Editing DVD Recordings

[akita256]

I am trying to convert older 8mm videotapes to DVD's and have had no success doing it with capture devices connected to my PC. I am now to the point of buying a DVD recorder to do this. My question is this: If I record my old videotapes onto DVD's in a DVD recorder connected to my TV and camcorder, can I then upload the DVD to my computer and edit the images and then save them back onto another DVD? Or is it impossible to edit the images burned onto a DVD? Many Thanks!

[ChrissyBoy]

I do this all the time.
- Record DVD using the Camcorder as source (use RW media if supported)
- Copy VIDEO_TS folder from DVDR to HDD
(the following works for me)
- use vob2mpg to get a great big mpeg
- use VideoReDo to edit/trim

Thereafter you can archive the mpg to a DVD or author a DVD-Video as normal. I do both so i have an archive.

[akita256]

Thanks for the quick help! So if I upload the image on the DVD (burned by the DVD recorder) onto my hard drive (as an MPEG2 file-?), I should be able to then edit the file using any of the lower-end-cost commerical editing software packages (such as Pinnacle, Adobe, Magix, ulead, etc.? If so, one last question, if I run the image through one of these editing packages, will it lose any quality when I burn it back to a DVD after the edits are done? Currently, I had tried had problems with poor quality blurry images when trying to use a capture card and then burning to a DVD through my computer.

[ChrissyBoy]

Well it depends on your DVD Recorder what you will have on the resulting DVDR. In most cases you will have a VIDEO_TS folder containing VOBs just like a commercial DVD. So you basically copy those to your PC and edit or convert them to an mpeg first and edit. In terms of quality: Choose an editor which only reencodes at the cuts you have made - leaving the rest as is. VideoReDo is one such product to do this. If your "editor" reencodes the whole thing then yes, expect a quality hit.

[broadway]

Hi, akita,

What type of editing are you thinking of?
Just trimming out commercials etc or something more complicated like adding transitions, fades?

I also use a DVD recorder.
Record to a DVD-RW, then copy the whole set of files to my hard drive.
I use TMPGEnc DVD Author to trim out the commercials.
With TMPGEnc DVD Author I can't do frame level trims but it is close enough for me. I think they have another product TMPGEnc MPEG Editor that does frame level edits. Others here use Womble's software.

I have not experienced any problems with this type of setup.

[akita256]

Thanks again. I don't want to do any complicated editing. I would only like to be able to: 1) cut out any unwanted frames/footage, 2) add titles, and 3) add/mark chapters. So should either VideoReDo or TMPGEnc do this for me? Can these be downloaded as freeware?

[broadway]

you can download trial versions of the TMPGEnc software to try for 14 days and see if they'll work for you

with TMPGEnc DVD Author I can create chapters and create menus
I'm not picky about getting very complicated with that sort of stuff
so you mileage may vary