Making a DVD mix (just like a CD mix)

[hakeemshabazz]

First post to the boards guys (just discovered them). I did do my fair share of searching past posts for a solution to my problem. And while I did find posts asking questions close to mine, I never read a post that truly clarified things (for my particular question in mind).

So here's my question: (I'm a newbie to all this stuff, so keep that in mind please).

Just like you rip your favorite songs of your CDs to burn as your own mix, I want to strip my favorite scenes out of the DVDs that I have & make a mix out of them to burn back on DVD. As far as the whole authoring part goes (menus, etc) - I'm not very interested in that yet, and will start researching that when the time comes. Now from what I have read on these boards, this seems do'able. Awesome! But...what are the steps, and most importantly, will you lose quality from it? I don't want to bother doing this if the DVD I burn has scense that don't match the quality off the DVDs.

From the research & experimentation I have done so far, I have pulled clips of a few scenes off their DVDs (using DVDshrink). I just picked the start & end points, and there I had mini VOBs. I picked no compression, but are the VOB files exact copies of the DVDs? (I only ask, because it was so easy, it seems too good to be true!) If this is all good, then on to step 2.

Now say I have 20 scenes (20 VOB files). Can these be edited? ...like can I make fade ins & fade outs for each scene? If this can't be done while the files are still VOBs, I guess I have to extract (demux?) them...in which case, will I lose quality when I turn them back into VOB files??? And what programs are recommended for this? If you can edit VOB files directly, what should I use?

Lastly, can I join two separate VOB files? And what is best for this? (DVD2One? ...couldn't try it because it is only in the pay version)

If anyone understands what I'm trying to do, could you simply tell me if it's possible...and if so, the best steps for doing it? I don't expect any one person to give me the whole low-down, but if I can get a path or some direction I will gladly fill in the blanks myself. I have just read so many things lately, it's all getting turned into mush inside my brain.

Thank you - to all that help me out. I do appreciate it.

[GbMedusa]

As far as I can tell, you should have no problem until you want to add extra content (transitions, etc.) Unless I missed a tool, you will have to convert the ripped scenes to MPEG or AVI before you will be able to merge them with the transitions & such. After that, it is simply a matter of authoring the resulting file.

[hakeemshabazz]

yeah, i don't want to do any significant edits, becaues I don't want to have to convert the mpeg to avi (and lose quality).

so I'm just wanting to add fade ins/outs.

[scottvf]

You can use Tmpgenc dvd author to do what you want. You can import a dvd and edit out what you don't want and keep what you want. Then just import another dvd and do the same untill the dvd is filled. Then Create your menu and output. Then burn