Thumbnail an unencrypted DVD

Thumbnailing an unencrypted DVD is conceptually no different than Thumbnail a multi-part video but since it might be a popular thing to do this section will discuss some additional details.

Basic operation

To demonstrate thumbnailing a DVD I used DVDStyler on his_girl_friday.mpeg to create a single title DVD. It created the following files in a VIDEO_TS directory:

C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\dvd\VIDEO_TS\
   VIDEO_TS.BUP
   VIDEO_TS.IFO
   VIDEO_TS.VOB
   VTS_01_0.BUP
   VTS_01_0.IFO
   VTS_01_0.VOB
   VTS_01_1.VOB
   VTS_01_2.VOB
   VTS_01_3.VOB
   VTS_01_4.VOB

You can find the MediaInfo info on the VTS_01_*.VOB files here.

By default, thumbnails for a video are written to the original directory of that video. If you are generating thumbnails directly from VOB files that reside on a DVDROM drive, you have to use the -o, --outdir option to tell CLAutoThumbnailer where to write the thumbnail pages.

In addition, you have to figure out which “title set” you want to thumbnail. Title sets look like VTS_TT_NN.VOB where TT is the title number and NN is the part within that title. Normally you’ll want to do the largest title set and it is also normally the first one, so you’ll specify VTS_01_*,VOB. If you are unsure, with an unencrypted DVD, you can just watch the first few seconds of each title set (skip the 00 parts since those are for the DVD menu), to figure out what title you want.

Finally, in the special case of VOB files only, since the actual file names aren’t very informative, CLAutoThumbnailer will add the output directory name to the filenames.

If the above VIDEO_TS had been written to a DVD+R/DVD-R disc, you would therefore have to do something like:

cd "C:\His Girl Friday (1940)"
clatn -o . e:\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_*.VOB"

Even when the VOBs reside on a hard drive (a much faster operation), you’ll still probably want to put the thumbs in a different directory, so do:

cd "C:\His Girl Friday (1940)"
clatn -o . "C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\dvd\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_*.VOB"

which will tell you:

Processing C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\dvd\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_1.VOB ...
Processing C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\dvd\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_2.VOB ...
Processing C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\dvd\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_3.VOB ...
Processing C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\dvd\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_4.VOB ...
0:03:59 Total time to create AVFileSet.
Thumbnails Range   0:00:05.000 -> 1:31:39.298
Thumbnail Duration 1:31:34.298 (Total 1:31:44.298)
OutputDirectory is "."
Auto adjusting aspect ratio from 1.500 to 1.333
Generating 144 104x78 thumbnails on a 12x12 Overview page.
0:01:18 to create Overview thumbnails.
144 thumbnails created. 0.55 seconds / thumbnail.
Generating 552 325x244 thumbnails every 10 seconds on 35 4x4 Detail pages.
0:04:04 to generate Detail page thumbnails.
551 thumbnails created. 0.44 seconds / thumbnail.
0:09:23 overall time to process thumbs - vts_01.dvd.

0:09:26 Total time.

Notice that CLAutoThumbnailer automatically skips VTS_01_00.VOB which is just the menu page for the title and not part of the movie. Here’s a sample of the generated thumbnail pages:

“His Girl Friday” DVD Overview Thumbnail Page

“His Girl Friday” DVD First Detail Thumbnail Page

“His Girl Friday” DVD Last Detail Thumbnail Page

The information added to the thumbnail pages of multi-part files is discussed in Thumbnail a multi-part video. However, since media players are either not able to jump to a specific time, or are able to jump to the time within a DVD title (rather than the time from the start of a VOB file within a DVD title) this additional information isn’t particularly useful for DVDs.

Skipping the credits of a DVD title

Of course, it’s possible to use Command-Line Options to customize the thumbnail generation of DVDs. For example, here’s how you would skip the credits on the Overview thumbnail page:

clatn -o . -i 0 -s 0:0:48 -e 1:31:07.184 "C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\dvd\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_*.VOB"

with this result:

“No Credits” Overview Thumbnail Page for “His Girl Friday” DVD