DVD to MPG/AVI/H264 for editing - desperate help needed

[BertRito]

Hi guys,

Here's the scenario -

- I have a set of DVDs (not copyrighted, so free to manipulate/copy etc) which I need to "rip" so that the footage on them can be edited

- I had been previously using VOB2MPG which had been working perfectly for three years until....

- Something changed in the way the discs were authored, which caused problems when cutting up the vision. It seemed there was some sort of "slippage" which made cutting innacurate, particularly later in the file.

Basically I want to get the VOB files off the disc without losing any quality, then be able to cut and edit them inside something like Premiere Pro (I actually do 1 step in between that to cut certain bits out before placing into Premiere Pro).

My question is........

Should I completely change course and use another method to get the desired result? Like convert the DVD to AVI or something similar, as long as it will retain quality and be easily edited?

Your thoughts would be most welcome.

[aedipuss]

you could try cleaning them up by re-authoring them first using dvdshrink.

[BertRito]

Yeah, tried that. Didn't make any difference unfortunately. I thought that would do the trick but funnily enough there was no change - the slippage issue was still there.

[BertRito]

I think I've got a clue as to what might be going on -

It seems that for the discs which work properly, the stream bitrate (checked through VLC) is pretty consistent - between 7500KB and 8500KB most of the time.

For the ones which don't work, the bitrate jumps from anywhere between 3500KB and 7500KB, never really jumping to 8000KB at any stage.

Now I'm not too familiar with the way that CBR and VBR work, but does that point to some discs being encoded using CBR (the ones which work fine) and others using VBR (the ones that don't)???

[aedipuss]

it's not a vob2mpeg problem. most likely you are trying to cut between i frames. premiere pro isn't a good mpeg-2 editor. try womble mpeg video wizard or mpeg2cut2.

[BertRito]

Thanks aedipuss.

I never actually get to the Premiere stage, because the slippage occurs in the part where I cut the footage *before* importing the clips into Premiere.

The program that does the cutting originally is VideoReDo Plus, which is built into the program I'm using. It has worked perfectly before, but since the discs changed (and by the looks of it, the bitrate) that's when the problems occurred.

I even tried running the file through VideoReDo and re-muxing everything. That didn't work either.

[poisondeathray]

which program are you using that has videoredo integrated? what version of videoredo is it using?

videoredo has no problems with vbr content (unless it's maybe an old version)

are you sure the content doesn't have copy protection ?

another option is to encode everything to an I-frame format, avoiding any potential GOP issues. If you have the room , uncompressed AVI would be great

[BertRito]

It's a custom software package that is used for various other purposes - AVI joining is naturally done through VirtualDub, but the MPEG joining uses VideoReDo.

The version it uses is a relatively old one - 2.1.2.417 . There is no option to upgrade to the later version, because it breaks the functionality and the software which has it integrated can't be changed to fix it.

Uncompressed AVI would be awesome, and I suppose I do have the space. The thing I find is that if I re-capture the discs, I never seem to get the same "quality" that ripping the DVD to MPEG can provide.

Is there another option which would retain the high footage quality? Even if it means switching over to uncompressed AVI? (which would obviously eliminate a lot of issues in the process).

[poisondeathray]

When you rip the disc with dvd decrypter or dvd fab, it's the original MPEG2 on the DVD - there are no losses. The VOB structure contains the MPEG2 video plus other data like subs, audio and metadata.

When you encode that as uncompressed AVI, the decoded image is still bit for bit identical - i.e. still lossless in the same YV12 colorspace

When you import that into a NLE like premiere, there maybe an YV12=>RGB colorspace conversion and some losses (not to the naked eye), and again when you export RGB internal => YV12 final format like MPEG2 (along with compression losses)

Other options to Uncompressed AVI would be lossess compression like huffyuv , or lagarith for example (to conserve HDD space). These are lossless, but they might not be treated as truly lossless in NLEs because of the colorspace conversions (really, to the naked eye you won't be able to tell the difference)

The danger of cutting long gop formats, is if you don't cut on I-frames at the end of a GOP, you might not get frame accuracy , and it can cause other issues. This isn't a problem with videoredo, because it re-encodes that affected GOP when you make a cut in the middle. But I suspect your older version has a bug , or the video you have has some form of encryption

So what you could do is convert to all I-frame (like uncompressed, or one of the lossless fomats like huffyuv) . You might do this in avidemux for example, then do your cuts. If this is too much work, you can do rough cuts firsts but cutting on I-frames only. You could use mpg2cut2 or avidemux to do this , then converting those "mini-clips" to a losselss format for import into premiere

[BertRito]

Firstly, thanks so much for your help.

The issue that I have is that I need to actually cut the footage into little pieces *before* it gets into Premiere. The vision is about an hour each disc, and the custom program I use in between is needed to pick out certain bits of that footage very quickly. (I need to be vague as I can't give anything specific away).

So if I rip the disc with either of those two programs, is the next step to use a different program to convert to uncompressed AVI?

I actually don't mind if there's a slight drop in quality, ie - it doesn't have to be super super perfect but it does need to look good when eventually exported out and played on big screens to a large audience.

So compression would be fine if the quality is still reasonably maintained. I liked the way I used to do it because the MPG files came in at around 4GB per disc (obviously). Uncompressed AVI comes in at around 15GB.

