Hello everyone, I have been reading for the past few hours and I still need help. Here is my situation. I need to prepare a DVD presentation on the history of our community. It will be a DVD-9 presentation, because I need all the extra space I can get. The Dilemma - I have until Wednesday night, Thursday is the presentation. The Items - I have one of those vcr/dvd combos that converts the video to dvd. I have a total of 18 DVDs that chronicle 25 years of history. (hence the need for dvd-9) THe Problem - I decrypted my DVDs, so i have the Video_Ts folder for each DVD. I am TRYING to use DVD LAB PRO, but it doesn't allow for multiple clips into a movie. What is the best way to deal with all this ? Should i try and convert the vobs into an avi or something and then combine those files using something cheap like Movie Maker , and then import into Dvd Lab pro ? Also to mention, that this dvd is a docunmentary, so the audio of the "clips" I cut from the dvds, need to be a bit lower, because I will be recording an audio only file of the narration in hopes of overlapping it. (sorta like when they do translations on the fly in the news) If anyone can help me, or direct me, it would be greatly appreciated. I never worked with multiple clips and multiple dvds before. Thank you
You don't need to have everything in one clip. You can have them in several movies and then have them play one after another. There will be maybe a 1 second pause in between clips. As for audio, if you are going to be adding a vocal track, then you will need to strip the audio. You can use VobEdit, PGCDemux, or even DVDLab can demux the audio. Then you will need to convert the audio to wave. Use Besweet since it is fast. After that, import it to an audio editor like Sony Vegas. Next, import your recorded track. Now, adjust the audio level of the original track until the level you want. Preview and when satisifed render to a stereo AC3 file. If you have the HDD space (you will need lots), you can convert your DVDs to uncompressed AVI. This is best for editing. You can then import them to any software, merge, cut, whatever. Then encode to an mpeg-2. If you are cutting anything, make sure you do it together with the audio, otherwise you will have problems with the audio sync.
Is the only way to edit a dvd is to convert to avi ???? For example, what i am looking to do is the following. DVD 1 - i want clips from 2:00 - 4:00 mins, and then again from 9:00-12:00 I am doing this to about 18 dvds...I can't just directly work with it ? Is it possible to do this in dvdshrink ? or what is a good editor that would allow for this ?
You can work directly with the MPEG2 files in the DVD no problem. I use Cuttermaran for MPEG editing and it is also free. The problem is that it only works with MPEGs that have been demuxed. So basically you use Vob2Mpg then demux with with VobDubMod and edit away. Cuttermaran is very easy to use and all the above mentioned software is free. You van then create your DVD by putting the created MPEGs in order. I am sure there is an easier way but I have never had to edit 18 DVDs in 1 night.
I only said that uncompressed AVI is best for editing, but for what you are doing it won't make a big difference. I think your best bet will be to do as suggested to use an mpeg editor. Then you will probably have to re-encode the clips into either 1 file or just have them separate and know there will be small pauses in between clips. I don't think quality is an issue in your case, so use a Constant Bitrate encoding if you have to encode and make them all the same bitrate. This will reduce potential problems. If you have Mainconcept or don't mind a watermark on your video (the watermark appears when you use the Demo), you can have Mainconcept encode everything to 1 large file when you use the batch mode. Not sure which other encoders have this feature though. Oh, another thing, if you have the HDD space, you can just create one massive DVD out of all 18. Set chapter points at everything you want to keep. Then go into PGCEdit and remove the cells that you do not want. You can preview them before deleting the cells. After this, run it through FixVTS and it will remove all the unreferenced cells (the ones you removed). Some people find it easier to cut stuff out of a DVD than to edit video before hand and make a compilation. Either way will yield similar results.
