DVD Ripping, editing and Reburning with Maximum quality

[reccos]

I'm trying to rip a few scenes off a couple of Christmas show DVD's, re-edit them to fade between each other and hold a freeze frame, etc., and then burn the final back to a DVD without losing a bunch of quality (I need this to be blown up on 20' projector. So far I have used MactheRipper to rip the chapters that I need and I get relatively small .vob files (are they the full quality?). Secondly I have tried to convert those files to a .mov or compatable file for use in iMovie (This is where I believe the main quality loss is, also I have FinalCut Express but I'm not that proficient in it). After the editing then I export to iDVD and burn (I've also been told that the type of DVD could affect the quality as well, I was using Verbatim for the preliminary copies, but I'll probably use a higher quality Apple DVD). If you have any suggestions at all I would appreciate hearing them.

Thanks All!
reccos

[Bjs]

Any time you shift from one format to another quality is always going degrade by some value

This will certainly appear where any transition or effects takes place ... and projected to a 20' screen ... one can only guess thats' what is going to happen and that ' means "feet" ... it's going to be noticeable

All you can do is limit the amount of processing to generate these effects ... after all, it's dvd to dvd, no up scaling involved other than when being projected

Q1: Cut / slice vob = no difference (only when re-encoding takes place for any reason)
Q2: Verbatim ... quality ... is there any other choice

[reccos]

With what programs can I edit the .vob? I am only using clips up to a couple of minutes and they are no more than 200 mb and when I view them with VLC player it appears that quality has already been lost. Perhaps I need a better DVD ripper?? Can you suggest?

[Baldrick]

Try mpeg streamclip.

[Bjs]

Dvd quality being lost when playing back ... doesn't happen I afraid

Remember dvd has a few defined aspect ratio's and I think vlc by default plays using aspect ratio ... so, 720x576 (pal) will play in a window drawn at 720 x 576 "pixel's" ... if you play it in full screen on any computer then this is where things start to become more noticeable

Ie ... 720 x 576 (pal dvd) vs 1920 x 780 pixels (users screen resolution)... known as up scaling ... take into account "gpu" and "drivers" are foremost in any video process

As for editing, you might try jahshaka, or avidemux ... which can open other options such as converting dvd to another format which is more widely accepted by other applications

Avid Free DV ... gone a while back now was pretty good ... so will throw in ZS4 ... mac, windows and linux supported

[terryj]

You're wanting to add fancy iMovie transitions ( fades and dissolves)
from a finalized format ( heavliy compressed) and expect to have good quality?

not going to happen.

You would need the original footage to do so.

Whenever you take a finalized format like Mpeg-2,
which has been heavily compressed to get the footage
to fit onto your DVD, and you want to take it back
to what it originally should have been in,
in this case DV Stream, as Bjs has pointed out,
you are going to take a quality hit, because lost/thrown out
pixels can't magically re-appear. Bits thrown out,
can't magically re-appear.

If you can live without any fancy fades,
and can just live with simple cuts,
then as Baldrick suggested, using MpegStreamclip, which
will enable you to not further degrade your quality, and
just provide you with simple cuts/edits to the existing
finalized format.

But if you have to have those cross fades and dissolves,
and you wan tthe best quality, you need to start over from
scratch, from your original source material.
Otherwise, you'll further degrade your quality, transcoding
from mpeg-2 to dv stream and then back again to mpeg-2
with the cross fades and dissolves.