Single Episode Rip with MINIMUM Re-re-re-re-compression - HELP!?!

[jdmba]

Greets,

Whenever my brother, who is an animation writer, has a cartoon that he wrote air, I have been diligently capturing it in premiere (currently from my DVR) using the composite (Y/R+W) outputs, into my ten year old Canopus DV50. I edit out the commercials, and add them to a DVD "reel" of his work.

From a compression standpoint, though we have the DVR (which probably compresses it) out the analog, analog->firewire DV conversion (which probably compresess it), and then Premiere output (which definitely compresses it), to Encore.

Can anyone PLEASE let me know if there is a set of programs I can use to rip the same episodes off DVD's without experiencing worse compression? I have tried using a few programs, and the output is awful.

Thanks

[Baldrick]

You can rip out video from a dvd using dvd shrink(in the reauthoring mode), videoredo, tmpgenc mpeg editor with no video and audio quality loss. Then import the vob/mpg clips in encore and make a dvd(if that is your goal...).

[jagabo]

Or DVD Decrypter in IFO mode.

[jdmba]

Thanks. I need something I can edit (in some cases, the shows were 1/2 hour, but were composed of 3 7 minute segments, and I only need 1 segment). I dont think IFO or VOB can be used in that case.

If I am dumping to AVI from the pre-compressed DVD which then has to be loaded into Premiere, is that equal to (or worse) than capturing an AVI into Quicken from the DVR?

Thanks!

[jagabo]

Capturing from the DVD players analog output will have more noise and less detail than converting the VOB from the DVD into an AVI.

You could use a program like VirtualDub (with an MPEG2 plugin) or AviDemux to read VOB files directly from the DVD, mark off the section you want to keep, and save as AVI with whatever codec you want to use. Uncompressed RGB will run about 112 GB/hr. Uncompressed YUY2 is about 75 GB/hr. Use HuffYUV or Lagarith for the highest quality (lossless compression, but very large, ~30 GB/hr) intermediate file. Or Cedocida for good quality DV AVI (~13 GB/hr). Or an MJPEG codec where you can pick the quality/size combo that suits you.

Run some small tests to verify which of those codecs will work with your editor. Cedocida should work since you're already using DV AVI.

[jman98]

Thanks. I need something I can edit (in some cases, the shows were 1/2 hour, but were composed of 3 7 minute segments, and I only need 1 segment). I dont think IFO or VOB can be used in that case.

Both VideoReDo and MPEGVCR can accept VOB files as input and edit them. IFO's are a completely different type of file and don't contain video.

[manono]

If all you want to do is cut the shows, there are plenty of VOB cutters out there.