Problems with Multi-Episode Discs

SweetOne69

I've had problems with Fab Player with TV Series and I'm having the same issue it the TV Mini-Series "IT".

It seems that Fab Player has in issue with playing all episodes when the episodes are "linked" together instead of one big "episode".

I use DVDFab to make backups. For TV Series, I use full disc copy. And for IT I did a main movie backup for both Side A and Side B and Merged them into 1 ISO.

When I try play them with Fab Player, I mount the ISO and when I select play or Episodes or in the case of IT just Play IT, when it finishes playing the first Episode (or the first half of IT) it just returns to the main menu (or with IT it just stops).

Everything works fine with both VLC and Windows Media Center.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

signals

If you used the Main Movie copy mode, it is possible that all episodes on a disc were not copied. Main Movie just looks for the longest title and assumes
that it is the main movie, which is correct 99% of the time but not for TV Episode discs. Full Disc however should work fine with Fab Player. I suggest you update to the current version of Player (3.1.0.2, here https://www.dvdfab.cn/mlink/download.php?g=MEDIA_PLAYER) and make sure you have it set for Menu Mode in Settings. Did you use DVDFab Merge mode to join the two sides of the disc, the ISOs?

SweetOne69

If you used the Main Movie copy mode, it is possible that all episodes on a disc were not copied. Main Movie just looks for the longest title and assumes
that it is the main movie, which is correct 99% of the time but not for TV Episode discs. Full Disc however should work fine with Fab Player. I suggest you update to the current version of Player (3.1.0.2, here https://www.dvdfab.cn/mlink/download.php?g=MEDIA_PLAYER) and make sure you have it set for Menu Mode in Settings. Did you use DVDFab Merge mode to join the two sides of the disc, the ISOs?
signals

Just to clarify, for TV Series I do rip them in Full Disc Mode. For IT, yes I used DVDFab Merge to join the ISOs from Side A and Side B into a single ISO.

Also I do have FAB Media Player in Menu Mode.

signals

The last time I used Merge mode it did not support original disc menus and I believe this is still the case. The playable content may be there but it will not be accessible from any sort of menu, do you see a menu when you play the Merged content in VLC?

SweetOne69

The last time I used Merge mode it did not support original disc menus and I believe this is still the case. The playable content may be there but it will not be accessible from any sort of menu, do you see a menu when you play the Merged content in VLC?
signals

No I don't. For the Merged backup of IT, I ripped each Side of the DVD using Main Movie Mode so there wouldn't be any Menus.

I may be confusing you because I included 2 issues that I believe our linked.

TV Series DVDs are handled 1 of 2 different ways when you select to "Play All Episodes".

1 way is it combines all of the episodes into 1 title. It treats the multi-episodes as 1 "movie" the "time bar" will be in the 2-3 hour range instead of 18-43 minutes.

The other way is just to link the individual episodes together and play them in sequence. The "time bar" will show the length of each episode instead of the combination of all episodes.

If I do a full dvd copy of a TV Series that is constructed in the first way, It will play properly with DVD Fab Player.

If I do a full dvd copy of a TV Series that is constructed in the second way, It will not play properly with DVD Fab Player. It only plays the 1st episode and goes back to the start menu. I can play each episode individually, but when I select play all from the DVD menu, it only plays the first menu.

I included the Merged copy of "IT" in this problem, as the construction of the Merged Title is the same as a TV Series constructed with the 2nd method.

signals

The approach to take with DVDFab depends on how the discs are authored (one Play All title vs. one title per episode) and whether you want the individual episodes to be selectable from a menu. Which is the goal for this project?

signals

UPDATE
I found an old set of series DVDs and tried it. There is a quirk in Media Player--it must be set to Menu mode to play these merged volumes correctly (even though they have no menus). In Simple mode, Player disregards the pre- and -post commands and just plays the titles in order of longest to shortest play time. If you set it for Menu mode, it reads them and plays all the titles back seamlessly in the correct order (as if you had selected Play All on a menu). This would probably be true for volumes made with Customize/No Menus mode as well.

SweetOne69

UPDATE
I found an old set of series DVDs and tried it. There is a quirk in Media Player--it must be set to Menu mode to play these merged volumes correctly (even though they have no menus). In Simple mode, Player disregards the pre- and -post commands and just plays the titles in order of longest to shortest play time. If you set it for Menu mode, it reads them and plays all the titles back seamlessly in the correct order (as if you had selected Play All on a menu). This would probably be true for volumes made with Customize/No Menus mode as well.
signals

I have media player set to Menu Mode and still have issues.

SweetOne69

The approach to take with DVDFab depends on how the discs are authored (one Play All title vs. one title per episode) and whether you want the individual episodes to be selectable from a menu. Which is the goal for this project?
signals

For TV Series my goal is to make a Full disc copy using DVDFab and when I play it back using Fab Media Player to have Media Player play all episodes when I select Play All from the Menu no matter how the disc is authored. Right now it will only play 1 episode when the DVD was authored using the one title per episode format.

signals

I have media player set to Menu Mode and still have issues.
SweetOne69

Sorry, I can't duplicate this problem using Merge mode[quote=SweetOne69;n341550]For TV Series my goal is to make a Full disc copy using DVDFab and when I play it back using Fab Media Player to have Media Player play all episodes when I select Play All from the Menu no matter how the disc is authored. Right now it will only play 1 episode when the DVD was authored using the one title per episode format.[/quote]If the disc has a Play All menu option, Player should play them all if they were made with Full Disc (not Merge) mode and Player is set for Menu mode and DVDFab Pathplayer is not set to 'Jump to first title' in Common Settings->DVD->PathPlayer. If you just want the episodes to play with no intervention, use Customize/No Menus mode.

SweetOne69

Sorry, I can't duplicate this problem using Merge modeIf the disc has a Play All menu option, Player should play them all if they were made with Full Disc (not Merge) mode and Player is set for Menu mode and DVDFab Pathplayer is not set to 'Jump to first title' in Common Settings->DVD->PathPlayer. If you just want the episodes to play with no intervention, use Customize/No Menus mode.
signals

With Pathplayer do you mean "Jump to first Menu"?

Under the Pathplayer Settings for Change DVD Playback there are 2 options: "Jump to first Menu" or "Jump to Main Menu"

I currently have "Jump to First Menu" selected, should I change it to "Jump to Main Menu" or should I disable the "Change DVD Playback" feature?

signals

The PathPlayer navigation options are
Jump to First Menu (which is usually but not always the Main Menu) and
Jump to Main Title (Main Movie or first episode of a series disc, usually the longest one)
If I do Full Disc, I always use the 'First Menu' option, it skips all the crap at the front of a disc.

If you are Merging two discs (or a two-sided disc) I would turn the PathPlayer navigation off completely, but make sure you have the episodes in the correct playback order (you can click and drag them up or down), since this is the order in which they will play. If the discs you are Merging are DL originals, remember it will require visible amounts of compression to make them fir on a single DL disc, there is no free lunch in this.

If you want a menu, use Customize/keep original menu or Full Disc if the menu has the Play All function that you want.