Authoring/copying DVD-RAM discs

[Trollheart]

Hi guys.
Looking for some help here (again!)
Have the TRIAL verion of TMPGenc DVD Author, but getting an error when Outputting: something like "Illegal floating decimal point calculation" or something similar. This then stops the Output procedure. Now, I've seen there's a fix for this, but it hinges on settings in the Environment tab, and on the Trial version there are none, so I assume that only applies to the full version. I do intend to get the full version once my trial runs out, but I need to know that it works first.
I'm just trying to author programmes on DVD-RAM discs (Star Trek/Red Dwarf/Scrubs etc) and burn then onto DVD-R. This seems to be the only proggy that can do this (I've tried DVD Decrypter et al, but although the disc burned the DVD recorder would not recognise it: it's a Panasonic DMR-HS2).
Any help on sorting TMPGenc, or any suggestions for other proggys (pref share or trialware) very welcome. DVD-RAM is great, but it's driving me crazy! Surely others must have this problem? You get your programmes onto DVD-RAM to free up hard disk space, then you need to put them onto DVD-R to read them in ordinary DVD players. Can't be that hard, can it?
Thanx again for any help, and sorry for whining all the time...
Troll

[vioxx]

Do you just want to bacp up your DVDs?

If that is all you want, why make the problem so complicate.

You don't need to 'authoring' the DVD before back up to DVDR.

3 Steps back up with freeware:

(1) Rip to HDD with DVD Decrypter

(2) Shrink DVD-9 to DVD-5 if needed with DVD Shrink

(3) Burn to DVDR with DVD Decrypter

[gshelley61]

DVD-RAM is sort of a pain in the ass. Even when you get your various applications to accept and import the .VRO video files, it takes a real long time and is buggy sometimes. I mostly record and finalize with DVD-R's for analog videotape footage and laserdisc transfers with my Panasonic E50 nowadays. They're cheap enough to do that and so much easier to deal with. I rip the .VOB files to HD (much faster than with .VRO files), frame-accurately edit with Womble MPEG Video Wizard and then author the final DVD with TMPGEnc DVD Author.

Freeware that can do simple I frame cutting and joining of MPEG files... Cuttermaran and MPEG2Schnitt. You can author for free with IFOEdit.

VOB's, VRO's.... they're just MPEG2 files with a different extension. If you want, once you've saved either type of file into your HD you can simply rename them with the .MPG extension and that usually works out fine.

[Sam Ontario]

My 3 steps are:

1. Record with DVD+RW
2. Rip and crop to HDD with DVD Shrink 3.1.7
3. Burn to DVDR with DVD Shrink or Nero

If I need to combine 2 or more captures, then
2a. Combine with DVD Shrink V3B5.

A straight forward method for general consumers, a lot easier then get my Philips DVDR75 to display the correct TV channel or the input on my TV the 1st day I bought the DVDR75 when inserting a blank disc, despite of reading thru the manual, pressed all keys on the remote and tried every feature on the screen display!

[gshelley61]

Unfortunately, Panasonic DVD recorders to not burn DVD-RW or +RW. Only DVD-RAM and DVD-R

[Trollheart]

Thanks again for all the help guys.
A few points should be clarified though:

1. Why do I need to reauthor? Well, I have, for instance, some episodes of Star Trek on one DVD-RAM, some on another, various documentaries spread over a few, and I want to put them together on a DVD-R. This, I think, means I need to reauthor?

2. DVD Decrypter: I've used this to rip/burn the DVD-RAM to a DVD-R, and it worked fine, except that my Panasonic couldn't then read the resultant disc, so failure there. Even if this had worked, that wouldn't have got round point 1

As it goes, I have 6 full DVD-RAM discs, content of which I need to transfer to various DVD-Rs. Normal authoring programs don't seem to be able to either see or deal with DVD-RAM content, so I need one that does. TMP was looking good till I started getting that error. I'm going to try DVD-LAB next. Any further suggestions welcome.

