Newbie questions RE: Ripping clips and conversion

[Robbo888]

Hi there,

I've searched all over the forums for information and have gained some great knowledge but I'm pretty knew to all this so I would love for someone to assist me with what must be just the most basic of operations.

All I want to do is:

- Rip/Capture certain clips off DVDs I have (both commercial & private), not necerssarily the whole disc, merely just parts

- Edit the clips I've captured (mostly for length) in something like Premiere. I've been using Smartripper to get certain chapters etc. so advise if this is wrong/right or needs to be tweaked in some way so I can edit the clips.

- Convert the .vob to .mpg or .avi (or should this be done before editing?)

I'm hoping some of you guys can help me with this. I've got TMPGENC but I've no idea how to use it properly. Tried one conversion yet I couldn't open the converted file in Premiere.

Thanks in advance. Go easy on a newbie like me!

[Devanshu]

Like you, I'm a newbie also, but I have successfully copied a few dvd's so I'll give it a shot. I'm assuming you have the vob files already, now use dvd2avi(I think its under the tools section of this site) to get a wav file and a d2v file. NOW you can use tmpgnec to get a mpg, which you can burn to a vcd or a dvd. If you still cant figure it out, I would recommend looking under articles, and using safey's backup guide. Its really simple...feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

[Robbo888]

Thanks for the help. I've been able to rip the clips I want and put them into DVD2AVI, but have only been able to get an AVI file accompanied by either some AC3 Audio files or a WAV file. I'd love to combine the audio and video so it can be just one file, which is where I thought a program like TMPGEnc came in but I haven't been able to figure it out.

So in short I want to convert the current .vob file into either an MPG or AVI which includes the audio in the one file. Help for a newbie like me would be greatly appreciated.

[Robbo888]

Scratch that. I must have done something wrong before because I took the AVI file and the WAV file created by DVD2AVI and put them into the relevant fields in TMPGEnc and everything combined together nicely to get the MPG.

The only other question is about the actual video quality. The file I ended up with was quite poor in quality (blocky, etc.) and I was wondering whether there's a chance of being able to maintain a good quality image during the conversion.

Again, help would be greatly appreciated.

[Devanshu]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but all DVD2AVI does is that it gets a d2v file which basically just points to the files to be converted. It also separates the audio, which you can use in tmpgnec. For the video source, use the d2v file and for the audio source, use the wav file. As for the quality, you can try to make a svcd or a xvcd instead of a vcd to maintain some quality. Sorry I'm not much help . Again, let me know if I can do anything to help.

[Devanshu]

Try this...

In dvd2avi, go to file open and select your file(if you have multiple vob's they will automatically insert) and click open. Now click OK. In the video option, go to field operation and click forced FILM. Next, selct the track number(that just depends) and for output method and select decode to wav(ac3, lpcm). Also, selct dolby surround downmix...Ive found that the sound is better in quality if you check that option. Now save your project. This SHOULD get you a d2v and a wav file. Let me know if it works!

[Devanshu]

ALSO, you can use the clip frame and noise reduction, ghost reduction, and sharpen edge features in tmpgenc to improve the quality of the avi.

[Robbo888]

Thanks for your help Davanshu. I've been able to output the d2v and wav files and put them into TMPGEnc. I'm now experimenting a little to get different quality files as the current ones I've got are quite blocky and jumpy in places (and no, it's not my PC). I'm not really fussed about file size, though I'd like to keep them down to a manageable level (no 1GB clips or anything) and keep them just to a single file with both the audio and video inside (ie- mpg, avi).

So are there any other suggestions to improve the quality of the picture? I'm looking at the MPEG-2 output at the moment but if anyone's got any suggestions for outputting techniques, vob conversion or using different programs to get a better looking clip I'd really appreciate the assistance.

[Devanshu]

No problem...unfortunately I havent used a lot of programs to convert...just tmpgnec, so I cant help you with that. Right now I'm experimenting with avi2vcd, I'll let you know how it is. Good luck with the quality thing.