Extracting parts of a DVD

[jabbo5150]

A friend of mine wants me to make a compilation DVD for him from some old VHS tapes - that's easy enough as I'll use my Canopus ADVC-100 and Final Cut Pro/DVD Studio Pro on a mac pro.

What I am having issue with, is he also wants me to add some clips to it that are already on DVD, so I need to rip those from the disc to add to the new DVD.

What is the best way to do this without losing quality?

I have Mac the Ripper as well as MPEG Streamclip.

Any suggestions?

[lordsmurf]

This: http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/video/edit-dvd-mac.htm

[videopoo]

No need to use MTR....thats only needed to removed CSS from a commercial disc. Streamclip will do the job just fine.

[jabbo5150]

So I'd want to extract using Yadex and then use MPEG streamclip to Demux to M2V and AC3? Then I could just dump those into DVD Studio Pro?

[jabbo5150]

The stuff I want is on 4 chapters of the DVD. I was able to extract those 4 chapters into 1 .vob file using MTR and then demux to .m2v and .ac3 using MPEG Streamclip. That would all be fine, except one of the chapters has some stuff I'd like to edit out. I use final Cut Pro to edit. How can I make a file I can edit in Final Cut pro without losing quality?

[videopoo]

Forget MTR

All you need is MPEG Streamclip (or Yadex) for this. Open the VOB, choose your in and out points and extract the MPEG file. If you need to edit, you first need to transcode to an uncompressed, editable format first before bringing into FCP. You will have a quality hit since you'll eventually need to go back to MPEG 2 for DVD

[jabbo5150]

Ah, trying to avoid the quality hit. It's only one of that chapters that actually needs anything cut and that is at the beginning and end of the chapter.

I can do those cuts on the VOB in MPEG Streamclip right? Then I'd demux to MPEG and ac3?

[tomlee59]

Streamclip can handle simple cuts and splices, so if that's all you need to do, then you have the tool for the job already. No need to use FCP in that case. You'll want to fix timecode breaks after you're all through; Streamclip will do that, too.

What I don't know is how smart Streamclip is about re-encoding, or rather, whether it's smart enough to avoid full re-encodes when you're simply cutting and splicing. My impression is that it's smart (based solely on the speed with which it operates), but I do not know for certain. It sounds, though, that all you want to do is a simple cut. Just perform the cut at a keyframe, and that should pretty much guarantee that no reencoding will take place.

[jabbo5150]

it seemed like it didn't reencode anything as it did it all in a few seconds (Both the cut, as well as the export to .m2v and .ace). Cool little program

[tomlee59]

it seemed like it didn't reencode anything as it did it all in a few seconds (Both the cut, as well as the export to .m2v and .ace). Cool little program

Glad to hear that it worked for you. And yes indeed, Streamclip is a favorite of many folks on this forum.