Editing an Existing DVD

Software & Apps Video Edit Software
#1

Need some help. I have home videoes - made from a DVD Camcorder (using small discs at the time). But I’ve copied them to standard size 4.7G DVDs.

I recently purchased Sony video editing software (SONY VEGAS Movie Studio) which is excellent, but only captures video directly form a source (the camera or existing Video Files - Mpeg / AVI / etc.), but not from my DVD drive (As the DVDs show up as VIDEO_TS files).

My goal is to take my existing DVD collection and make new DVDs (example - HOLLOWEEN which will contain 2004, 05, 06, etc… rather than have it on 4 different discs.) The software is awesome and does everything I want, but my problem is getting started.

I’ve used Pinnacle and Adobe Premier - and as I recall, they had the same issue. So, I am assuming that I have to use some software to convert it to a high grade VIDEO file and then use the editing software to do what I want and encode it back to a DVD.

Can someone help me here? Recommend any software? Thanks

#2

What you want is author existing video DVDs. This means that all material is already DVD compliant. You do not need to convert it to any other format. And you shouldn’t if you want to keep your original videos in the same quality.

When I want to do the same thing I do it in two steps:
a) I transfer all video content from the DVDs to the hard drive. You can easily find free programs to do that, e.g. DVD Decrypter.
b) I author the video files from the hard disk. Remember that they are already DVD compliant, thus no extra encoding has to be done. In this step I avoid programs that try to do everything for the user, e.g. Nero Vision Express, Pinnacle Studio, but I instead prefer programs that do not have the ability to re-encode the material, in order not to lose any quality. The difference may be invinsible but maybe not, depending on many factors, mainly the original video compression. This is the reason why I use TMPGEnc DVD Author 1.6 (quite old) for this. But you can find other (and free) alternatives as well.

I don’t know if SONY VEGAS let you do the authoring without re-encoding the material.

I hope I helped you. Since english is not my native language, I hope the above is readable and clear :slight_smile:

#3

If your Vegas program can import mpeg2 files, then all you have to do is take the mpeg2 video that already exists in your dvds out of their .vob container files in the Video_TS folder. One program that can do this is Vob2Mpg. It is easy to use, can work from the disks in the drive and will not degrade the quality of the video. http://www.videohelp.com/tools/VOB2MPG

Vob2Mpg only works with unencrypted dvds, but since these are home movies, that isn’t a problem.

#4

Thanks. - QUALITY is my main thing.
I have old HI-8mm tapes that I captured through FIREWIRE of my older son and those DVDs came out with awesome quality - I was able to edit and add content -menus and what not and the encoding was excellent - used Pinnacle Studio then.

Now, my DVD camera home movies don’t look as crisp as the HI-8mm converts do, so QUALITY is a must.

I’ll try the DVD Decrypter tonight. I’m not sure what the files output, but if the SONY VEGAS recognizes them, I’ll give it a shot - hopefully the Quality will be maintained.

#5

Thanks Kerry - Sorry a little dumb here.

Do the MPEG2 files maintain the quality?

My hope is to take the 10 min segments - link them together, add some nice menus / music and burn them back to DVD - at the Highest Res.

When you say “Unencrypted” means copy protected?

I can easly use NERO to make copys - which I cannot do to commercial release DVDs (but thats more to the fact that they are Dual Layer).

#6

I agree that Vob2Mpg is an excellent choice. Thus, you have your MPEG2 files without any quality loss from the original content. Then you can import them to SONY VEGAS. But I assume that this program will re-encode everything, so there will be a quality degradation. If this will be visible or not it is up to you to say :wink: . You cannot avoid quality loss in re-encoding an MPEG2 video. That’s why I proposed to use a program that does only the authoring part (add videos, menus, chapters etc) and not the encoding one.

#7

THANK YOU.

Worked just fine. Happy videoing guys…