[poisondeathray]

(I edited my post above before I saw your post)

You can pre-process into rough edits with mpg2cut2 or avidemux by cutting on keyframes only (see the above explanation as to why you need to cut on keyframe at the end of a GOP) , these may have "rough ends", but you can do the final edit in premiere, when it has been converted to all I-frame, so you get perfect cuts

If uncompressed or lossless compression (lossless huffyuv would bring you about 50-60% the size of uncompressed YV12 video) is too big for you, another option is MJPG compression which has a variable "slider", you can select a quality/compression level that is "adequate" for you. MJPG is all I-frame too, and can be accessed with avidemux. For DEcoding in premiere, you can use ffdshow, and MPJG has to be enabled in the ffdshow vfw configuration

[BertRito]

I'm happy to convert the vision before doing any of those VideoReDo cuts - that was my original intention but everything I tried (using DVDShrink first, running it through VideoReDo again to remux, etc) didn't seem to solve the issue of the "slippage".

I also don't mind if the cuts aren't 100% frame accurate - they just need to be reasonably close so when I get to Premiere I can do the trimming. At the moment the cuts in the VideoReDo process aren't anywhere near.

Perhaps I'll give avidemux a crack to see if that solves anything. What I will probably do is re-mux the entire video first. If that then solves the issue I'll be back to where I used to be.

Will report back ASAP. Thanks again for all your help.

[poisondeathray]

videoredo is the very reliable for cutting in my experience. I can only assume it's the older version that's giving you problems (that or the stream you have is somehow "different" and my 1st guess is that it has some form of protection)

when you say "slippage" can you clarify? do you mean audio/video desync i.e. sync issues? or did you mean not frame accurate cuts? your 1st post would suggest you mean frame accuracy, but your most recent post suggests otherwise...so I'm confused what you mean by "slippage"

[BertRito]

By "slippage" I mean accurate cuts (audio/video sync is fine). It doesn't even have to be 100% frame accurate since I'm taking the clips into Premiere, but on these new discs it's not even close - up to 40-50 seconds off in some cases.

It has to be something to do with the encoding/protection/timecode because playing back the segments in the software is fine - it's only when they are cut out using VideoReDo that the resulting footage doesn't match up with the edited segment.

The version I'm using worked perfectly for years until the authoring of these discs changed to a different company, so it's something they've done in there that has upset things.

[poisondeathray]

You could try running them through dvd fab (dvd fab hd decrypter is the free version) before your regular videoredo cutting routine

[BertRito]

What setting would you suggest when using DVD fab? I've ripped the entire DVD to disc, but that doesn't get around the issues I have (same as using DVDShrink, etc).

It seems avidemux has a number of workable options - I'm thinking this could be the time I switch to AVI instead.

I've tried using DV (which I assume is the uncompressed AVI setting) but the program crashes. At the moment I'm giving the Huffyuv setting a go, to see whether that will work. I think it might be OK, but will keep you posted.

[poisondeathray]

I would have ripped the entire disc, but if that doesn't work ....

I just checked avidemux and there doesn't seem to be uncompressed option (IIRC , it was available in some earlier versions) , anyway I hope the huffyuv option works for you. DV-AVI isn't uncompressed

But this 40-50 sec off your cut site is very weird... if the problem is your old version of videoredo you could use the those other programs to do rough cuts (1 GOP is usually around 15 frames) , you could even try doing your trims in avidemux then export those sections as huffyuv avi all in avidemux. It should be indexing your vob, so that's another check for frame accuracy

You didn't mention what version of premiere, but in CS4+CS5, they can take MPEG2 from DVD directly

[BertRito]

I used avidemux and the huffyuv option - the file size is huge and seems to split after about 4GB or so. Unfortunately I need it in one big file as well, which counts out that option.

One thing that did work was the MJPG option with AC3 audio. While it didn't import into Premiere, the in-between process of editing the resultant AVI file was frame accurate.

With that in mind, I can now either cut out the clips then run them through Adobe Media Encoder to get them into Premiere Pro, or run the whole disc file (about 1 hour) BEFORE cutting out the clips. Either way should work.

The testing takes a fair while but I'll keep plugging away to see if I can get something workable. At this stage I'm less concerned about file size and more concerned about getting a proper workflow going so I can continue with what I've done the past three years with confidence.

Thanks again for your help. Anything else you can think of would be most welcome.

[poisondeathray]

I think if you checkmark openDML files in the preferences, you can use larger AVI files (tools=>preferences=>output=>create open dml files)

With MJPG, you ned a vfw decoder installed for premiere (it doesn't ship with one). I mentioned this above in post#11 and there are instructions there. For AC3 audio , install AC3ACM

[BertRito]

Ok. So here's where I'm at with my testing -

DVDFab

-Tried ripping the entire disc (similar to using DVDShrink, etc). Cuts still not near frame accurate.

- Tried ripping the disc into a 2-pass divx .avi file at 8000kb bitrate (good enough for what I need). Frame accurate cuts using VirtualDub but won't import into Premiere (audio not supported). Won't import into Adobe Media Encoder either.

AVIDemux

- Tried using the MJPEG option, but the custom software I use won't then let me cut segments out before importing into Premiere

- The Huffyuv option came out with a massive file size (expected), but wouldn't even play in the custom software which uses a windows media player front-end, hence I can't cut anything out using that file type either. (I may be missing something here)

- Currently trying a range of other options, but so far haven't cracked the right mix yet.


Just to re-cap - what I'm trying to do is rip the DVD into a format which can be edited through my custom software (which uses VideoReDo/VirtualDub) and then imported into Premiere CS4, all the while maintaining a reasonably high quality.

After all this, am I just better off re-capturing the entire disc in DV format?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.