What is the deal with the multiple cells? After Smartripping a film that is slightly too large, can you eliminate all of the cells except for cell one in each chapter to make the file smaller? What are cells? Some chapters have two and some have up to 5 cells. Are they all necessary or are they there for copy-proofing purposes only. I noticed one of the replies on my Signs posting said to eliminate a chapter and a cell and it worked for me.

Actually it was an either or proposition.
I suggested removing a cell from the end, or the last chapter. Some chapters only have one cell, and as you said, some have more. It is just a means of chopping a bit off the end, to make it to a size not requiring reencoding. As you discovered, this is easier, and less likely to cause grief with the authoring program, than using chopper XP or some of the other programs like that. But, sometimes the last chapter still has a bit of the movie in it, so a cell or two will do the trick.

I just still want to know what a cell is and why there are different amounts of them in each chapter.

A Cell is the smallest unit on a DVD. The amount of them is determined by the author, because each cell can have it's own ID, like a VOB comprised of many or few can. It is just how much control over the film for multi angles, or chapters , etc is desired.

So if I took out all of the cells in each chapter except for the first one, would I shorten the length of the film or just the M2V size. Would that be taking out parts of the film?

You would be removing part of the movie, so both is the answer. Think of it as a chapter is to the movie, so is a cell to a chapter. Just a small chunk.

In the "signs" post, I was essentially saying to cut a cell off the END of the movie where it wouldn't be missed, rather than a chapter. The last chapter of signs just happens to be like 5 seconds long, so it amounted to the same difference. I don't normally mess with the frontend of a movie, because that's where the mpeg2 header is, and likely to mess something up.

So a cell IS a part of the chapter, which is part of the VOB, or m2v. You can't remove cells without removing some of the movie. Like you can't remove cells from your arm, without removing some skin.

Thanks Templar, what do I have to do to become a veteran?

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