DVD to something editable

[investingstuff1971]

Hi,

Apologies in advance if the subject of this post bleeds beyond just conversion; I couldn't figure out exactly where to put it. Here's the situation. I have two mini dvds with several chapters on each, which were recorded on a Sony Camcorder. I need to combine the contents (minus a few chapters) into a single file to which I'll need to do some light editing. I don't really care what the final format is, so long as it's something I can make available for download and which will be easily played on a standard player. I'm (arbitrarily) shooting for a wmv file.

I don't have any experience with the stuff, but I thought that it would be easier than it's turned out to be. A reasonable first step seemed to be to try to convert it from dvd to anything else. I've found a lot of software, but none of it is free. This is a one time shot for me (actually, I'm doing this for a friend) so I'd rather not spend $30 on software I'll never use again. I did discover (through this site) vob2mpg which I was able to run to convert one of the dvds to mpg which seems to be a step in the right direction. The problem though, is that it doesn't support eliding certain chapters which means that my output mpg contains even the chapters I don't want to include in the finished product. Maybe this is a dead end.

Rather than rambling on, let me ask a few specific questions:

(1) Does anyone know a free, without limitation (ie, no watermarks) utility for converting from mpg to wmv? I don't need a lot of bells and whistles, but if I could only convert certain chapters off of the dvd that would be great.

(2) Assuming I can get this stuff converted to wmv, can anyone point me towards a free utility to do basic editing of wmv?

(3) Since I picked wmv arbitrarily, I'd be open to suggestions for another way to proceed here.

Thanks in advance for any advice anyone can offer.

-is1971

[Baldrick]

DVD was not really meant for any editing to begin with and that is why so many editors don't support it directly. You can cut out chapters with dvddecrypter in the ifo mode. Or use DVD Shrink in reauthor mode to cut out what you want. You will get a vob file that you can convert directly to WMV with AutoMKV.

But wmv is not the best format for standalone dvd players...I would rather make divx/xvid that works on many standalone player. You can convert to avi xvid/divx with FairUse Wizard, AutoGK.

[investingstuff1971]

DVD was not really meant for any editing to begin with and that is why so many editors don't support it directly. You can cut out chapters with dvddecrypter in the ifo mode. Or use DVD Shrink in reauthor mode to cut out what you want. You will get a vob file that you can convert directly to WMV with AutoMKV.

Thanks Baldrick, I really appreciate your help. I am going to try to use one of those two tools to remove the unwanted chapters. One more question: even after, I've got everything converted to wmv, there is still a bit more editing that I need to do. Essentially, I just need to remove a few other random pieces of footage. Is there a free editor I can use to work on wmv?

But wmv is not the best format for standalone dvd players...I would rather make divx/xvid that works on many standalone player. You can convert to avi xvid/divx with FairUse Wizard, AutoGK.

I'm not sure that I understand this unless "standalone dvd player" means something different than what I think. Ultimately, I am going to ship this off to someone who is going to watch it on their pc, not a dvd player. So, wmv should be good for that, right? Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

-is1971