VSO Software Forum

I'm trying to rip a dvd with tv episodes and the software picks up each episode very well (shame it defaults to itialian audio and danish subtitles but anyway). Unfortunately after ripping a few episodes I noticed that it cutting off the last minute or so of the episode. For episodes with "to be continued", this is very frustrating! What's going on and how do I fix it?

I've already been through the options and while there is a "cut" feature, it is not being used. The converter itself is stopping short of the end of the episode due to no setting I can find :-( Help would be appreciated

I found a solution that works. By cutting out the credits manually at the end of each episode, the episode gets ripped correctly. Bizarly, I noticed that the final file size is nearly twice what it was. At least I can rip the episodes ok but the software has a little fine-tuning needed

I've watched many of the converted episodes over the last while and I finally have more info on the cause of this. It seems that the episodes that are most out of whack are ones with may deleted scenes. At a guess I'd day that the "track info" is the play time for the episode sans extra deleted scenes. However, if the deleted scenes are include in the same block of memory, simply skipped over where appropriate, then the play time of the episode no longer matches that of the actual data converted in the end result.

To test:
* find a tv series episode with a lot of deleted scenes.
* note time of main feature when played from disk as well as the final scene it finished on
* convert to mkv
* note stopping point of converted mkv. Time should be the same but the scene different.

The stopping point will be the length of the main feature but there'll be a corresponding amount of the credits trimmed off matching that of the play time of the deleted scenes. This does depend on how the deleted scenes are structured on the disk however. I think this less likely to occur in movie dvds.

What you mean by deleted scenes?

Specifically, I'm trying to convert my set of XFiles dvds (all 9 seasons worth, inc. movies) - it's a lot of data. However, on these discs, on some of them at least, there are the usual "special features" and "deleted scenes" you see sometimes. The deleted scenes are parts of episodes that were taken out of the episode when played normally.

I've noticed that these deleted scenes appear in the converted episode but do not appear (correctly) when played normally via dvd. I know I'm looking at the deleted scenes in the converted episode because I can a) compare with the dvd version and b) the scenes are usually noticably different (lacking music, colours are off, etc). When playing the episode from the dvd, the deleted scenes appear only when navigating explicitly to the "Deleted Scenes" menu off of "Special Features".

I conjecture that;
- Say the episode is 45 minutes in length, including credits *and* deleted scenes.
- The dvd menu option for Deleted Scenes jumps to a particular marker point and plays for x length of time to display it.
- When playing the episode via the dvd menu, there are marker points for where the episode exists on disc and these *skip* the deleted scenes in the full 45 minute episode track at the specific marker points. As far as the video player (e.g., VLC) is concered, the episode run-time is, say 42 minutes.

=>If we have, say those 3 minutes of deleted scenes, VSO Converter is converting the full 45 minute episode track but picking up the 42 minutes as the termination point and stops converting 3 minutes before the end. It's not using the same markers as a dvd player to skip over the deleted scenes.

Most of the time, the length of the deleted scenes is quite short and only eats into the credits. If the run time of the delete scenes is greater than the credits then it eats into the end of the episode as VSO Converter stops short.

I hope this description is clearer but if you need any more detail, let me know.

If you're looking to test with something I'd recommend getting a physical copy of "XMen 1.5" - or any movie where you can watch a "normal" version or "Theatrical" or "Directors cut" version on the same disc. The setup is such that you can play two versions - one without the deleted scenes and one with the deleted scenes in thier correct place. I think it uses the same marker system to skip over the deleted scenes instead of having two copies of the same movie on the same disc. This should provide a sample test bed for you to experiment with.

...and if this really is the cause of the problem (I'm guessing after all), I'd suggest that the fix is to provide an option where VSO Converter converts the deleted scenes or not. I can dream :-)