Software options and tasks involved in editing a DVD

[PTR]

I hope someone can help as I'm getting pretty confused by the plethora of software options and tasks that involved in editing a dvd. The scenario is that I have two dvds and an audio disk of a party including a band performance. I want to take the three discs and try to merge them together and edit them into smaller bits. I've downloaded about 7 different bits of software:

CheetahDVDBurner.exe
dcloner.exe
DTLite4356-0091.exe
dvdripper-adownload.exe
easy_cdda_extractor_2010_6_setup.exe
Setup_MagicISO.exe
SetupImgBurn_2.5.2.0.exe

... and I've managed to save ISO files on my hard disk and I copied the dvds to separate backup up disks just in case but I'm completely at a lose as to where to go now.

All the 'free' software seems to be trial and only seems to do one small part of the overall job that needs to be done so I guess I have to buy something. This is something I'll want to do pretty infrequently, maybe a few times a year only so I need something that can do the everything and is pretty intuitive, reliable and easy to use. Does such a product exist? This site seems to push in the direction of AVS but is this a good tool set - would it do everything that I need? There are some negative reviews on CNET. What about Nero - is this what I need - does this do all of these jobs? Roxio gets a lot of negative reviews on Amazon so I've ruled that out anyway although I'm not yet clear if that is the kind of suite that I need.

Some pointers and advice would be very welcome.
Regards.
PTR.

[jagabo]

You'll first want to rip the DVDs to your computer with something like DvdFab. Then remux the VOB files into MPG files. If they're not commercial discs (with CSS encryption) you can use something simple like VOB2MPG to rip them directly to MPG.

You'll probably want to purchase a non linear editor like Sony Vegas Movie Studio or Corel VideoStudio (previously Ulead VideoStudio) both of which sell for about US$100. The full Sony Vegas package would be even better but that's around US$500. I don't recommend Pinnacle Studio (now from Avid). I haven't used it lately but it has historically been full of crash-and-die bugs.

You can look into open source alterantives:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open_source_software_packages#Video_editing

Maybe Cinelerra is far enough along to do what you want.

[redwudz]

PTR, in the future please use a more descriptive subject title in your posts to allow others to search for similar topics. I will change yours this time. From our rules:

Try to choose a subject that describes your topic.
Please do not use topic subjects like Help me!!! or Problems.

Thanks, and welcome to our forums.

Moderator redwudz

[PTR]

Hi jagabo,

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'll take a look at the Sony product but I'm surprised you didn't mention any of the common packages you see in the shops, Nero, Roxia, etc. .... are these no good or just not the right prodct for this kind of job? This is just a hobby for me, it's not a commercial operation and the DVDs are mine recorded by me or my friends so there are no CSS encryption or ownership issues. Consequentlly I was hoping there would be one suite that do everything - I guess not? And something that was either open source, or not too expensive; even $100 sounds like quite a lot for something I'll only use once in a blue moon .... but maybe I'm just not being realistic? I'll check out the open source link but
a quick look tells me that Cinelerra does not run in a Windows environment.

As it happens I already have a copy of Windows Movie Maker (which came bundled with Vista) will that do it? Maybe all I need to do is rip the ISO file to MPG files with one of the rippers below ... yes?

Sorry about that redwudz, I thought that was quite a good header label as I assumed that it would be a question that you would ask coming to this forum but anyway I take your poin t and will try to make my questions a bit more technically tunde in the future.

Regards.
PTR.