Getting DVD Video to Editor

[HiroP]

Solaris was a great movie, wouldn't you all agree?

There are some amazing CGI space scenes that I would like to mix with other video in Adobe Premiere 6.5 and/or Screenblast Movie Studio 3 (much easier to use).

So my question is, what is the process for ripping Solaris (DVD) and getting it into a format (AVI or MPG?) that I can import to a video editor and play around with?

Ideally, the least amount of programs and steps involved, the better.

Thanks in advance for your time, this is one fantastic website and community for all things video!
HiroP

[macleod]

TMPGENC DVD Author can import dvd video that you have ripped with dvddecrypter or other ripping software. There is also a AC3 plugin which you will need.

[rob1]

I pretty much follow this guide. Basically, you frameserve d2v to avisynth and just open the avisynth file directly into Premiere (needs a plugin). This saves you an encoding step, but requires a couple of programs. Fortunately, the guide has a download package if you need it.

[HiroP]

macleod
Thanks for taking the time to reply, but what I was looking for was a method to rip DVDs, convert them into a format that I can use in a Video Editor of my choice, slice and dice, add effects, etc., and then save it out in good enough quality as a new video.

rob1
Exactly what I am looking for! Thanks a ton.

Now for a bit of complexity:

I am ripping DVDs on my laptop, which has my only DVD-ROM drive. From here, per the guide you sent me, I will have .VOB files which I then convert to .d2v, and then to AVISynth files.

So, a question: Can I transfer the AVISynth files to my Desktop (where I edit with Premiere) on a 650MB CD-RW disk? Will one VOB file converted to an AVISynth file fit within the 650MB limit?

And is the AVISynth file an "avi wrapper" that points to the d2v or VOB file, or does it contain all the video?

[rob1]

First, glad this seems to work for you. Second, there's a little bit of confusion. What you are basically doing with both the d2v file and the avisynth file is 'frameserving'. I can't really explain it very well- the d2v and avisynth files by themselves do pretty much nothing. They aren't video files. In fact, the avisynth file is simply a text file with a couple of lines in it saved with an avs extension. The do nothing without the actual VOB files they access being on the computer. (They are little tiny files- but they aren't video.) Frameserving just sort of passes the video from one spot (the VOB) to another (Premiere).

So, if you need to get clips from your laptop to your desktop and the clips need to fit on a CD, my best advice is to cut out the clips you need on your laptop, save just those clips to CD, then load them into your desktop. I'm assuming you want to actually work with the clips on your desktop because it has more horsepower and/or the software you need?

Um- SO, I'd probably follow the above guide and get the dvd ripped to your laptop and your d2v and avisynth files set up. I personally would use virtualdub to open the resulting avisynth file and make clips. You'll probably need to compress the clips to get them to fit onto a cd- and depending on how long they are it will determine which codec to use. I'm pretty happy with xvid set at a high bitrate for archiving purposes. Xvid edits like CRAP in Premiere- however, since I frameserve them to Premiere using avisynth, it takes care of that problem. Frameserving to Premiere can be a little slow/buggy, but I do it a lot.

Geesh- I hope that was some help. The easiest thing would be to simply edit on the laptop- it will also get the best quality out of the dvd footage. Once you go to vdub to make/compress clips, well- you're compressing the video again.

Um- and edited to add 'I am an idiot and did not see the last line of your post'. Yea- avisynth is like an "avi wrapper". Ignore all the crap where I go on and on with a lame attempt at explaining how avisynth wasn't a video format. Sorry!

[HiroP]

I went ahead and averted that mess by setting up File Sharing and got the .VOB file over to my desktop.

HOWEVER, that guide using AVISynth and all the other applications packed into AMVapp (http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/amvapp.html) is not working for a great deal of users.

The problem lies in opening the .avs file into Premiere, which I among many get an error "Unrecognized Exception", and none of the fixes presented on the forum (http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=15764&highlight=mpeg2source) are working. It is driving me nuts after trying to get it to work right.

Are there any other methods for VOB -> video editor? Possibly using another wrapper type solution?

Thanks again rob1.

[timmyp]

Couple of other things you can try (or at least that I've done in the past)..

1) Demux the individual video and audio streams from the VOB with something like VOBEdit, and try to load the resulting files individually into Premiere.

2) You can try simply changing the file extension on your VOB'S from .vob to .mpg, then try to open with Premiere. One caveat, though.. This is not a highly recommended method. It works in some situations, but it depends on what the VOB actually contains (how many video angles, audio tracks, subtitles, etc.). With a full movie like this, you're probably better off trying the first suggestion first, but it might be worth a shot just to see.. you can always rename it right back.

[HiroP]

#1 Sounds like a good idea, I will have to try that.

Also, I read that someone uses FlaskMPEG (with good results) to output an MPEG file, and then uses that in editing. I've been testing this method today and the results are pretty good so far.

And you are probably right, that handling the .VOB as is would be very slow and usually does not work in Premiere (or so I've read).

If anyone else has their Golden Method for ripping and editing DVD video into their projects, please advise!

Thanks again.

[rob1]

Before I'd found that guide, I had tried using method 3) VFAPI Conversion- if I recall, you just apply a wrapper to the d2v file and open that in Premiere. (My memory is a wee bit fuzzy- but I'm pretty sure that's what I did.) This worked fine- except you can't open more than one at once.

Not a problem for you- as you could just pull the whole dvd in that way. I was using it to pull in multiple dvd's- and as describe in that guide, they started reading from each other. As long as I was only using one, it was okay. (Because I needed to pull in multiple dvd's, I ended up pulling each individually into vdub and saving as xvid- but that's time consuming, a pain, and loses some quality.)

Anyway- with only one d2v file- I think the VFAPI approach would work okay.

[lgh529]

The previous suggestions are better, however, if you keep having trouble, open the .vob file in VirtualDubMod, then save as a dv avi file that Premier can open. There will be a slight quality loss as the codec re-encodes the mpg to dv, however, for most things, it is pretty minimal.

Good Luck

[jimmalenko]

Load into DVD2AVI and demux into .d2v and (probably) .ac3.
Convert ac3 to WAV with BeSweet, HeadAC3He, etc.
Frameserve into TMPGEnc and Mux back together.

Result: original DVD quality MPEG2 ready for editing.

[HiroP]

I will have to read up on frameserving, thanks for the added suggestions jimmalenko and lgh529.

Also, I've grown accustom to Ulead's Video Studio 7 because of its ability to playback video in real time, where as in Premiere 6, it is very choppy and is hard to see what your video is looking like when you can't preview real time playback.

So, I will be sure to let you all know how these various methods are working for me, and any advice I can pass onto others.

~ The gracious HiroP