Riping a DVD with deleted scenes restored

[M.AD]

OK, this is my new project. I need help figuring out how I am going to go about it.

I have a movie (for this example, Star Wars AOTC). What I want to do is put the movie onto a DVD-R, but insert the deleted scenes located on disk 2. What software would I use?

[mkelley]

You'll need editing software -- and the specifics of your goal will tend to dictate what software.

If you rip the movie to your hard drive you'll end up with an MPEG2 file which you can edit with an MPEG2 editor such as Wobble (around $150 I think). People say good things about it, but I'm still skeptical it can work around the two biggest problems of MPEG editing (frame accuracy and loss of quality). But assuming that works it would solve your biggest problem (although I'm not sure it will preserve the audio tracks -- someone with more experience can jump in and tell us whether DTS and/or Dolby 5.1 are preserved with Wobble.

I'm far more familiar with Premiere, which is an AVI (primarily) editor. But you'd have to convert the MPEG2 backwards to an AVI (I guess there are now a couple different convertors out there which will handle this) and for sure you won't preserve DTS or 5.1 (although Premiere Pro *might* be able to handle 5.1 -- I wouldn't hold my breath). Assuming you can do this you'll then export to an MPEG.

And then you author your disk using any of the DVD authoring tools available -- DVDLab is my choice (but won't support dual audio tracks).

Note that however you go it won't be seamless -- the best you can hope for will be a fade to black where the old stuff ends, a fade in from black for the new stuff, and then another fade out. I'd be *extremely* surprised if you can get sound to track well (you will probably have to fade it out at the end of the old stuff because the trend nowadays is to have the music swell over even scene changes).

Good luck -- you'll end up with an interesting movie (not one you'd probably want to watch more than once, but who would want to watch "Clones" more than once anyway?)

[M.AD]

Cheers for that

However my biggest hurdle is how to find the deleted scenes on the DVD - I know SmartRipper can rip chapters, but how can I pinpoint deleted scenes on a disk full of commentaries etc?

[mkelley]

I don't know how Wobble works, but assuming it works like every other video editor I've ever used, this isn't a difficult thing.

A video editor is like a text editor -- you take your assets (your video) and cut and arrange it any way you like. In the case of me doing in Premiere what you want to do, I'd simply rip both disks and translate everything into AVI. Whether it came in as two large AVI files (one for each disk) or a million small ones doesn't really matter. You just go through the clips until you find the one containing the portion you want -- if it's too long (say it's the whole disk) you just trim both ends until it's the size you want (you can scrub through the previews until you locate your in and out points).

If you've never used a video editor I suggest you try out Microsoft Movie Maker (free to XP) and get a feel for how the process works before you spend any serious money on a decent editor (like Vegas, Premiere or even Wobble). It may well turn out this will do all you need it to do. If nothing more it will give you an idea of what you need to have in your source.

[Gurm]

Well, assuming you REALLY want to go to the trouble, you could certainly demux the mpeg file before fiddling.

I mean, the highest quality (but most work) method might be something like:

1. Rip both DVD's to the hard disk.
2. Sort through them with an MPG-capable editor such as Wobble, or even with a DVD exploring tool in order to find the scenes you want. The deleted scenes are likely to be in their own title, so you just have to hunt around and figure out which VOB that title is in...
3. Audio - here's where it gets tricky. The deleted scenes are almost guaranteed not to be in DD/DTS. Virtually guaranteed. And I don't know of a DTS-capable editor. Sound Forge will do DD5.1, I think. Your best bet might really be to stick with the stereo/prologic/dolby surround 2.0 track. So:
3a. Demux both assets - the deleted scene VOB (which might have other crap in it as well) AND the main movie.
3b. Remember you're gonna have to be PRETTY DAMN EXACT with splice points, so get out a nice large legal pad (or open an excel sheet on your second monitor).
4. Use the best MPG decoder you can find to convert both pieces of video to UNCOMPRESSED AVI in the best color space you can come up with. Yeah, you're gonna end up with a weird-lookin' frame, or else throw away the extra 16:9 information. Oh well.
5. Fire up a good video editing program (such as Premiere) and splice away. NOW... here's the bad part. You're gonna find that deleted scenes come in all sizes and shapes. What REALLY sucks is that a lot of the time they come in full-frame, or a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT widescreen ratio than the original film. Yikes! It's gonna be ugly.
5a. WRITE DOWN ALL THE SPLICE POINTS, 'cuz you're gonna have to do the same to the audio, and you'll be flying blind with that.
6. Do the same with the audio.
7. Now you have two MASSIVE WHAMMA JAMMA files, audio and video, that are all spliced up. Fire up TMPGEnc or CCE and build a new DVD-compliant MPG2 file.
8. Re-author.
9. Burn.

