.m2v & .ac3 To DVD

[I_Burn_Coasters]

Hi There:

Could you not Rip a DVD into the .m2v and .ac3 file(s) accordingly and then use DVD Studio Pro to combine them, sync them, export them as a DVD Video, and then burn them with Toast Titanium??

Would this not give you a copy of the "Movie(s)" on the DVD with no quality loss??

Thanks
Coaster Boy

[tgpo]

Even easier: Use dvdxtractor to make a disc image then burn that. The problem with that is that their maybe some copy-protection agents I'm not aware of. I have very small experience with Dvd Studio. The other problem is that most dvd's you rip will be larger than what a dvdr can hold. Most movies today are larger than 4gb, thus need compression to allow for it to be burnt on a new dvd.

[I_Burn_Coasters]

I agree I think making a image and burning it would be way to easy! There must be some type of encryption on DVD's that prevent that!

As far as DVD Studio Pro goes after importing your .m2v and .ac3 files could you not export them as a DVD file?? Thus having all the necessary compression to fit the movie on a blank DVD??

Coaster Boy

[major]

Try DVDBackup for OSX. You can also use DVDStudioPro if you got elementary streams so as to remux them and build the DVD structure. You can also burn within DVDSP.

[wbaccus]

Oh man.. that's beautiful. I was getting a little tired of all the encoding you have to do with DVD --> VCD. DVD-R's are getting cheap enough now that there's no point in living with the lousy quality of VCDs. Gonna give it a shot in the next few days.

As far as burning back to DVD-R. After you get the files grabbed with DVDBackup, you just set Toast to DVD mode and drag that folder into it and burn? It's that simple?

[wbaccus]

What do you do when the DVD you want to use is greater than 4.7GB? Using DVDBackup can you just not process the VOBs that have the extra content and still end up with a playable DVD? My hunch is that the answer is no.

I do have DVD Studio Pro too, but haven't used it yet. Could I create a new DVD with just the movie content and cut out the extras to get it down to under 4.7GB? If so will DVD Studio Pro work with the VOBS or am I goign to have to use DVD Extractor to get it back to m2v and ac3 files?

thanks for the help.. this site is invaluable!

[AntnyMD]

For DVD's 4.3gb or less, just use DVDBackup to decrypt and copy the disc. Set a new DVD project in Toast, and drag the VIDEO_TS folder into Toast and burn. For wider compatibility (though this should not be necessary), add a blank AUDIO_TS folder to your project. Burn! Yes, its that simple.

You'll note I said for DVD's 4.3gb or less. 4.3gb on your computer hard drive is the equivalent of 4.7gb on your blank DVD media. Theres an explanation why theres a difference in other posts on this site (do a search).

For DVD's greater than 4.3gb, use DVDExtractor to rip out the main movie. Doing this will cause you to lose subtitles, unless you know how to make DVD Studio Pro deal with the spc files containing the subtitles that DVDExtractor will leave you with.

Since your film is greater than 4.3gb, but you don't want to re-encode (as you want to keep your full DVD-quality film), select a range of SCENES (not chapters or tracks) within DVDExtractor that reaches approximately 4.5gb - 4.7gb. This will be side 1 or disc 1 of your new DVD. The remaining scenes will fill side 2 or disc 2 of your new DVD. Make sure you tick ON merge scenes and demultiplex in DVDExtractor. Make sure you have more than twice as much empty hard drive space as that DVD you're ripping.

When you're finished ripping, choose the m2v file and one ac3 file for use in DVD Studio Pro. Start up DVDSP and import your video and audio file. Next, select Add Track. Tell it which video file you'll use, and if it is 16:9 or 4:3 (for anamorphic purposes).

Next, click on the speaker icon in your track window. From the very top of your screen select Add Audio Stream, highlight Untitled Audio and on the right, select your audio stream. Feel free to tell it what language the audio stream is.

Once you do those two things, you can have DVDSP build your DVD. After it builds the DVD, you can burn the thing. However, DVDSP allows you to play with all sorts of options like how the remote control buttons react, you can make entry points (chapters), use motion or static menus, with or without sound, use scripting to control how the DVD player machine interprets what to do with the content with little or no interaction from the user, etc etc. I took a week working with the Spider-Man trailer I downloaded from apple.com (and converting it to DVD spec) and taught myself DVDSP. If you don't spend some time learning the program, you'll end up making DVD's that conform to spec, but you won't be happy with them until you study that manual and try a few things first.

[wbaccus]

Thanks for your help. Played around with it last night and DVD Studio Pro does seem to be fairly intuitive. One last question for you. If you did need to decode the M2v file to do some editing in Final Cut Pro, like to completely cut out parts of a movie, what codec and settings would be best for preserving the quality of the video when you go back to mpeg2?

[AntnyMD]

I havent used Final Cut Pro (I have a copy from a "friend" but I cant really work it out what I would use it for) but when I am prepping MPEG2 video for re-encoding, I use the Motion JPEG A codec. For me, a 2 hour movie makes a Quicktime video-only file of just under 7.5 gig (at the maximum best setting).