3 DVD's Edit and Merge into 1 M4V

[ddbigshoots]

newbie here, I always dug the "Back to the Future" trilogy and my kids enjoy watching it to, I am in a middle of a project of moving all the movies I own over to a 1TB drive connected to my PS3. I would like to make the "Back to the Future" Trilogy as one big movie and join the main features into one. Of course I would like to edit the beginning and end of the 2nd Disc and the Beginning of the 3rd to make it one seemless movie.

At the moment I was successful in ripping the movies with RipIt (for Mac) and converting the VOB to M4V with HandBrake and then editing and merging with SimpleMovieX, where I am getting stuck is that I cannot get the audio to properly sync on the PS3 even though I can generate a proper viewing .M4V to play under QuickTime.

I am at the point where I am getting ready to rerip the DVD's and start over with the VOB, anyways I can make this less painful that it already has been. I have access to WindowsXP under VMWare Fusion. So I don't mind playing with Win software as well.

DD

[Baldrick]

Joining often cause sync problems. Maybe you could try join with a different software and see if it helps like avidemux, mp4box, videoredo 4 prerelease.

[ddbigshoots]

I'm open to anything that is known to work

[greymalkin]

dd,

I did this same exact thing many years ago..well...made it into a seamless movie that is, not compressed to mp4.

I will first tell you what tools to use, then tell you where i made my cuts for seamless perfection

TOOLS TO USE:
- Rip movies using dvddecrypter and set it up so it only creates a single .VOB for the main movie. Don't use any compression
- Import the 3 main movie .VOB's into Womble MPEG Video Wizard. Place them on the timeline one after the other and snip out the peices/snap the vob's back together to fill the gap (where to cut below). After you've made all your cuts, do a stream copy. You now have a seamless BTTF in a single MPG2 file with the original audio track. No loss in quality.
- Use a compressor such as xvid4PSP to create a high quality ps3 version or leave it as is..I'm sure the PS3 is beefy enough to handle mpg2, but the file size will be large, around 10GB.

WHERE TO CUT:
BTTF1:
At the end of the movie when Biff hands marty the keys to his 4x4..marty looks at them..says "keys?"..then the screen goes black before the garage door opens. This is a perfect spot for performing the cut right at the scene change since there is no detail until the garage door is opened. Of course Jennifer has changed but I found this is the best way to deal with it since most of the movie has gone by since you last saw her and Marty immediately calls her Jennifer after he drools over his truck.

BTTF2:
After the delorean disappears in the sky and biff says what's goin on? cut it! Then cut again after the credits have stopped and just before the delorean appears in 2015. If you do it just right the music will not sound like you cut it . You can try cutting a section in womble, putting the 2 new peices together, then if it doesn't work right undo and try again until you get it to your liking. The way I have it the drums (i think?) are kinda building up then at their peak I cut it..then come in at (duuuun du du duuuuuun!)..if that makes any sense

At the end of BTTF2 you want to cut it in-between the scene where the delorean touches the wire and where it goes over to doc who is just now getting up off the ground after being blown off the line. I used that spot because there's a brilliant flash of white that covers the entire screen..try to cut there.

BTTF3:
This was probably my least favorite edit, since there are actually pans around doc's house and marty driving doc home, but the credits were rolling so it had to go. I found a good way around it anyways. After Marty runs up to doc to tell him he's come back from the future..Doc says "great scott!" and faints..then the screen goes black..cut it right there before the music or the BTTF logo comes up. Then cut again right after the last credit goes away..it will be focused on the tv screen static just before howdy doody comes on. It makes it sort of comical as doc says great scott right before he faints and it's also the first thing he says when he jumps up from his sleep on the couch when howdy doody comes on. It also helps to add to the confusion as doc is also trying to figure out how he got home...the events from the opening credits are then explained by marty and the movie goes on without really missing anything.

[ddbigshoots]

Thanks everyone for the help, I finally got it to work on the PS3.

Here's my run down.


Tools:

RipIt v1.3.3 (Mac) - Created your traditional folder with VOB
VideoReDo v4.20.2.595 (Win) - This was the key, just straight MPEG2 Video Cuts of each Disc and then Merging them together back out to a merged MPEG2
HandBrake v0.9.4 (Mac) - I spent the first round of 10 hours encoding to an .M4V to come up with a 5gig file that won't copy to the PS3 Hard Drive since they are formatted Fat32. The nice thing though about HandBrake is that there is a Constant Quality Slider that by default is at 60% and by moving this down to 56.86% it produced a 3.7gig file that I am happy with the quality of the playback on the PS3


As for my BTTF Cuts

BTTF 1
I cut right after the DeLorean was rising just before the wheels fold under, my reason for this is that Marty's girlfriend in the first movie is prettier then the girl that played the same role in the sequel's

BTTF2
Cut the beginning to start right when biff walks out the door calling for marty then exited that cut to when biff says "what the hell is going on here" just before the music starts playing. From there the credits we're spliced out and the movie cuts to the sky and rain just before the DeLorean flashes in the sky and they reappear.
I exited at the end with marty just putting his head on Doc's chest

BTTF3
The credits at the beginning sucked so I did cut the beginning to 1 second before the TV announces that it's Howdy Dowdy Time.


Note: on BTTF2 part of the beginning of the movie was also after the credits, found this odd.

So thanks all for the help.

[greymalkin]

sweeet man..good to hear! I think the main reason I chose my cuts where I did is there there was an ever so slight "glitch" when I hopped from one .vob to the other. I don't know if it was the software, my computer..whatever, but I masked it by picking for the most part scene changes or total black/white out frames.

and I totally agree jennifer #1 was better looking :P. I just thought it would be odd for #1 to be in one scene then #2 in the very next scene. but in the end it doesn't really matter . Yep..they lost the original Jennifer and George..although the tried to make the new actor look like george with a prosthetic face! Couldn't really do that with Jennifer.

I might make an iPhone version for my friend who is a BTTF nut :P...I bet it would look awesome on the iPhone screen! and I could probably get it down to 2+gb or so.

See now when you do it all over with the bluray versions you'll be a pro!