Edit and Delete DVD Menu buttons with PGCEdit | 1/1 |
This is a short guide for anyone who wants to delete buttons from DVD menus after they have stripped audio, extras or any other content references in a DVD menu. It also shows how to copy and paste button commands, which can be useful on language selection menus. This guide should only take you a few minutes. Let's get right into it.
Introduction & Requirements
PGCEdit - Download this tool and extract it into any folder using WinRAR.
This guide assumes you already have your VIDEO_TS folder with all of your DVD files (VOB, IFO, BUP) inside it. This is "not" a comprehensive PGCEdit guide, it's a quick solution for manipulating the buttons of a pre-authored DVD menu, which comes in useful for many reason.
Why do this?
There are several reasons why you might wish to manipulate DVD menus. For example, if you have removed all the foreign audio on your DVD during a backup process, then you might want to make it impossible for anybody to select it as an option. You also may want to keep the button functionality, but instead of it referencing audio that has been stripped, it will result in the English audio being played.
Run PGCEdit
On your first run of PGCEdit, you may be a little bit overwhelmed by the amount of options you have right in front of your eyes, but don't worry we will only be using what we need and this task should not take you too long at all.
The first thing you need to do now is open a DVD. You can do this by either clicking the DVD icon in the button bar on the very left of the program, you can click File --> Open DVD or just hold down CTRL + O on your keyboard.
You will now see a file browser. Navigate to the folder that stores all of your DVD files (VOB, IFO, BUP etc.) and select it, click Open.
Opening a DVD
The first thing PGCEdit will do now is scan through your DVD, looking for navigational information so it can present it to you in an easy-to-use interface. As in the picture that accompanies this text, you have to wait until you have the option to click "Close", as the program will continue to scan for BOVs.
Once it is finished, click the Close button.
And then there was information
Don't be overwhelmed if a vast amount of code now pops up on your screen. You do not have to know what any of that means, I will guide you to complete your task without having to type anything at all.
All you need to do here for a moment is pay attention to the left of the program. As you can see the VTS menus are split up into sections (if you don't know what VTS means, don't worry). Look at the menu I have selected on the left (in gray) in my picture (click to enlarge). What you need to notice here is the "25b". This means there is 25 buttons in this menu.
Now I already know that since there are four others with 25 buttons, it is one of the menus for the four TV show episodes on my DVD. Because I don't want to have to put any raw commands into this article at all, I'm just going to suggest that you select any menu that has a number of buttons.
When you do that, look at the button bar op top of the program. Click the green "Menu" button and a new window will open, hopefully displaying a cell from your selected menu.
Editable Menu
Now you should see a new window pop up and you should see some kind of menu with buttons on it immediately. If not, don't worry, it could be in another cell (we will see later). Look at the picture beside this text. You can notice immediately that the buttons of the menu are already marked out for you. You can click on them and look at options you have to edit and manipulate them. Above where you can see my menu, you see the location of this menu on the DVD, mine reads..
VTSM 1 / LU 1 / PGC 2, PG 3, Cell, 3: VOB ID 20, Cell ID 1
Gibberish? Don't worry, but what is important is the "Cell, 3". It reads 3 while your will almost certainly read 1 because I changed it to 3 myself. You can this too if it is possible. That area where all of that information is, is in fact a button. Click it...
Cell selection
You may only have 1 Cell in this particular VTSM that you can edit, or you may have many. I hope it is not too time consuming but you will have to go through all the menu's and all the possible Cells to find where the language selection, or whatever you want to change, is - that is, unless you want to learn a ton about DVD structure first? Didn't think so!
Find the cell you want to edit (the menu with the button you want to delete or change). I have already found mine as you can see above, and I want to remove the option for commentary because it is no longer present on the disc. So let's delete a button...
How to delete a button
The first thing to do is simply to left click on the button you want to get rid of to select it (it will be green), then when its selected, right click on it and a Menu Editor window will open (for the love of God make sure you get the RIGHT button). It will look like the picture that accompanies this text. The first thing you will notice is that you can actually change the location of the button on the menu, but that's probably not a good idea (especially not a widescreen menu; if it is a 16:9 menu then you are better off just changing the command than deleting the button).
But let's not get too into it here (we'll keep that for another guide). If you want to Delete the button then simply click Button --> Delete Button. Now when you are done, click OK...
The button is gone?
Now you should be back at the Editable Menu Cell, only this time, as in my picture, the button should no longer be present. Of course, the button will still be visible but it will no longer be selectable by the remote control because as far as the DVD player will be concerned, it is not there. You could completely remove the button (in my case, the word "Commentary") if you wanted to, but that would require a lot more work and really it's not worth it.
So if you have more buttons to delete then you can go right ahead, just follow the same instructions again until you are satisfied. If you want to simply copy the command from one button to another instead of deleting it, then read on (for example, instead of me making the Commentary button go away, I could have changed the command so that it was the same for the English option, the result in the DVD player would be the standard English audio is selected either way).
If you want to simply delete all the buttons that no longer work anyway, then go ahead, and then click here to go to Save the DVD...
Copy and Paste a command instead of deleting
You should already know how to get to the menu that you want to alter. When you get there (like mine), then left click on the button that you want to "copy", so if you want to set all foreign audio as English for example, then left click on English. When it is selected (green), right click it and the Menu Editor Option will open up again as before...Copy Command
When the Menu Editor opens up, what you need to do this time is click Edit --> Copy command like I have in my picture. This will now copy the command of this button to the clip board. Once you have clicked it, it is on the clip board and now you simply must click OK.
Once you click OK, you will be back at the menu. Now, left click on the button you want to "paste" this command on to. For example, in my case I want my commentary button to simply select English audio because I stripped the commentary during backup, so now I left-click on Commentary because I want to paste the command for English audio onto it.
Once you have the button you want to edit selected (green), right click on it and the Menu Editor will load yet again...
Paste Command
Now what you need to do with the Menu Editor is click Edit --> Paste command, like I did in the picture. Once you do this you will have successfully copied the command of one button to another, meaning they will do the same thing when selected in a DVD player now.
Click OK to go back to your menu. Change and manipulate all the menus that you want now, and when you are ready, we will look at saving the DVD.
Save the DVD
Close any menu pages you have open out of your way when you are done until you are back at the main PGC Edit menu. Click File --> Save DVD (or CTRL + S). This save should be immediately complete because we have only edited the functionality of the menus, so we should not have to save the full DVD again. You should get a message confirming the save was successful.Make a Backup?
You may now be prompted to backup the edited files. I highly recommend you click Yes.Where the Backup is located
Go to your DVD folder where you have the DVD you just edited. You will notice there is now anew folder in there called PgcEdit_backup. Keep this folder just in case you get any problems playing the Menus on a DVD player after you burn. If you do receive problems, simply copy all the contents in the PgcEdit folder (CTRL + A to select all, and CTRL + C to copy) and then go back to the DVD folder and paste (CTRL + V, or right-click anywhere and click Paste) and say Yes when asked if you want to overwrite any files. This will put all the old functionality back into the menu.
Hopefully you will not have to make a backup though.
Finally
This guide set out to help you manipulate your menus quickly and easily, we hope we have accomplished that on this guide. If you have any questions or need help, please visit our Discussion Forums for assistance.
Version History
v1.0 - First published by Dela (23/03/2008)
Written by: James Delahunty
