Hello, I am a newbie to dvd authoring. I would appreciate a few pointers to authoring home dvd movies. I would like to edit and shorten a wedding dvd. The photographer I hired did basic menu with only 1 -2 menu items for the 3 discs using apparently imac video editing. Looking at the discs I have 3 - 4 vob files per disc. I have pinnacle studio version 8 and am told it is the easiest to work with. The problem is it would not import vob files. I updated to version 8.3 and it could import avi, mpg files. A few guides on the web say dvd decryptor and smart ripper could do the conversion. With dvd decryptor I ended up with one mpg (mpeg 2 - ?layer 2 - d2v?) file for each vob file, but no ac3 sound files. With smart ripper I ended up with the missing ac3 sound file, but only 1 file for all vob files. I could import the d2v file into studio 8, but how do I import the ac3 sound file? Then there is the issue of synchonizing the single ac3 sound file to the other mpg files (obviously I have to offset the sound file to match the video on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th video/mpg file. From the web search it sounds like synchronization might be a problem with this approach. Is any of the mpg (layer 1 or 2) convertor that include sound in the actual file or is this inherent to all mpg format file? Could I convert to mpeg (1st generation) and work with it? if so which freeware does that? I understand mpeg is synonymous with VCD. Is there any loss of information with this conversion? I also found virtual-dub-mod which could convert the vob files to avi format (sound included in the file), and that studio 8 will accept this import (which seems to solve this problem of synchronizing sound to picture). Before I get too involve down this path, is there any loss of information with this conversion? I understand a vob file is essentially a combination of mpg file and ac3 sound file. It would seem reasonable to assume that conversion of vob file to mpg should be loss-less, and best approach. A few articles on the web say re-naming the vob file to mpg should do the trick, but no matter what I do, any renamed-vob file still is recognized as vob file, and not mpg file. Thanx for your input. -Michael
Ideally, you should not convert the VOBs to MPG but should edit them directly. Maybe using TMPGEnc or DVDLab. But if you do decide to convert so you can add fancy menus and effects, try to save as AVI instead of MPG (more space, but less lossy). You can use a program like ImTOO DVD Ripper to convert VOBs by chapter into AVI or MPG. http://www.imtoo.com/dvd-ripper.html It allows you to specify the bitrate of the output files too.
