but since HB treats single VOBs as file-based sources, it won't look for them.

[mduell]

Hmm, subtitles are ok in LOTR with the method above although maybe they weren't vobsubs.

[ascianti]

DvdReMake Pro will do what you want (ie: create one giant dvd from two small dvds via. a seamless merge). The instructions are here: http://www.cdr-zone.com/forum/post-11602.html#11602
AFAIK, the demo version won't let you export it, but the full (paid) version will.

However: You might end up with an error (more than 9 VOB files), to fix that error...
1) Remake your dvd using dvdremake and export it (get your one big dvd)
2) Download VobMerge (freeware)
3) Merge Titles together until you have only 9 VOB files (ie: if you have vobs 1->11, merge 10/11, merge 8/9, rename the 8/9 f file to VTS_01_8.VOB (or whatever the naming convention being used is), and the 10/11 file to VTS_01_9.VOB (don't make the merged files larger than 2gb or you might have problems
4) Open the source with handbrake, it will scan properly.
This should preserve your vobsubs and chapter information.

[mduell]

I suppose you could even hack up an IFO manually.

[Gene Poole]

I don't think that concatenating the VOBs preserves the subtitles, as required by the OP - it certainly won't preserve the chapters.

I tried this and you are correct. All vobsubs were undetectable, but the closed-caption (text) came through OK. Surprisingly, all audio channels came out OK, but lost their names (i.e. "English", etc.) in the process.

[Deleted User 11865]

I don't think that concatenating the VOBs preserves the subtitles, as required by the OP - it certainly won't preserve the chapters.

I tried this and you are correct. All vobsubs were undetectable, but the closed-caption (text) came through OK. Surprisingly, all audio channels came out OK, but lost their names (i.e. "English", etc.) in the process.

That information (audio track languages) is not contained in the VOB files.

[Gene Poole]

I suppose you could even hack up an IFO manually.

Great idea! I geve IFOEdit a try and that seems to solve all my problems.

[vrangsinn]

Yamb will let you insert multiple video and audio-streams. I used it to preserve a multi-angle feature as Handbrake will only let me convert 1 of the angles. I converted both angles into seperate files and used this program to restore the DVD's original feautures - http://yamb.unite-video.com/index.html

[saverio]

With MakeMKV you can repack a single title into a MKV (losslessly, also the language data is there). Then use mkvtoolnix to join both files, encode the joined file and recombine with the original one as you wish (for me, it's encoded video, pass-through audio and vobsub subtitles).

Still have to try with LOTR...