MPEG-2 to AVI?

[hip_school_preppie]

Hi Folks,

I wanted to see if there was anything wrong with this process that I'm doing. To give a little background, initially I'm transferring old VHS tapes to DVD using Sony Vegas 8. I create an AVI that I then convert to DVD burnable files with menus and such in DVD Architect.

I have a couple of burned DVD's that I would like to throw back into Sony Vegas to make a few editing adjustments and currently I'm using Nero 4 to capture the DVD movie to MPEG-2 (I don't see any options to capture to an AVI). I then take the MPEG-2 and load it into Sony Vegas, make my edits and render to AVI. Then I can go back to DVD Architect and create another slew of burnable DVD files with the updated AVI.

Is there a better way to this, or am I really losing any quality from the original DVD by going through this process? I tried a DVD to AVI method using the DivX codec but I don't like how it imposes it's logo in the beginning of whatever you capture.

Thanks for any thoughts!

-CW

[redwudz]

You can turn off that Divx logo. It's in the Divx settings. In 'Start', click on the Divx codec in 'All Programs', then the 'Decoder Configuration Utility>Toolbar' and uncheck, 'Show Divx logo watermark'.

If you have DVD files already, you don't want to convert them to another codec, then back. That will lose quality and waste time. One way is to extract the MPEG-2 files from the DVD with VOB2MPEG, then edit that MPEG file with a MPEG editor, then re-author that to DVD. I usually do that with GUI for dvdauthor, but any authoring program should work. There will be no quality losses this way except from your edits.

Some MPEG editors: MPEG-VCR, VideoReDo. They are fairly inexpensive and have trial versions. MPEG StreamClip, which is freeware, may also work, though I haven't used it.

[hip_school_preppie]

Thanks redwudz - so I understand, use VOB2MPEG, then Vegas to edit the MPEG-2 and then render/save my changes to MPEG-2 again (instead of going MPEG-2 to AVI) and then load the new MPEG-2 into DVD Architect to add back my menus?

[guns1inger]

Vegas will expand mpeg-2 on the timeline and force a complete re-encode. If your edit needs are modest, have a look at VideoRedo or Womble, or one of the free alternatives such as cuttermaran or mpeg2cut2. These can make simple to more complex edits (womble can do x-fades etc) with minimal to no re-encoding.

[hip_school_preppie]

I'm actually using the NeatVideo plugin to clean up the video so I kinda need to use Vegas.