HELP - DVD to Hard Disk with no quality loss & easy to d

[djrobski99]

Hi,

I have a DVD recorder when I've been using DVDR media to record onto from the TV.

I want to convert from the DVDR to hard drive to edit out commercials etc and then burn back to DVDR.

What is the easiest way to do this and what format do I convert to, AVI or MPEG2 ?

Any programs that are easy to use, that anyone could recommend would be a great help.

Thanks

Rob

[lgh529]

It's already MPEG-2. So you could edit commercials using Womble VCR (see tools), however I have never done that. MPEG editing is hit and miss since it was never designed to be an editable format.

It is not possible to make any conversion and not lose some quality. There are various ways of doing this, but it is not without quality loss. Every time you convert something, no matter how good the codec, there will be quality loss. How much you ask? That depends on the codec, and what your going to play it on. If your just going to watch it on your living room 32" TV, its a different than playing on your HD bigscreen.

[djrobski99]

Thanks.

I've been looking at the forum and it seems that most software converts the VOB to AVI, so I would need to re-convert back to MPEG2 in order to burn back to DVDR when ready.

Is this correct ?

What is MPEG 4 ? Can I use it for DVDR to try to retain the quality ?

Also, does anyone know any good menu creation software which is easy to use with moving chapter selection windows (sorry the picture in the window plays for 10 seconds or so).

Thanks again

[andkiich]

Don't convert the MPEG2 file to anything else if it is going back onto a DVD to play in a set top DVD player.

Just use the Womble tool to cut out the commercials, then merge the MPEG files together and author.

If you convert the MPEG2 file to any other format you will start losing quality.