Rip from a Digital Camcorder mini-DVD

[cpgoose]

Hi guys...any help would be great as I've never done this before...and I'm not having any luck.

I've used DVDShrink and DVDFab Decrypter in the past to rip normal DVDs, and haven't had any problems.

My problem is I'm ripping one of those mini-DVD discs from a digital camcorder (Panasonic VDR-M70). Both programs allow it to rip, but when I play the file in DVDShrink, the audio has all these scratch and pop sounds throughout...it's awful!

When I just play the video normally in media center, it sounds fine.

Is there some trick that I'm missing in order to rip these kinds of discs?

[daamon]

Hi cpgoose,

This is a shot in the dark as I've never used a camcorder with a mini-DVD disc. But the disc shouldn't be copy protected and you should literally be able to just copy the files and paste to your hard drive.

Have you tried playing the ripped files through Media Center? It may be that playing them through DVDShrink is the problem.

[cpgoose]

Well, for a shot in the dark, it was a pretty good shot

I was able to play the files that I grabbed from the DVD in Windows Media Center, and it played fine. I can't find a way to display the DVD's title menu, so it just plays all the way through, but that's fine.

And yes, I was able to "Explore" the dvd and just copy/paste all the files that were on the disc. It did the same thing as the programs that "grab" the files.

Now I just have to burn a new DVD and see if that can play in a normal dvd player.

[daamon]

Now I just have to burn a new DVD and see if that can play in a normal dvd player.

When you do, make sure that you don't just burn the files as your DVD player is expecting them in a certain format - i.e. the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders.

Depending on the folder structure on your mini-DVD disc, you can either copy the entire disc (all folders and files) and then burn to a new DVD, or you may need to take the files and author them using something like GUI for dvdauthor to create the right files in the right folders.

[cpgoose]

Cool beans, it worked!

1. I "grabbed" the files from the source DVD using DVDFab Decrypter.
2. Then I put them through VOB Blanker to blank out the occassions that I didn't want.
3. Then I put it through DVD Shrink to create the ISO file.
4. Then I used DVD Decrypter to burn the new DVD, and it played fine...no audio problems.

Now I just have to figure out how to change the initial menu and make it look nicer. I guess everytime we taped a new occassion, it made an addition to the menu. So there's the first title (which is the one I want), and then the other 7 or so that I blanked out. You can click on them, but they don't play anything. I guess now I would like to just change the menu to be a certain picture (for example) that just says to "Press Play" or something like that. I'm sure there's a way to delete or cut the occassions that I don't want, rather than just "blanking" them out.

Thanks again for your help!

[daamon]

Hey! I'm glad it's going well for you.

Changing the initial menu is going to be more involved. There's a number of ways of doing it.

All will involve you creating the new "menu" as an image with a background and a layer (technical term, look it up - you'll need to understand "layers") on top containing the "Press Play" text. Something like Adobe Photoshop or similar does the job.

You could then either author (another technical term you'll need to read up on) using something DVD Lab Pro (or similar) to bring your new menu together with the existing video and have the "Press Play" layer link to the video footage.

Or you could re-author using DVD Remake - a different way of combining your new menu with the existing footage. If you go this way, the image will need to already have been used as the basis for a menu that's been authored, and it's the authored menu you'll be using here.

Of the two, I'd say go for authoring using a decent authoring tool.