Help with copying & editing personal basketball video

[Skydiver6]

A friend of mine gave me a couple DVDs from their camcorder of our daughters' high school basketball games. I would like to take some clips from these videos to include in the year end video/slideshow that I'm putting together. I can watch these DVD videos on my computer but I don't know how to save them onto my computer so I can open them in windows movie maker to edit them. The "save as" button is not highlighted to just save the videos. I tried copying and pasting them but them come up as 2 separate folders "video" & "audio" and there is no way to open them in the software - or to watch them again in windows media player. Can anyone help me? Please?

Thank you,
Donna

[mats.hogberg]

Rip the DVD with DVDDecrypter. Get the MPG out of the ripped VOBs with VOB2MPG. Load the MPGs in WMM.

/Mats

[Baldrick]

Please read our sticky topics, https://forum.videohelp.com/topic323286.html

[redwudz]

Several ways to do this. You could use VOB2MPG and extract the whole video as one large MPEG file. Or you could use DVD Shrink in Reauthor mode, select just the parts you want and save them out.

Or our members may have some better ideas. BTW, the VIDEO_TS folder contains the video in the VOB files. Take a look to the upper left for 'WHAT IS' DVD for the DVD structure and format.

Not really recommended, but you could rip the DVD to your hard drive with a program like DVD Decrypter or DVDFab HD Decrypter and rename the .vob files to .mpg files and WMM may be able to import them. VOBs usually have more on them than just video and audio, but probably not with home made DVDs.

[Skydiver6]

Wow! Thanks for all the info and so quickly! )

I tried the DVD decrypter method and it worked and I was all excited. I edited the clip for a piece I wanted to use but then WMM saves it as a MSWMM file and then Pro Show Gold which I'm using to make the year end video does not recognize it. Is there a free program I can use to edit the mpg clips that will leave them mpg clips? I checked out the TMpgenc DVD Author but it costs $70.

Thanks!
Donna

[tmh]

WMM does not output DVD compatible file formats i don't think. You'll have to use a different editing and encoding/authoring program.

I know DV camcorder process better, but not DVD raw material. It's a bit of a pain, but look thru the tools or keep watching for ideas. I'm pretty sure WMM is NOT what you want to use.

[powerpc123]

Take the VOB's DVD Decrypter gave you, turn them into an MPG with VOB2MPG, as redwuz suggested.
Bring that MPG into Proshow and do your editing (I think Proshow calls it "Video Trimmer").

[redwudz]

Skydiver6, not a fan of WMM, but it does have a 'hidden' feature. It can output in DV-AVI format that many encoders and editors can accept and it is fairly low loss, low compression. When you go to save your video, select 'Other settings' and scroll down to DV-AVI.



DV uses about 13GB per hour of video, so make sure you have enough space.

[tmh]

redwudz, would he want to output in DV-Avi if his footage is in DVD format? Is the DV output low loss when converting from mpeg2? Also, can WMM even handle vob or mpeg2, edit and output with low loss?

Just wondering

[redwudz]

I don't know if WMM can handle VOBs, but it should accept MPEG-2 formats.

I would skip WMM entirely, but the OP mentioned it. DV-AVI is the best output option for it, IMO, if you really want to use the program and you want to end up with a DVD format. But you are correct, it's always better to edit in the native format whenever possible. There are a few freeware MPEG editors, Cuttermaran is the first that comes to mind. I would rather use VideoReDo or MPG-VCR or other payware editors.

DV is low loss (Or more correct, low compression, about 5:1) compared to some other formats, but going from MPEG-2 to DV, then back to MPEG-2 will give you quite a noticeable quality loss, depending on your original formats quality.