Questions re creating a DVD compilation from several DVD sources

[TURB0x]

Hi all! I'm totally new at video editing and DVD authoring and I'm creating a DVD compilation containing 30+ clips collected from a variety of DVD sources (as many as there are clips). It's gonna be a compilation of TV appearances by a musical group.

I've already extracted most of the clips from the DVDs using VideoReDo TVSuite V4 and saved them as separate mpgs. I'm planning to use TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4 (and Adobe Photoshop CS6 for menus) when authoring the DVD.

My question is what video editing software you guys would recommend me to use? Here's what I'm planning to do with the MPEGs I've collected:

- Add descriptive texts before the beginning of each clip and fades at the beginning and end of each clip.
- Possibly adjusting the volume of the audio so that all clips are about the same volume-wise.
- Possibly replacing original audio with new audio in some clips.
- Possibly adjusting the audio / video sync in one clip.
- Adjusting the aspect ratio of some clips, as they have been captured / recorded from TV broadcasts in wrong aspect ratio - e.g. one is stretched out to 16:9, and one is "pinched" to less than 4:3 (with added black bars).
- Add subtitles (not hardcoded) to certain clips

All this while compromising the quality as little as possible. Is there a good all-in-one solution?

Oh, and a final question - since the clips are compiled from a variety of DVD sources would it be wise (quality wise) to edit them as separate "tracks", or should I just edit and encode them to one big mpeg?

Any help regarding this would be MUCH appreciated.

[jman98]

It's certainly possible to do this. But I'm going to be blunt with you.

You think you are asking this - Can I use tweezers on an ingrown hair to remove it?

This is what you are really asking - How can I do brain surgery to remove a tumor?

There is no "good all-in-one solution" to this. You've made 4 posts since you've joined. I think it's fair to assume that your technical skills for this kind of thing are at the beginner level. It's going to be really time consuming to do what you want and take a good level of experience that you don't yet have. I don't have the patience to hold your hand through this, but others may and they may respond to your post.

[sanlyn]

An "editor" is what you need for your last step. For the preceding steps, you need to learn to make title videos, resize/crop/add-borders, and otherwise physically adjust frames sizes to a single standard for your final output, re-encode all this stuff to mpeg (you didn't think you could change a frame size and not have to re-encode, did you?). You already have Masterworks, why not make life easy and use your TMPGEnc discount to get MPEG Editor v3? There are free editors/joiners, but they're a hassle -- I never liked any of them. You'll need Avisynth for lots of the other stuff, or get into the free-software hassle again.

[TURB0x]

An "editor" is what you need for your last step. For the preceding steps, you need to learn to make title videos, resize/crop/add-borders, and otherwise physically adjust frames sizes to a single standard for your final output, re-encode all this stuff to mpeg (you didn't think you could change a frame size and not have to re-encode, did you?). You already have Masterworks, why not make life easy and use your TMPGEnc discount to get MPEG Editor v3? There are free editors/joiners, but they're a hassle -- I never liked any of them. You'll need Avisynth for lots of the other stuff, or get into the free-software hassle again.

Thanks for the reply and suggestions sanlyn! I'll start looking into TMPGEnc MPEG Editor 3 and Avisynth! That was the kind of advice I was looking for as the amount of software out there is a bit daunting for a beginner. I once did some rudimentary editing in Adobe Premier and was thinking that maybe that was worth getting, but maybe that's overkill, or not suitable in this case?

Regarding the aspect ratio thing - yes, I was thinking that maybe that could in some way be corrected without re-encoding as I'd heard of some simple IfoEdit fix for full DVDs with incorrect aspect ratio. I guess that's not applicable to a single clip in a compilation though?

[sanlyn]

I'd say you have some learning to do, but that's something we all do every time we start a new project. Look, there is no one-button solution but there are ways to improve the workflow. You have to handle each stage as it comes along, so at this point you will get rather general answers and gradually move to more specific areas.

The first specific point I'd mention is that you can't mix videos of different frame size and aspect ratio into one clip and expect superb results. IF your largest frame and aspect ratio equates to 16:9, you can adapt the 4:3 clips by adding black borders and making everything the same size and 16:9 AR. But I'd do that by working the smaller mpg's in AVI format with Lagarith lossless compression -- and since their mpg color space is YV12, stay in that color space until encoding time. Don't attempt major revisions in lossy mpg form, the quality will go straight downhill. You can make those into 16:9 mpg's with Mastering Works. That way, your entire production will encodde and play at 16:9 with the smaller frames pillared to fill the screen. If you watch such 16:9 mixed productions on TV, that's the way they play. You should also use AVI for creating your still-image and text screens. There might be some freebies around that will do some of this mpg frame revision; as far as I know, there might be some that will do it without a big re-encoding job, but I don't think so. Re-encoding lossy mpg as mpg-to-mpg without an AVI intermediate cleanup is a losing proposition. Maybe other members have other ideas in that regard, but I've always worked that sort of thing in AVI, which keeps losses to a minimum.

In case you're wondering about MPEG Editor v3 and the way it cuts and joins mpg clips: it is a smart-rendering app that is frame specific, meaning that you don't have to cut on I-frames. The editor will re-render only the specific frames and convert them to a proper GOP size. Many so-called cutter/joiners will re-render the whole video or confine you to whole-GOP-only cuts, which isn't what you want.

Your audio should be converted to lossless PCM or it will sound like crap by the time you get to the final combining stage.

Your Mastering Works encoding will be as good and likely better in some respects than Adobe Premiere. You're aware that Premiere comes in plain-vanilla and Pro versions. Pro is obviously more advanced, but I'd say you won't need it and even the learning curve for the non-Pro versions will tie you up for quite a while.

Take this project a step at a time. Submitting a few short samples of what you're working with would be a start. At this point there's no way anyone could lay out the project completely.