How to copy a video segment from my DVD-Camcorder

[dark_cyber]

I have a Sony DCR-DVD505 camcorder that records to the small DVD-R disc. Our children recently had a school function and another parent wanted a copy of part of my video where their child was in my video as well. It looks like the Sony saves the video in a VIDEOS_TS folder as .VOB files. How can I get this to where I can copy out about 10 minutes of this video and burn it onto another DVD for this parent?

Many thanks!

[greymalkin]

The sony saves it in a format playable on a DVD player. The easiest way to do it would be to copy the video_TS file to your computer, then use one of the free trial dvd authoring programs like TMPGEnc DVD Author.

Go through the wizard and tell it you are importing DVD video, then there should be a place to edit the video. From there you can set the start/end frames of the video. Set the start frame to wherever this person wants the video to start and the end frame to where they want it to end. Then have it author/burn the dvd for you.

Otherwise you'll need an mpeg editor (I like Womble Mpeg Video wizard) to import the .vob file, chop them up, and save that 10 min section as .mpg.

A .VOB file is basically an MPG file to DVD specifications as far as I can tell.

[redwudz]

Several different methods will work. You could use DVDShrink and just cut out the part you want and re-author to a new DVD. Probably the easiest method. Or use a video editor that accepts VOBs. Or use VOB2MPG and rip the whole DVD to one MPEG file and edit and re-author that. Or rip with a program like DVD Decrypter and re-author. Just a few methods. These are all freeware programs.

Most programs have guides listed at the bottom of their toolpages.

And welcome to our forums.

EDIT: You can get away with renaming a VOB most times to a .mpg with a simple DVD, like one from a camcorder, but it's much more than just a MPEG:

VOB = The VOB files contains the actual video,audio,subtitles and menus.

(From 'WHAT IS' DVD to the upper left on this page.) The other problem you may run into is that your disired video may be split between two VOBs, as they are normally ~ 1GB sections of the DVD.

[dark_cyber]

Thanks for the suggestions. I use to do this often years ago with my older mini-dv camcoder, but since I got this new dvd camcorder I have not do it any...so basically I forgot everything I use to do

I use to use DVDShrink and TMPGEnc DVD Author. So, sounds like those are still some of the best ones.

Thanks again.

[greymalkin]

I think they get so much attention for their ease of use.

thanks redwudz for the corrections

[magnil]

Please help another newbie! I have a similar Sony DVD camcorder. Every clip is a chapter on the DVD. Can any of the above programs (or other programs) rip the DVD so every chapter becomes an mpeg-file? Can it also name the mpeg-file as the date the clip was recorded?

[magnil]

Answering my own question, guess there is not such a program. Have tried more than ten different programs now They all make one mpeg for every VOB which means that you have several clips in every mpeg.