I'm not well up on IFO editing. Someone mentioned IFOEdit: any ideas on that? I think I have that. Then there was VOB EDit? Ah, it's all too confusing! I'm not looking to be a big DVD author or a whiz at it, I just want to transfer my DVD-RAM recorded content, put it the way I want it, maybe do a LITTLE editing (tidy up commercials, pop a menu on etc) and burn the result to a DVD-R that will work in most DVD players.
H
E
L
P
!

Thanx guys!
Troll

[gshelley61]

Try saving the .VRO files to your hard drive first, like in a new folder on your desktop, for instance. With a 2 hour DVD-RAM it will probably take about 20-30 minutes or so. Once they are saved to your hard drive, rename the files with the .MPG extension. Now your MPEG2 video files will at least have a relatively universal file extension. Load the saved files with the new .MPG extension from your hard drive into TMPGEnc DVD Author and perform your simple edits, chapter insertion points, etc. and create a simple DVD to see if it works. If it doesn't, there may be some problem with the .VRO files to begin with.

Arranging MPEG files (and/or cutting and joining them, etc.) for the purpose of creating a compliant DVD-Video for playback in standard DVD players is authoring. It does not mean re-encoding the video files and losing any quality in the process. TMPGEnc DVD Author is considered one of the better and easier programs to get this done, but there are others. DVD-RAM is not recorded and authored in the DVD-Video format... it is DVD-VR which is a different format. Still MPEG2, but a bit different.

IFOEdit is freeware that can author a simple DVD, but you have to demux the finished .MPG file into separate video and audio files first.

[Sam Ontario]

Unfortunately, Panasonic DVD recorders to not burn DVD-RW or +RW. Only DVD-RAM and DVD-R

My 3 steps still applicable if DVD-R is used, only with consequence of throw away the DVD-R afterwards or a master/raw copy to be stored.

BTW, the 3 steps usually finish in 20 minutes, i.e. just finish a dvdr ready for DVD players before finish copying the .vro to HDD from RAM!

[gshelley61]

Yeah, that's why I gave up on using DVD-RAM a long time ago. It's too cumbersome to deal with. It's intended purpose is to be used as a mini HD for time shifting wth the DVD recorder.

Trollheart has 6 DVD-RAM's to transfer and hopefully after that he'll go to recording on DVD-R to avoid aggravation and save time... lots of time!

[Trollheart]

Tried a few things last night, not surprisingly, no luck.
Tried copying the VRO file or VOB file onto HDD, but although there's plenty of space on the HDD, Windows XP says there isn't. Perhaps these can't just be dragged and dropped?
Tried using DVD Shrink, but it exited with errors.
Tried TMPGenc again, same floating point error.
Downloaded DVD-LAB today, going to try that tonight.
As far as another comment made, I can't really give up using DVD-RAM, as since I record a fair bit on the DVD Recorder I can't always spare the 4 hours to transfer programmes to a DVD-R, and even if I can, once they're there they're stuck there, no editing or moving possible. Not to mention that with DVD-RAM I can use high-speed dubbing, which is FAST!!
So, still looking for a way out. I tried IFOEdit but was completely lost. I'm also going to try Smartripper and see if that's any better.
Is there a prog that will rip the VRO files to my HDD to allow me to rename to MPG and then author them? I THINK I could do this on the DVD-RAM disc itself, but I'm a bit scared of overwriting the orignal files and bollixing the whole thing up!
Ah well, the seach continues.
Any more info or help gratefully received...
Thx guys
Troll

[Sam Ontario]

Tried a few things last night, not surprisingly, no luck.
Tried copying the VRO file or VOB file onto HDD, but although there's plenty of space on the HDD, Windows XP says there isn't. Perhaps these can't just be dragged and dropped?
Troll

Did you clean up your recycle bin?

