Extract video from 2 home DVDs - combine to single DVD with menus

[gutted]

I'm a bit of a newbie at this - please go easy on me. If I've neglected to provide any relevant info, please let me know.

I've been asked to put together a DVD of a show by the person who recorded the show. Show was recorded by video camera on to 2 DVDs single-layer ('act 1' and 'act 2'). I'd like to extract the video from both DVDs, then put them onto a single dual-layer DVD with a menu (I'd like a menu so use can select "act 1", or "act 2", or "play all"). I'd like the picture and audio quality to be as close to the originals as possible.

I've extracted the video using vob2mpg pro - the quality of audio and video is perfect. I now have 2 files - "act 1" is around 3.5GB, and "act 2" is just under 1GB.

I've previously used DVDIt Pro (v6) to author my DVDs, and have been very happy with it. I've already created my menu, added an intro audio track for the menu (a snippet of music taken from the play), and added menu backgrounds etc. I have previously used AVI files that were created using a freeware ripper called "Magic DVD" - my chosen authoring software was happy enough with the AVI files, but the quality was pretty poor which is why I bought a copy of vob2mpg.

I thought it would be easy to simply change the project to use my newly created mpg files instead of the poorer quality AVIs - but DVDIt is having major problems importing the files. It's treating each mpg file as hundreds of smaller files and is taking an age to import each file.

Here are some questions...

1. Anyone familiar with DVDIt, and anyone know what is wrong with it? I've been Googling it, and will post on the Roxio forums but as yet I've not found anyone with a similar problem.
2. Have I messed up the extraction from the originals which might be causing DVDIt problems? I used standard options in vob2mpg, with the exception of forcing aspect ratio.
3. Are there any other (ideally free) DVD authoring tools that I can use to create a DVD with the content I extracted using vob2mpg that will allow me to specify length of menu audio track plus have a JPG as a menu background, plus let me create buttons with custom text (act 1, act 2 etc)? (I also have a paid-for version of Roxio, installed on my wife's PC, but I can't figure out how to set the audio track to anything other than 20 seconds which is why I reverted to DVDIt on my older/slower PC).
4. Is there any software (ideally free) which will let me transcode the vob2mpg output into AVI (or other format) that I can try with DVDIt before I give up with DVDIt altogether? I don't want to lose any quality if at all possible.

Sorry for such a long-winded post. I'd like to get this nailed, and am trying to provide as much info as possible. I'm certain I'd have missed something anyway but again - I'm new to this, so please go relatively easy.

Thanks for any help!

[redwudz]

Re-encoding to a AVI type format will lower the quality, so I would avoid that if at all possible. You can try the freeware authoring program GUI for dvdauthor. It should be able to do what you want if you have DVD compatible MPEG files. (Which you should have if you extracted them with VOB2MPG.) There are guides for GUI for dvdauthor listed toward the bottom of it's toolpage.

If you plan to burn to a dual layer DVD disc, I would only recommend Verbatim DL discs and using Imgburn to burn the disc.

And welcome to our forums.

[lordsmurf]

DVDit 5 and 6 are garbage.
It does not properly adhere to DVD-Video specs on input, and mangles your video output.
Uninstall it, it will never be any good for you.

Not Roxio, either.

For inexpensive and easy, use TMPGEnc Authoring Works. (Here's a guide for it.)
It has a number of templates similar to DVDit

[gutted]

Ok - thanks both. I've previously had some good results with DVDit, but I'm really having a hard time of it and I think it may be time to move on. As recommended, I'll uninstall it. Likewise I'm disappointed with Roxio - several years ago I bought it for my PC, though it turned out that my version didn't work on Win7 (my wife's PC). Stupidly I bought a newer copy for my wife's PC when I probably should have done some research (any research) and spent my cash a bit more wisely. Sigh.

Cheers for the tips - I'll look into both GUI for dvdauthor (I think I spotted that earlier, while looking for software to complete this project) and TMPGEnc Authoring Works.

Incidentally - the media has been bought for me. Not sure where they got it from - but this is a charity outfit, so my guess is that they're as cheap as possible Still - at least if I can get a suitable iso file prepared, then if they don't like the quality of the discs I can burn new ones if they provide me with some decent DVDs.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Thanks again!

[lordsmurf]

TAW should have a 30-day uncrippled trial.
That will at least get you through a disc. If you like it, and need it later, buy it at that time.

[gutted]

I've been having a play about with it, and I think TAW might have what I need: it's currently outputting to hard disk. I couldn't figure out a way to write an ISO file using TAW, but hopefully it should be a relatively short step to burn the output from TAW to ISO using Nero or something. (The content looks the same as on a DVD - I can see a video_ts and audio_ts folder in the output location).

The simulation in TAW looked ok - once it's finished the output (in around another 5 hours!) I'll hopefully create an ISO and test it through XBMC. If all is good, then I can set about burning the 12 copies that I've been asked to create...

Cheers for the advice - very much appreciated!