Replace main title with my own, keep everything else same

[Sugar Daddy]

Hi everyone, so after going over the tutorials and getting completely lost, I'd like to ask a question.

Here's the deal. I have a copy of "Aliens" director's cut and have copied the whole VIDEO_TS to my HDD. I want to try something weird. I prefer the director's cut over the original, except for one scene. So I extracted the M2V and AC3 streams, edited the scene out, and built a new VIDEO_TS with DVD Studio Pro (with no menus, subtitles, or anything). I am wondering if it is possible to replace the first director's cut title with my new title and maintain the same menus and special features of the original DVD. From what I read, it sounds like it's possible, but I worry about chapter markers and scene selection being out of sync and stuff.

Has anyone done something like this before? Successfully? If it's in the tutorial, then I'm probably just not understanding, and if so, could you tell me where these instructions are in the tutorials so I know what to study again?

Thanks for all your help! This is one steep learning curve for me....

[Sugar Daddy]

Me again.

Even if it's not possible to keep all extra features, is it possible to replace the main title with my own and put it back into the original menu? I would just get rid of the "Bonus Materials" and "Setup" options on the menu so I have just "Play" and "Scene Selection." Thanks in advance!

[mike]

Yeesh. It may be possible, but it sounds like you may be taking the long way around.

If the DVD contains both Director's Cut and theatrical versions, and the scene you don't like is in one but not the other, then it's quite likely that the scene corresponds to a cell. (Click on the cell and drag the slider through it to check.) If so, you could just add a command to that cell to skip ahead ("Link") to the next cell, without triggering a risky timemap rebuild or breaking any other features.

[Sugar Daddy]

Thanks Mike. Good suggestion, and that would probably work, except the Director's Cut is the only version on this particular DVD. I think now that it's probably impossible to do this without losing all other features on the DVD. The one thing I was hoping to keep though was the menus. Anyone else tried this?

[mike]

Have you checked whether the scene corresponds to a cell? It would have been very likely if there are multiple versions on there, but even if there aren't it's still quite possible.

Re the full title import - I seem to recall Jérôme mentioning a long time ago that he was working on a PGC (as opposed to VTS) import feature, but it hasn't appeared in a release yet.

[Sugar Daddy]

For this case in particular, you're probably right, it would be it's own cell, so I can tell it to skip that cell. I will give that a go, thanks!

However, I can see myself wanting to do more of this with other titles, and for some cases it might not be as clear cut as skipping a cell (I'm thinking Star Wars next, cutting out all that extra junk and getting as close to theatrical as possible). I will continue to tinker, and if anyone else has any ideas on how to remove the main title and replace it with your own while keeping menus, I would love to hear them. Thanks again everyone.

[Sugar Daddy]

So for anyone who googled with this same question and got here, I just discovered a piece of incredible software that does this exact thing. The only problem is that it's 350 bones. 350 bones that I don't have.

http://www.dvdafteredit.com/node/81

One of the big selling features is apparently the ability to swap out any title set for one of your own, post-build, and leave everything else untouched. It also lets you replace and even edit menus, change number of buttons, etc.

Just wanted to share this with anyone else who might care, but I DO NOT want to take anything away from myDVDEdit. This is a great program and has got me through some big jams. And the price is definitely right. So thank you Jerome!!