editing footage from DVD and more ...

[therandelman]

hello everyone!

what i want to do is to capture footage from a DVD, re-edit it and burn it down to DVD again!
what is the best way to grab the footage? should i convert the mpeg2 file to avi and then back again? edit the mpeg?
how can i ensure best quality?

another thing: when converting eg. DivX AVIs to DVDs, i find that the eventhough the filessize is much bigger, the quality is far worse... what's the best way to handle that?

hope you can help me.
thx,
trm
:shrug:

[therandelman]

anyone?

[robotfunk]

any conversion to a new codec will degrade quality , even rerendering to same codec will do this.

depending on whether the DVD is protected or not you will need to use a naughty rip app, this step won't degrade the video if you are prepared to put 9 gb on your hd.

Now you have mpg video that you can edit with an app like mpeg2cut (there are others) , without recompressing. The resulting mpeg2 files can be authored and burned to DVD.

The only thing I haven't found yet is an app to make loops by repeating a cut fragment without rerendering/-encoding.

[asterix]

If you want to keep full quality your better off using a hardware solution. Software solutions will always lose quality one way or another. Else Capture in Mpeg2 format, edit in Mpeg2 format, and save in Mpeg2 Format. Reputable cards will be able to port into programs like adobe premier pro so the hardware can doing all the rendering. But they are pricey.

[asterix]

Sorry Jilt you just snuck that post in.
Im pretty sure Sony DVD architect 2.0 will do that and rip directly to ISO, vob or dvd.

[gpvillamil]

There are lots of tools that edit MPEG2 losslessly.

For example, the Womble MPEG Video Wizard (http://www.womble.com/products/) can read DVD VOB files directly, it has a very good and quick interface for clipping out bits and making one big MPEG or several individual files. It has a "smart" system to avoid re-encoding, it will basically identify which bits have the same framerate/resolution and re-encode only the clips that differ. It will do transitions between clips, and only encode the transitions, leaving the rest untouched.

Video ReDo (http://www.videoredo.com/) is similar, though simpler.

The TMPGenc MPEG Editor (http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/index.html) has similar functions, though I find the clip editing mechanism a bit cumbersome for making multiple edits.

[alangeering]

I tend to use VOB-edit to demultiplex the different streams on the DVD and save as seperate ".m2v" and ".ac3" (mpeg2 video and AC3 audio respectively).

I then import the files into DVD Architect, play with them and burn to a DVD once again.

I usually achieve all this without any recompression. Only demultiplexing and then multiplexing which is a lossless process that just re-orders data.

Alan

[therandelman]

thx for all your advice! these are quite usefulll hints! :yep:
i'll have to mix parts of the DVD with new created clips (mostly avis i guess) .. maybe it would be better to render the avis to mpeg2s and then edit it with one of the progs u recommended (Architect, Womble) ... still to decide... well, anyway, thx agin
trm