Replace main video and keep chapter points?

[bizzybody]

I need to 'upgrade' an older DVD project by re-encoding from the original source video, but keep the old menus with all the chapter points.

The original graphics etc used to create the menus aren't available, the person who wants this done had someone else do a DVD from video he shot and did a pretty poor job on the MPEG encoding. Bad interlacing problems and overall crap quality, but the menus are good enough as-is. The original files total only 3.94 gig, plenty of room to add quality to the main video without needing a dual layer disc.

I've already re-encoded the video and have made a DVD file set from it without menus.

There's no subtitles and only one audio stream in AC3. What looks helpful is that each menu and video clip is 'self contained' with its own separate IFO BUP and VOB files. There's 16 groups of files, with the main video in VTS_16 etc.

I've been looking at it with IFOedit and PGCedit but haven't figured out how to 'transplant' things so the chapter menu will work correctly. If I rename the new files to match the original VTS_16 (leaving the original IFO) the chapter menu almost works, the buttons jump to somewhere close to where they should, but playback freezes after a few frames. Replacing the original IFO with the new IFO along with the new VOBs causes all chapter buttons to go to the beginning of the main video. Playable but no chapters.

The original files have a small VTS_16_0.VOB, only 156K.

So what I'm needing is replace original video with new, higher quality video- same content and length, adjust chapters so they'll work, don't muck up the rest of the original stuff. No added complications of subtitles or multiple audio streams.

Simple, right? Riiiight.

P.S. If I can do this, it's worth money to me because this guy has a few more DVD-Rs with the same problem of poor encoding. Good thing he kept all his original video files!

[r0lZ]

You cannot simply replace (or delete) files in a DVD folder with the explorer! That cannot work on a standalone player, and even with some software players, as the IFOs are tied to the VOBs, and will be desynchronized!

Use PgcEdit's Replace VTST Titles function: select the main film of the old DVD, call the function from the File menu, navigate to the IFO of the new film, and answer yes when prompted to keep the original data.

Note that the new title must have the same number of cells (and chapters), or you will not be able to keep the right chapter points. Also, the new title must have been authored as a new DVD, with the IFOs and the VOBs.