Encoding problems...iMac Intel

[flyer]

First off, I'm a newbie to the Mac world, but when the new iMac's came out I just had to get one. I waited until the Intel models were available, and bought the 20" 2.0 Ghz model, and increased the ram to 1.0 gig. Operating system is OS X 10.4.4

I have a lot of digital photos that I want to work with, and also have about 20 DVD's of family movies that I want to edit. The DVD's were created by taking our old VHS tapes and 8mm camera tapes, and creating DVD's on a Zenith DVD/VHS recorder player. The DVD's that I created can be played on my Mac, or any other DVD player that i have in the house.

I want to use iMovie to edit, crop, merge these DVD's. I downlaoded ffmpegX, and tried dragging a DVD icon to the source format window, but it showed in "From" that the source was unrecognized. I used MacTheRipper on the DVD, and then dragged the Video_TS file that it created to the Source format window in ffmpeg, and it showed in From, Video_TS, in video it showed mpeg-2, 720x480, 9396 kbps, 29.97 fps. In audio it showed ac3, 48000hz, 256 kbps. When I try to encode this movie, I get the message "Not supported..This engine does not currently support Video_TS input. Use VOB input, or select a preset using memcoder or mpeg 2 engines." So, I went to the Video_TS file in finder, and opened it, so that I could drag one of the VOB files and encode it. Using all default ffmpeg settings, when I press encode, a progress window comes up, and it shows that the encoding process is complete after about 2 seconds. I show that a .ff file was created, but that it contains 0 KB of data.

I'm new to all of this, so I'm sure that I'm not setting something up right. Again, I'm only using default settings in ffmpeg...I haven't tried adjusting anything.

All I really want to do is get my family movies which are on DVD into iMovie so I can work with them, and create new DVD's from iMovie. How do I do that?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[PiggyWiggy]

As it says, you shouldn't use a preset that uses ffmpeg but rather mencoder. But what is you want to do with the VIDEO_TS folder? What do you want to encode it to? In any case, when selecting a preset it will show whether it's using ffmpeg or not... If you want to create an avi you can use either mencoder xvid, or maybe the h264 preset.

[Case]

For import into iMovie, you'll want to convert to DV, because that's iMovie's native format. For DV, currently that means using the ffmpeg engine (thus no VIDEO_TS input).
Don't use individual 1023 MB VOBs as present on the DVD, but instead merge them into a single large VOB containing the whole feature. There are several merge tools available, but I prefer MacTheRipper or 0SEx to do that for me. In MTR, choose 'Title Only Extraction' and select the title of your choice (based on duration). The resulting VOB file can then be passed on to ffmpegX.
A 2-second process indicates an error, which should be solved independently, based on the Process Log.

[flyer]

Case, Thanks for your recomendation, which I followed, but still came up with an error while encoding.

I used MacTheRipper as you suggested, creating one vob file. I dropped that file into ffmpeg, and made the target format DV. The encoding only took about 2 seconds again, and the Process Information for my encoding try shows and error of "Codec type mismatch for mapping #0.0 -> #0.0.

I can't seem to find what that error message means.

Thanks again for your help, and any help with my error message, and how to correct it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks to PiggyWiggy also for your response to my original post.

[Case]

Codec type mismatch for mapping #0.0 -> #0.0.

Try "Invert mapping" in the audio tab.

[flyer]

Case, thanks again. That seems to work, as it is encoding. It took about 3 minutes to encode to 100%, and is continuing to encode after that, i.e. it is up to 800% now. Is that behavior normal?, and if so, how long should it take to encode something that started out as a 4.2 GB DVD?

[flyer]

Case,

It has finished encoding, took about 1 hr. Thanks for your help!!!

I am now importing the movie into iMovie. iMovie shows that it will take about 1 1/2 hours to import, so maybe later tonight I can see how it looks in iMovie.

Thanks again!

[Case]

One hour to convert how many playback-minutes of DVD to DV on an Intel Mac?

Would be a nice start for the benchmarks.

[flyer]

Case,

One of video took about one hour to encode.

I just finished importing the video into iMovie. It took 1 1/2 hours to do that. It took about 12 minutes for MacTheRipper to create the VOB file. That puts the total at close to 2 hours and 45 minutes to take a one hour DVD and get into iMovie so I can edit it.

I'm watching some of the movie as I type this reply, and I'm noticing that the video on the movie freezes sometimes even though the audio continues smoothly. Something must have gotten hosed up. This Mac isn't as easy to use as I hoped it would be.

[fatespawn]

Flyer,

The reason it took so long to IMPORT your dv into iMovie is because you are trying to COPY XX Gigabytes of data from one spot on your Hard Drive to another.

Next time try this.

for iMovie 5 and up.
Create your iMovie project with no clips
Close iMovie
find your video file in the Movies folder
Control Click your movie and select "show package contents"
drag your .dv file to the Media folder.

for iMovie 4 you don't have to "show package contents." Just drag your .dv clip to the Media folder in your movie folder.

Now you've MOVED your movie rather than copy it to this folder

Open iMovie and you'll find your DV in the trash. Just move it to the clips pane.

Easy as pie.

Fate.