Extract video from DVD

[prl]

Hello,

Sorry if this is repeated or in the wrong place. I have a DVD with some video footage and I want to extract the video from there to edit it in Vegas 8.0. How can I do this? I want to do this without losing quality in the process, is it possible?

Thanks,
Paulo

[Baldrick]

Doesn't vegas has a dvd-video import function? I guess it's under File->Import->DVD Camcorder Disc or similar.

[guns1inger]

File->Import->DVD Camcorder Disc or similar.

Is exactly where it is. This will import your video and audio ready to be dragged to the timeline. You will get one clip per chapter.

However you also have to understand that Vegas is not a native mpeg-2 editor, so it will expand the video to the timeline, then re-encode it when you are finished. You will take a quality hit. If you want lossless (or near-as-dammit-to) mpeg editing then you need to look at Womble Mpeg Video Wizard or perhaps VideoRedo.

[prl]

Thanks for your answers.. I'll take a look at those

guns1inger, what I'm doing is this: I extracted the video from the DVD (in Vegas) and edited it the way I wanted. In this case I wanted to completely replace the audio track and edit a few parts of the video with some fade-in/out. When the video was ready, I rendered it in AVI (Custom NTSC DV, Best video rendering quality, 720x480, progressive scan). I got an 8GB file for 35 mins of video.

Now I'll encode that file in Cinema Craft Encoder and then author the DVD in Adobe Encore 2.0.

Is this a good way to do things?

Thanks for your help,
Paulo

[guns1inger]

I would have expoerted directly to mpeg-2 and AC3 streams from Vegas. The mainconcept encoder in vegas is quite good if configured correctly (read : do not use the underpowered default templates).

[prl]

Hmm.. I'll try that guns1inger. By rendering it to AVI and then enconding in CCE to MPEG-2, am I losing any quality that I wouldn't lose by exporting directly to MPEG-2 in Vegas?

Thanks again!

[manono]

That's why he suggested going directly to MPEG-2. Going to DV AVI as an intermediate step isn't lossless. It's not very lossy, but lossy nonetheless. And it also wastes time unnecessarily.

[prl]

Ah ok..

I did the export from Vegas to MPEG-2 directly and I have a little problem here. When I did the export to DV AVI (from Vegas) and then encoded it in CCE I got an MPV file with 36 minutes (framerate 29.97). But when I do it directly from Vegas to M2V, also with a framerate of 29.97) I have a video with 32 minutes. I guess the framerate isn't correct in one of those, but I don't understand where I made the mistake.

guns1inger, you said "do not use the underpowered default templates". Is there anything I should pay special attention to when defining the settings to the export? I don't have the knowledge to know what to do exactly.

[guns1inger]

Bitrates are the major issues. The templates are simply too low (unless Vegas 8 ups the numbers). But these won't change your running times.

When you render from Vegas make sure you aren't rendering a region, but the entire timeline.