Newbiest of the Newb> Basic rip/rearrange/reburn question

[Jen526]

I apologize in advance for the basic-ness of this question. I've attempted to use the guides here, but feel a bit overwhelmed.

I have a project to burn some old family movies (on VHS) to DVD for my grandmother. I can get them onto DVD with minimal quality loss(purchased this guy, and he's working great ) but would like to go a step further. The VHS tapes she has were originally converted from old 16mm video and were put onto VHS in rather willynilly order. A few clips actually play upside-down. I'd like to be able to rip the DVD, parse out the clips, flip the upside-down ones, and re-combine them in a more chronological order (and add chapters to make it easier for her to jump to particular clips).

I've gotten the files broken out into clips using basic windows movie-maker, but no matter what quality I choose when trying to re-author the video, the quality always seems to far worse than the original video quality, and with a lot of black space around the video, which the source DVD does not have. I honestly don't have a good enough vocabulary in this stuff to even know where in the process I'm going wrong, so I'm not sure if I should be focusing more on the "Author" or "Edit" or "Capture" guides, or something else entirely.

I'm willing to throw more money at this, if the solution is to invest in some expensive editing/authoring program, but I'm hesitant to commit to that unless I know it will give me the quality I need. Can anyone recommend an appropriate guide or offer suggestions on the easiest way to get the best quality for the sort of thing I'm looking to do?

[Baldrick]

You could try export to dv-avi with windows movie maker and then convert it to a dvd with for example avstodvd.


Or use a better dvd/mpeg editor like mpeg video wizard dvd or tmpgenc mpeg editor.

[Chef Goldblum]

This is a bunch of stuff to edit, rearrange, and make the DVD. Not really hard, but you need to get some better tools and do some learning on how DVD works, and what steps are needed to get to good video. Movie Maker aint gonna get you there. Maybe try dvdflick.

[transporterfan]

Two progs I can vouch for are:
VideoRedo (advanced editor) and VideoStudio Prox4.
With just VideoStudio you will be able to do everything you want.
I have done similar work to what you describe and it was a breeze.
It's not the tools you use, it's how well you learn to use them.
These are pretty simple but can produce amazing results and are my personal preferences.
I am sure other people will tell you theirs.

Another, simpler option maybe to build a slide show with effects. See below.

http://www.wondershare.com/pro/dvd-slideshow-builder-deluxe.html

You would still require an editor to cut sections from the VOB files on your DVD.