[Trollheart]

Hi Sam.
I don't think that would matter: the VRO file was reported at 4 GB and I had 30-odd GB on the HDD, with or without the recycle bin...
Troll
PS ANyone any views on DVD Movie Factory? Thinking of trying that out

[ZippyP.]

Tried TMPGenc again, same floating point error.l

In your first post you said TMPGEnc DVD Author (AKA TDA) and in this post you said TMPGEnc (AKA TMPG-Encoder). Two very different programs, so which one is it? One will encode mpegs and the other will author and burn your mpegs as a DVD.

You need TDA. I've never heard of the "floating point error" in TDA.

[Trollheart]

It's DVD Author: sorry, I was just shortening it.
Fixes on this dont work as the setting mentioned aren't in the trial version, so far as I can see (it happened again this morning, only got to 1 minute of output then crashed with the floating point error: maybe it's the disc, I'll try another one tonight...)
SOrry for the confusion
Troll

[Trollheart]

Hi again guys.
Tried a few other discs, same result, with an additional error "Stream processing?"
Had a thought though: would the fact that the DVD-RAMs were recorded in Hi-Speed Dubbing make a difference? I thought that maybe the process of dubbing faster than normal might make the files unrecognisable, and maybe lead to these errors?
Any help appreciated, again!
Thx guys
Troll

[gshelley61]

Maybe. I'm not sure what to tell you about the problems you are experiencing with DVD-RAM.

I can say that I've made a few DVD-RAM recordings that played fine in the recorder and even with software DVD players (PowerDVD, for example), but then were buggy and unusable when trying to edit them on the computer.

[Tearren]

-Trollheart

You don't need a special program to copy the .VRO to the hard drive of your computer. If it is not working, something probably is not right with your setup. I copy the .VRO file to the computer's HD all the time. Did you empty the recycle bin as someone suggested earlier? Do you have the drivers install to recognize DVD-RAM? Can you copy files to the DVD-RAM disk? DVD-RAM should work just like a computer's HD, but it is on a disk. Maybe you need to update the drivers?

Here is my process, maybe this will help you some. But first you will have to get the .VRO to the HD.

First don't do any editing of video on the DVD-RAM itself, this would cause audio/video sync problems in the future.

There are several ways to do this, here is my process...
1) I copy the .VRO from the DVD-RAM disk to hard drive
2) Re-name the .VRO file to .MPG
3) Using DVDLab, I demultiplexed the audio (in DVDLab) before inserting the video and audio into the "Movie Menu"
5) Prepare Format of DVD (Play button, Background, Chapters etc, Links to buttons, etc.)
4) "Compile the dvd"
5) Burn the DVD with CopytoDVD

Also if you are doing any editing on a standalone recorder from the HD you can't highspeed dub to DVD-RAM, you would have to record at 1x (the speed at which it plays) and force a re-encode.

I think you can do some editing with MPEG2VCR, others do but I have never done that before.

You may also want to check this out:

http://thewholewideweb.com/forum/default.asp?CAT_ID=7

Tearren

[Trollheart]

Thx Tearren.
I don't think I emptied the recycle bin: does that matter if I KNOW there's enough space?
I think you hit it on the head with the high-speed dubbing, as I had srt of sussed myself. If doing this confuses the proggy (ie Tmpegenc DVD Author) then I'll try re-recording the content back onto the HDD of the HS2, dub it in normal mode and see if TDA still gives me errors.
Thinking about it, this might be why the file won't transfer: it it's recorded at highspeed, although its 4 GB, maybe the computer is reading the uncompressed size, which would be a lot bigger, and trying to move that file?
Well anyway thanx. I'll spend another weekend going through various options and see how I do.
Thx again
Troll
PS that link is dead...

[Sam Ontario]

Thx Tearren.
I don't think I emptied the recycle bin: does that matter if I KNOW there's enough space?
...

Simple arithmatic tells me that Windows reported no. of GB free space - No. of GB in recycle bin = available GB for your .vro files. The answer is just one clip away!