edit dvd without losing quality

[robroth]

I have a children's DVD that has a couple of extremely short parts I would like to essentially blur out or remove (without removing the audio track preferably). Maybe 10 seconds out of an hour. I don't want to lose quality in the process of doing this. What are the best tools to use?

Thanks for any recommendations.

[guns1inger]

I would use Womble Mpeg Video Wizard, which is a smart-rendering mpeg-2 editor. It will only re-encode parts that are altered, and not the rest, and therefore will not affect the quality. I don't know if it can do the blurring for you, but for such a short segment I would save out just the section that needs to be changed, alter it in another editor, then re-encode just that part and edit it back into the original with Womble again.

If you just want to edit out the parts, do the whole thing in Womble without losing any quality.

[robroth]

thanks for the tip, i will give it a shot.

[guns1inger]

Depending on how accurate you need the cuts to be, there are some free alternatives, such as mpeg2cut2. However these will only cut on I-frames, which could be up to 14 frames from where you want to be. For some, that is close enough.

[robroth]

Just some comments while I'm still working on this.

mpeg2cut2 oddly enough doesn't seem to let you cut parts out of a file and save the rest, it appears to let you export the parts you wish to keep into new files. the documentation says if you try to extract multiple parts into a single file, the results may not be great at the point where the files are spliced together.

I'm trying Womble now. I grabbed the 30 day trial and the documentation for it says I will need to use something like DVD Decrypter to rip the DVD, edit, then reauthor a new DVD rather than work with the VOBs directly. I only need to edit one of the VOBs, but I'm following their recommendations.

Eesh... looks like DVD Decrypter just made a copy of the DVD, same file structure and all. This isn't a commercial DVD, so I don't think that bought me anything.

[robroth]

Just wanted to update this with info on the tool I ultimately found easiest to use in case someone else searches and comes across this topic. The tools above made me jump through a lot of hoops, and ultimately at the end, with Womble, the resulting DVD once burned wouldn't play the edited VOB. It retained the menus, but when selecting play, it would play the first VOB which was the production credits, then it stopped instead of moving to the edited VOB.

The tool that I finally used, which rebuilt all the pointers and split cells, etc was VobBlanker. I can't say it was the easiest tool to figure out on my own, but once I found a guide, it became much easier. The results weren't perfect, where I removed the data, the movie pauses for a few seconds at each of the two spots, but that's fine. We just want to show this once at my son's birthday party and a bunch of 5 year olds wont care.

Thanks for the help. Even though it didn't work out fo rme, I'm sure others might meet with more success.

[hech54]

I only need to edit one of the VOBs, but I'm following their recommendations.

That's good because you can't do that (edit one VOB then stick it back in)...which you've already found out:

the resulting DVD once burned wouldn't play the edited VOB. It retained the menus, but when selecting play, it would play the first VOB which was the production credits, then it stopped instead of moving to the edited VOB.

[filmboss80]

Your ideal solution was in the very first line of the very first response to your query:

I would use Womble Mpeg Video Wizard, which is a smart-rendering mpeg-2 editor.

Yes, it costs money; but if your project was just a 1-time thing, you might have gotten the job done in the trial period.

Other than that, keep a periodic eye on Womble products, as they are occasionally offered for free...or at least a reduced price.

[robroth]

The very first thing I tried was Womble mpeg video wizard. I downloaded the trial. It first wanted me to rip the DVD using DVD decrypter or another ripper tool. I used both. The second one I used basically merged all the VOBs into one which is what was desired by womble. Then I edited it, but in order to create a DVD out of it, it wanted me to use the DVD authoring tool and create a new menuing system. So I must have missed something in the faqs I read and the help instructions for womble. The instruction specifically walked you thru editing a DVD but the final step was to use their dvd authoring tools. I didn't want to create a new menu system.