To assemble a DVD, is it better to start with AVI or MPG source files?

[BillP2]

We need to dub portions of several DVDs through the analog outputs of a DVD deck onto a computer's hard drive, then use those re-digitized portions as source material for Premiere Elements or Pinnacle Studio 9 to compile a DVD for use in a church service.

To maintain the best possible quality, should we save the captured portions of the original DVDs as AVI or MPG files?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

----------------------- Bill

[jtoolman2000]

AVI to do the editing and output to MPG2 to author to DVD and the resolution should be 720x480 if NTSC

[guns1inger]

When you record to the HDD, choose a lossless codec like lagarith or huffyuv if you have room, or DV avi if space is at a premium. Don't use high compression codecs like Xvid/Divx etc.

That said, why are you going the analogue cature route if you already have DVDs ? Sure the bestter source would be the video on the discs, not an analogue transfer.

[BillP2]

The reason we are going through the analog domain and back to digital is each video segment on the source DVDs offers a choice of three stereo audio pairs.

We have not been able to figure out how to grab the audio we need from the source DVDs in the digital domain.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

--------------- Bill

[guns1inger]

You can rip it with DVD Decrypter, load it into DVD Shrink in re-author mode, select the audio track you want, select the start and end point of the segment, then rip. This will give you a mini DVD (compliant structure) of the chapter you wanted with just the audio you wanted.

Or you can load it into rejig and demux just the video track and audio track you want and edit from there.

Or you can use DVD Decrypter in IFO mode to select just the chapters you want, and demux just the audio and video that you need.

These are just a few amongst many options you have.

[victoriabears]

I always thought taking mpegs and "converting: them to avi was a bad idea as re encoding is always a bad idea?

Surely just taking the dvd's and using something like tmpg mpeg editor then re authoring?

I am but a simple man.