How can I reverse the authoring process to reauthor a DVD?

[ToddB]

I would like to be able to author a DVD, with several movie clips, and create a menu but later rip it apart and maybe update and create a new menu for it.

My main question is, is there a process that can demux the vobs into their original state? Or once a vob is created, do the individual clips lose there identity (when I have tried demuxing the vob, the clips all run together)?

I'm looking for a way to easily reedit my existing DVDs without having to keep the original mpegs around filling up my hard disk. I don't mind saving the project file for my authoring part (I use DVD-Lab), I could always easily relink the video to my existing menu links.

Thanks for any advise.

[JohnWestbury]

Me too. An easy way to go from VOB to MPEG would solve my problems.

[Brehmstein]

I am unsure if this is what you want, but I do a similar "re-edit" of my homemade movies. I use DVD author software that support the DVD+VR format. Read here for details on this format:

http://www.dvdplusrw.org

Hopefully this helped

PS: I have used Ulead Movie Factory 2 and I am currently giving NeroVision Express 2 a chance. (Both support the DVD+VR format).

[Drakng]

To both of you, the answer is YES, use tmpgDVD Authoring to extract the vob to mpg and then re-author

[Baldrick]

Tmpgenc dvd author can import dvd-video(the VIDEO_TS folder) and then can you recreate menus and such. I think you can open vobs directly with dvd-lab also.

[SLK001]

A .VOB file is just a .M2V video file and an audio file (.AC3, .LPCM, .MPA, etc) with a padding stream interleaved. Any demultiplexing program will be able to strip out what you want.

[Vejita-sama]

You can just demux the VOB files to their original elementary streams. To make the process a little easier go to http://www.doom9.org and look at the guides for 'The Big3'. This is a process to backup DVD9 -> DVD5 by: demuxing everything, re-encoding with CCE, re-author with scenarist.

The part you (might) care about is the demuxing. It's setup so that each VTS ends up in it's own dir, and it demuxes everything. Normally you have to demux each VTS one at a time. This automates the process.

[ToddB]

I'll have to take a look at tmpgenc, but I really like DVD-Lab at this point. I have no problems demuxing them, it's just that I'm left with mpegs that if where originally separate, have a time code that throughout the demux vob that always restart back at zero at the beginning of the original clip. I think this would screw up my chapter points if i recreated it. In any case, the more manual steps of cutting mpegs and audio files I would think it would decrease my changes that it would be successful.

Thanks for the input.

[dnetzero]

There is a freeware tool called vobedit which can demux (extract) either the video stream (mpeg2) or audio stream (ac3, LPCM, etc). vobedit can also merge and renumber the vob id (not cell id) for merging VOBs from different DVD. There are guides on how to use this tool but it basically very straightforward. Get a free copy from
www.ifoedit.com or www.doom9.org

To split an existing DVD or to extract complete titles or menus, check out this site
www.dvd-replica.com