Converting a DVD to AVI for editing

[tominct]

I need to needed to convert DVD to AVI, and downlaoded and tested Autop Gordian for tha purpose, in the hopes of being able to import the AVI file into adobe premiere or maybe even Windows Movie Maker for simple editing. No DICE! Premiere tells me that is an unsupported compression format (ok! I KINDA get that....but!) and WMM wont allow me to import the avi either claiming the codec is wrong.

What can I do. I got a video camera for christmas that records directly to DVD, but I need to be able to edit!

Thanks,

Tom

[redwudz]

If you want to edit a DVD by converting it to a AVI type format, you should use a low compression codec. Higher compression codecs like Xvid or Divx are very poor for editing. You might try HuffyUV or DV or similar. If you just need cut and paste editing, don't do a format conversion. Keep the file in MPEG format.

You can use VOB2MPEG to convert a DVD directly to one large MPEG that you can edit with most MPEG editors with no format conversions. Less quality loss that way.

Or if you want to do more extensive editing, you can use one of the AVI type formats mentioned. I prefer DV as it's 'made' for editing. You can take the MPEG file you extracted from the DVD and use VirtualDub Mod to convert to DV, along with the addition of a DV codec such as the Panasonic DV Codec. Or you can edit with VDM also, for just simple edits.

If your final destination is a DVD, you would be re-encoding the file twice by the time it gets back to DVD format. DVD>AVI>MPEG/DVD. There will be some quality loss with each process. A low compression codec will minimize that.

If WMM accepts the extracted MPEG, you can output as DV and encode that back to MPEG format, then author to DVD.

Lots of ways to do all this. It just depends on how extensive you need to edit and how much work you want to do.

[tominct]

OK....so Do I open extract withAuto Gordain? I don't get a choice of codecs other than Divx and Xvid....so what do I use to extract the video?

Thanks for everything!

Tom

[tominct]

Amen Brother! I think I have it!

You're awesome, thanks so much!

Tom

[HealthBob]

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