VOB w/AC3 to AVI - is it possible ??

[Northpole]

Hello to you all out there -

This is my second post only, so please be kind, eh ?

I have read almost "everything" in the forum, and several of the guides. BUT - none of it seems to cover exactly what I'm trying to do.

This is what I would like to do:
I have a buch of music-DVDs. Usually I like 1-3 songs from every DVD, and I would like to put together these songs from severals, and make my own "Greatest Hits" - DVD.
All of the DVDs have AC-3 sound, and I think my problem is about that.

I would like to rip all the VOBs to my HD (no problem), and the best thing would if there was a program that let me edit directly in the saved VOBfile, and then author and burn back to new DVD.

In that way, the quality would be the same as the original, right ?

So, to the million-dollar-question:
Is this possible ?????
Someone should know I think. I can't be the o-n-l-y person in the world trying to do this????

What I have tried so far, and my results:
(For all: Ripped VOBs to HD w/AC-3 sound)

Convert the ripped VOB to AVI with FLASK. Result: "Choppy" and jerky video, but good and in sync audio.

Loaded the ripped VOB into Virtualdub, and choose "save as AVI". Result: Jerky picture, and audio out of sync.

Renamed the VOBs to mpg and use Ulead Moviefactory. Result: Everything seems fine, but the final results freeze video and sound in both powerdvd and on tv after some playing.

Tested both Vegas 4 and DVDarchitech 1. Result: - no sound........

SO FAR - my best result was when I loaded the VOB into neodvdplus 4.1 and converted the sound from AC-3 to PCM. Then I loaded the new VOB now with PCM into Ulead Videostudio 7.
That actually worked ! BUT - I loose AC-3 sound, and neodvd seems to get my audio out of sync 6 out of 10 times.

Any suggestions out there????

Please help me with this. As you can see from my listings, I have worked with this issue over a long time and with many programs, and would really like to get a good result now.

Oh - by the way - the absolutely BEST, would if I could convert the VOBs to AVI, and load the AVIs into Studio 8, which are a program that I'm very familiar with.

As you have understood, I would like to do this operation without having to demux into different files. My experience with that is that the audio is always out of sync.

Another thing - I don't want to do some divx avi. Or, for that matter, do anything that reduces the quality. That's why neodvd seems so promising - seems that the program did'nt reencode the video at all, just the audio.

Oh - another thing: Have tried DVD Workshop too (trial that one too), and that progs just freezes for me.

Suggestions, please - or is this I'm trying to do simplyimpossible ???

(Also, please forgive me if this is the wrong forum - but since I've tried this so much and did'nt succed, I thought this must be very advanced...)

[flaninacupboard]

well, any decent authoring pacakge will accept a .m2v video file and a .ac3 audio file, mux them and pack them into a VOB.

Here's what i would do,
Using DVDdecrypter, select the chapters (songs) you want one at a time, and in stream processing select "demux" for both the video and audio stream. this will give you a .m2v video file and .ac3 audio file for each song. simply collect as many as you want. you can then use these two files for each song loaded into pretty much any authoring pacakge, like DVDit, or try TMPGenc DVDauthor, which has a free trial.

And yes, this is an authoring question really as you're not converting the files at all, just re-authoring them.

[FOO]

I suspect your main problem is that your video is
"pulled down" 24 fps. This seems to completely confuse
most programs that claim to be able to edit mpeg2.

You may think this silly, but try DVD Shrink miltiple times
( without compression ) to extract sections.
Should end up with several VOBs
Either author those or get ifoedit to make new IFO for them.

[Northpole]

Thank you for very quick reply to my question.

To flaninacupboard:
I have tried this. Two problems. 1) Most of the times when I mux the files in authoring, the audio goes out of sync. 2) Very often, the songs I want is only part of a chapter, or even worse - split over two chapters. This is why I would prefer to edit directly in the VOB.

To FOO:
I tried DVDshrink last night, but could'nt figure out how to extract sections. Every time I choose Reauthor, it only opened another window.

ANYWAY - I guess what really is going to help me, is if there is a way to load a VOB witth AC-3 sound into a program and in that program convert it to DV-AVI.

If so, I could load the new DV-AVI into either Studio 8 or Videostudio 7 and do the editing, add transitions and etc. etc.

The new DV-AVI could be PCM sound for what I care - I could just change that in i.e. Studio later on during authoring.

I have also tried out a program called DVDtoAVI converter, who gives me a file called "maxout". Unfortunately it's not good enought quality.

SO, the big question is - is there a program out there who can convert (directly) a VOB w/AC-3 sound over to a DV-AVI file ???

Thanks

[FOO]

In DVD Shrink Reauthor...
When you get your new window, drag the main movie
to it and close the old window.
Then use Start/End



...and if you are willing to re-encode it's easy to edit AVI

[Northpole]

To FOO:

HOLY......
It works !!!!
Thanks a lot! As soon as I drag the damn thing through the windows, I could very easy choose start/end points, and the quality is absolutely like the original.
A BIG THNAKS to you !!!!

If you don't mind, I have another question for you, because with this method I can only chose one start/end point at the time, and doing so during a 2 hour DVD with several clips is very time-consuming. (And - I don't really have the oppurtunity to edit and make transitions)

So, you said that if I was willing to re-encode, it was easy making DV-AVI.

Can you please tell me what progs to use, to convert VOBs w/AC-3 sound to DV-AVI ???

(Again - thanks a lot - I will play around with DVD-Shrink now for a while - )

[FOO]

There are dozens of video editors out there. I don't really
make fancy videos so I am not an expert at any of them
EXCEPT i always check them out to see if they can edit
telecined or mixed MPEG2. The last test was VS7 which failed
miserably.
They probably have trouble with AC3 too. You will just have to
try some.

Video Studio 7 , Media Studio 7 , Premiere , etc.