Best authoring program & how do I take footage off a dvd to use on anot

[charlesb]

Ive been doing a lot of research trying to find out how to author my own dvds and be able to extract footage off an existing dvd to be able to use it when creating another dvd. So far I'm planning on purchasing TMPGEnc but I'm not sure which program to use to extract the footage off a dvd.

If anyone could point me to the right tutorial or simply which programs work best for what I want. I want to be able to extract footage off other dvds and be able to use it on a new dvd project and be able to make menus, chapters, etc.

Also, does TMPGEnc allow to make region free dvds? and are there other authoring programs that better or just as good as TMPGEnc?

Thank you so much guys and any help would be greatly appreciated as I want to get on the right path and start doing this.

[guns1inger]

Extracting footage from a DVD depends on a few thing.

If the DVD is not protected, you can simply copy the video_TS folder to your HDD, or use VOB2MPG to extract the mpg video and audio content to your HDD directly from the DVD. I do this for material recorded on my DVDR.

If you need to then edit the footage, I would suggest VideoRedo or Womble, as both will give you frame accurate edits with minimal re-encoding. Both can also demux the results to elementary streams if your authoring tool requires this.

All consumer DVD authoring applications make region free discs. Some will also allow you to put region codes on. Note : there is a big difference between a disc being region free, and a disc being in the right format (PAL vs NTSC). Region and format are only tenuously related.

Are there better applications than tmpgenc DVD author ? Yes, but. There are many that are far more powerful and less restricted than tmpgenc DVD author, but these require more time to learn, and often have features that many users never need. Tmpgenc DVD author is a great beginner package, and does allow some freedom to change the basic templates it provides. If you are happy to work in a template mode, or need a tool to quickly create basic menus for multi-itle discs, tmpgenc DVD author is a good choice.

If you need more freedom and want to design more professional looking menus, there are far better tools available.

[milway]

I used tmpgenc DVD Author and your right, it is simple but effective. I switched to Ulead DVD Workshop 2 because its an easy program to learn and has great features.
I was thinking of investing in DVDlab pro. Is DVDlab that mutch better than DVDWS2 and what are the advantages?

[lordsmurf]

"Best" is relative to the task at hand. Sometimes it's TDA, sometimes DVDWS2, sometimes DVDSP, sometime Encore or others.

DVD-Lab is NOT better than DVDWS2, but they're different. I'm not a DVD-Lab fan, it's needlessly complicated and takes an unreasonable amount of time to author a simple disc. If i wanted to "fiddle" with that much crap, I'd just assume use DVDSP on a Mac, which makes DVD-Lab look like a toy.

DVDWS2 is like TDA, but with far more power and options.

[GeorgeW]

I was thinking of investing in DVDlab pro. Is DVDlab that mutch better than DVDWS2 and what are the advantages?

Here's a link to a thread from a while ago -- unlike lordsmurf, when I make comparison statements, I actually try to list features/reasons to support my comments.

He doesn't really list any features/reasons to support his claims, does he

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic307835.html

Regards,
George

[Noahtuck]

DVD-Lab is NOT better than DVDWS2, but they're different. I'm not a DVD-Lab fan, it's needlessly complicated and takes an unreasonable amount of time to author a simple disc. If i wanted to "fiddle" with that much crap, I'd just assume use DVDSP on a Mac, which makes DVD-Lab look like a toy.

DVDWS2 is like TDA, but with far more power and options.

You have that backwards.... DVDWS2 is too simplistic, template & menu option locked 8)
:P

[workinmatrix]

If you do not want to learn a lot for making DVD menu, you can select total video2dvd author or convertxtodvd

[guns1inger]

ConvertXtoDVD is a very poor choice if your source is already DVD compliant, as it re-encodes. It should only be used for converting non-compliant source, not authoring from compliant material.