Using iDVD to create new dvd from homemade DVD??

[ehmjay]

So i copied a bunch of my favourite shows off of tv onto my DVD recording box. I now want to copy them to my mac and add chaptering and create menus and such. How should I go about ripping the video and adding chapters and such. BTW I have Final Cut Pro and iLife 06.

Thanks!

[Frobozz]

One approach is to use MPEG Streamclip to convert the video directly from the DVD to DV or Full Quality QuickTime movie so they can be imported to FCP for editing prior to authoring and burning in iDVD.

[pianoman719]

Unless you need heavy editing with transitions, the ideal is to use an MPEG2 editor to do cuts-only editing. Otherwise you lose one generation exporting to a QuickTime .mov, and another generation when you re-encode to MPEG2 for the final DVD.

Although Final Cut Pro and iLife are excellent products, they don't contain ideal tools for re-authoring an existing DVD, or burning existing MPEGs to a new DVD. If you're looking for entry level commercial products that will help you re-author DVDs from a standalone recorder, consider Toast 7 or CaptyDVD 2. CaptyDVD 2 will give you finer control over chapter placement and custom menus. Toast will give you a host of other useful features, but less control over chapters and menus.

If you want to explore freeware solutions, you can try Sizzle 0.1:

http://www.thefridgeowl.com/sizzle/sizzle0.1.dmg

Sizzle 0.1 won't let you create menus, but will let you put chapter markers anywhere you want in a single-title DVD. Or, if you have separate recordings of multi episodes of a TV show, Sizzle 0.1 can author a single-title DVD which turns each episode into a chapter.

Although the lack of menus is in one sense a flaw, Sizzle 0.1 can be very fast to use! It creates a DVD that starts playing immediately when you put it in your set top box. You navigate chapters using the remote control.

But I'm putting the cart before the horse. Before you can reburn the MPEG2 video, you need to extract it from the DVD, edit out commercials, etc.

Since your DVDs from a standalone recorder are not copy-protected, you could just copy the VIDEO_TS folder from the finalized DVD to your Mac's hard drive. But using a ripper such as Mac The Ripper or Yade X can be useful for extracting certain titles and not others. (Yade X has a visual interface that lets you preview frames from the title you're ripping - a big help if the DVD has lots of shorts.)

It you want to rip from unfinalized disks, you may need Toast 7's Media Browser or Pixela's PixeVRF Brower. (Thanks, Frobozz!) See this thread.

There's a guide that gives details on using Yade X to rip and MPEG Streamclip to edit:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/edit/dvdrecorder/mac/recorderedit.htm

The guide is pretty good, but seems to make one error. After editing in MPEG Streamclip, you should *not* use Save As, but rather Convert To MPEG, or Demux. Save As will not write out a file with fresh timecode; Convert To MPEG or Demux will. In other words, when you do a Cmd-F to fix timecode breaks, this will only be a temporary fix unless you use either Convert To MPEG or Demux to write out a file with fresh timecode.

-Pianoman

[ehmjay]

okay so i tried with Yade X and everytime i try it i get an error at the very end. anyways I thought all was fine since the files would be created so i would demux the VOB and open the new files in FCP, however it then crashes. So I tried ripping the files with Mactheripper however that caused Mactheripper to crash. What the heck is going on? please help!

[ehmjay]

hmmmm...i have a feeling its because its a DVD-VR dvd. looks like I'll have to copy again. bah.

[ehmjay]

and apparently the only way my DVD recorder records is in DVD+VR mode...help!

[Frobozz]

Toast 7 and PixeVRF Browser can extract video from a VR-mode disc. The latter is available at http://www.pixela-1.com and includes an MPEG editor. Still, I prefer using Toast 7 to extract MPEGs from my VR-mode DVDs because it is more reliable.

[ehmjay]

so how do i extract the VR stuff with Toast?

[lordsmurf]

DVD+VR is a DVD-Video subset.
DVD-VR is not DVD-Video.

[Frobozz]

so how do i extract the VR stuff with Toast?

Using Toast 7 you insert the VR-mode DVD, select DVD video as the format in the Toast Video window and then click the Media button to enter the Media Browser. Using the browser's top button select DVD. Your DVD should appear in the browser window. With the lower button select the Title level. The Title(s) on the DVD should now appear in the browser window. Select the titles you want to extract and drag them to the Video window. Toast writes the MPEGs to the Roxio Converted Items folder.

Older DVD drives may not be able to recognize the VR-mode discs. My G4 iBook's combo drive just ejects them, but they do mount with my LaCie Firewire Drive and my G5 iMac's superdrive. If the disc doesn't get automatically ejected by the OS, Toast will be able to extract the video.

[ehmjay]

awsome thanks. Hopefuly this will work!

[ehmjay]

okay i managed to extract it but all i got was a MPEG file, which had no sound. This is becoming a nightmare! lol

another thing i did try was copy the Video TS folder and demuxed the VOB files with MPEG Streamclip to m2v and AIFF, however the aiff file does not sync up to the video file, and if I do it as m2v and .ac3, final cut pro wont recognize the ac3 file.

HELP! lol

you'd think this would be easier than all this!

[Frobozz]

Why do you think the MPEG has no sound? Select the MPEG in the Toast Video window and click the Edit button. There you can see a report as to the kind of video and sound in the file. If it is AC3 audio the MPEG won't play in QuickTime but will play with VLC Media Player or MPEG Streamclip. Once it is authored and burned to a video DVD the sound will play with DVD Player.