It's not pretty, is it?

I really don't recommend it. What would I do?

1. Copy both discs with AnyDVD (to kill CSS and Macrovision).
2. Plug DVD player into VCR. Hit record.
3. Play movie to scene cut.
4. Pause VCR.
5. Swap disc, find deleted scene, unpause VCR.
6. Rinse, repeat.

*shrug* It's a lot easier.

- Gurm

[Trust_No_1]

To M.AD

Check out this thread:
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=153667&highlight=

Read my post on how I edited a DVD movie. I would suggest that you print out the thread. I edited the "The Phantom Menace". I did my own cut and it turned out very well. It certainly doesn't look like some hacked up piece. The only caveat is that it is Dolby 2.0 Audio. I edited with Premiere 6.5.

Note: The only editing tools I know of that natively support 5.1 are Vegas (I think) and Premiere Pro.

BTW, George Lucas always provides high quality deleted scenes. So you will not have a problem with poor quality. I only wish other directors would do the same thing.

Good luck!

[Gurm]

Trust_no_1:

I think the thing with Lucas is that he's only showing you the scenes he cut during the final cut, after all the effects were in. There are, I guarantee you, hours of unused footage.

Many other directors/producers don't ever "finish" their deleted scenes. If you see nasty grainy skanky deleted scenes, it's because they never made it to final edit and were never mastered.

Or in some cases the deleted scenes are culled from the secondary cameras, or from 8mm, or whatever. (Hours of extra footage on "Big Trouble in Little China that was like this.)

- Gurm

[ddlooping]

HI all.

M.AD, if you have a lot of space, and don't mind a small pause when the movie goes from original to deleted scenes (and vice-versa) you might want to try TMPGEnc DVD Author.

1) Rip the two DVDs to separate folders.

2) In DVD Author, create a new project.

3) Use "Add DVD Video" and select the folder containing the ripped Disc1 (I assume your "montage" will not start with a deleted scene).

4) Select the title and audio stream you wish to keep (keeping in mind that the audio stream has to be the same on the deleted scenes).
You can also try and extract the chapters information or create your own chapter points later (you can even add your own menu).

5a) Use "Chapter cut edit" and set the start frame at the point where you want to insert a deleted scene.
5b) Set the end frame at the end of the movie.
5c) Use "Cut" to delete this selection; click OK twice to return to the main window.

6) Use "Add DVD Video" again and select the folder containing the ripped Disc2.

7) Follow the same steps as 4) and 5), but this time cut-off everything but the deleted scene you want to insert.
Step 5 will have to be done twice; once to cut-off everything before the scene, and a second time to remove everything after the scene.
Click OK twice to return to the main window.

8 ) Use "Add DVD Video" and select the folder containing the ripped Disc1.

9) After having chosen the main title and the audio stream, use once again "Chapter cut edit".
This time, remove everything from the begining of the movie to the moment at which the previously added deleted scene ends.
Then remove everything from the point at which the next deleted scene will start to the end of the movie.
etc etc....

I'm sure you get the gist.

If you try this method, let us know how the result was.

[Gurm]

This is true. You could, theoretically, use ANY of the good DVD creation tools in this manner. Hadn't even thought of that. ROFL.

- Gurm

[M.AD]

Well I am a bit tight for space... about 10Gig on on partition and the same on another.

My first attempt has been binned and I didn't even start editing. I ripped out all of the deleted scenes on low quality, and the same with the main movie. I decided that the ripped movie looked crap, so I binned everything and will try ripping everything on a much higher quality.

The finding and converting the deleted scenes went well. I decrypted the whole DVD extras disk, and used DVDShrink to find the scenes - each were seperate, and saved the video and audio. Then I combined them with VirtualDub. I might have another go tomorrow

[mkelley]

Get yourself more storage -- what you're trying to do needs elbow room.

With 120gb going for less than $100 there's no excuse not to have enough disk space.