Adding photos to a DVD project after finishing

[tmh]

OK, my brother made a DVD from camcorder DV clips and some photos mixed in (I think jpeg). He used Pinnacle Studio 8, I think. Now he wants ME to take the DVD and make a new project with a few more photos added in and some sections deleted. Obviously, this would be easy if he had ever saved the avi file after his final edit, but no, we only have the DVD.

So how do I take the VOB files, add some new photos, get the photos properly encoded for the DVD, add them into the middle of the video, author and burn the new video to DVD?

Another question - the video on his DVD is fairly poor quality in parts as it seems he sped up the footage to fit it all into 1 hr. Is there any way to edit this footage to a slower speed and see if it looks better? Again, he does NOT have anything but the finished DVD - no source files because he crapped out his hard drive.

Last question - why do I have to fix HIS mess? oh....I guess that's not for this forum....

[guns1inger]

You need to use a tool such as IFOEdit to demux the video and audio back to streams. Load these into your editor and adjust/edit as required. If the editing is simple cuts, look at the mpeg editors such as WombleVCR or VideoReDo. This may save you re-encoding too much. As you are adding photos into the middle of the movie. you will also have to adjust the audio to the new length, or create a new audio track.

Chances are you will have to build new menus etc from scratch when you author the new footage for burning.

[tmh]

If my Audio is just a soundtrack, can't I cut the portion I need to change then just creat a new section, encode then "splice" it back into the same spot?

Also, I know there are several mpeg2 editing products - how do I get the VOB files back to mpeg2?

Thanks

[guns1inger]

IFOEdit will demux the vobs back to audio and video files. The video will be mpeg-2. I'm not sure I understand what you are saying in your first paragraph. If you are just replacing a section with a new section, and the overall length is not going to change, then an mpeg-2 editor should be able to fdo this without reencoding the whole lot.

[tmh]

Thanks gun. What I'm now not clear on is just how I encode part of a video only. Do I seperate the section I want to change then add in the photos to that section, then encode that section only to mpeg2? Won't part of it then be re-encoded? Is this OK?

When I scan the new photos can I just scan them as mpeg2? I've always used jpeg, but I know there are many choices when using photos. If i can, then do I need to encode or just re-author, as I would have all mpeg2 ?

Thanks again

[guns1inger]

I haven't seen anything that can scan still pictures to mpeg-2. What you would need to do is add these to the timeline in your editor as stills, and stretch them to the duration you need. I know Premiere and Vegas can do this easily. Don't know about the mpeg-2 editors. When you then export the timeline, only the parts that have changed would be encoded. The rest would be written as is.

[tmh]

OK, maybe I'm just being dense or something, but I STILL can't quite get it. If I add the photos in an mpeg2 editer, then don't I need to send the whole thing through an encoder? Do encoders "skip" the part that is already DVD compliant (mpeg2)? Do some re-encode it and lose quality in the process?

Thanks.

[guns1inger]

A decent mpeg-2 editor (womble mpegvcr, for example) will not re-encode footage that is already compliant. It will encode new footage, or footage that has been altered insome way - e.g. a cross fade or other transition. If you simply cut and join without otherwise changing the footage, it will not re-encode.

[tmh]

Thanks, gunslinger. I've got it now - not too hard. I'll be doing it tonight.

[racer-x]

This post is interesting because I just recently went through this same thing. I created a 20-year Biography/music video for a client. It contained video clips as well as still and motion images. I sent him a copy and he loved the video but wanted to add a naration to the audio. No problem as I always encode video and audio seperately, so I could easily go back and edit the audio. I didn't hear from him for a while, so I deleted the avi and project files to free up my HDD.

To my surprise, he not only wanted to add a naration, but he also wanted to change the sequence of the clips and images. I decided to do 2 different methods to achieve the same results. I have MainConcept Mpeg Pro as a plugin for Premiere Pro. I figured this would be a good test for it.

I started but converting the m2v to Huffyuv.avi. I imported the Huffyuv.avi into Premiere Pro (after creating a custom template) and edited away. I saved all project files and then export to m2v using CBR @ 8500 kbps. The results were perfect as expected.

Now I wanted to try editing the Mpeg directly. I delete the Huffyuv.avi and open my saved project in Premiere Pro. It obviously asks "where's Huffyuv.avi" and I direct it to the original m2v, this way all project settings take effect on the m2v. I wanted as perfect comparison project as possable. I export using the MainConcept Encoder at the same settings that were used in the original m2v. This lets MC use it's Smart Render feature to rencode only newly created frames. The encoding times were very fast and the quality was also excellent.

To be honest, it was hard trying to tell the difference between the two methods. If you have a good quality Mpeg editor, than go ahead and use it. If you don't, then convert to Huffyuv avi, edit, then export back to Mpeg.