Question about converting video ...

[AGRO]

A client gave me a number of the dvd recorded mini discs that sony uses in there hand held video recorder. The recorder burns the disc. I can take these discs and they play in my home DVD player. My question is, how do I get the video to a format that sorenson or flash can understand? I tried a free vob2avi program and it did not work at all. I just need to be able to edit the video, and convert to online and DVD delivery. Any help thanks.....I am about ready to pass this one on.

[AXXESS]

Capture from the S-Video or RCA outputs of the DVD player to your PC. The generational quality loss will be negligible assuming you capture with the proper codec. I use the Matrox-DV compression that ties in with my Matrox RTX.100 XTreme capture card. Ideally, you would capture the video uncompressed. Depending on your drive space, though...

Export from your video app as an uncompressed .avi, bring into Flash or Sorenson for recompression.

[eric_darling]

Hey AGRO, if you have a Mac (which I think you do), check this out:
http://www.miraizon.com

Their Cinematize product is a very important part of my workflow these days. And, bonus, it's cheap and works as advertised!

[Corey]

That price is indeed not too bad.

[eric_darling]

Whoops! They now have a Windows version too. So, there you are. A nice cross-platform solution. Wish everything was that easy...

[Corey]

Almost a year too, so it's probably pretty stable.
http://www.miraizon.com/about/press022205.html

[rhosk]

A client gave me a number of the dvd recorded mini discs that sony uses in there hand held video recorder. The recorder burns the disc. I can take these discs and they play in my home DVD player. My question is, how do I get the video to a format that sorenson or flash can understand? I tried a free vob2avi program and it did not work at all. I just need to be able to edit the video, and convert to online and DVD delivery. Any help thanks.....I am about ready to pass this one on.

I've heard that you can just change the extension to mpg, and you're back in biz.

Coincidently, I've got a DVD Handycam in the mail and I'd be interested to know if that in fact works Eric.

[Intrigued]

I've heard that you can just change the extension to mpg, and you're back in biz.

Coincidently, I've got a DVD Handycam in the mail and I'd be interested to know if that in fact works Eric.

That's the ticket that had worked for me (I read that off a site via Google search a couple years ago). It's a licensing deal I heard.

[Corey]

If you think licensing issues are dicey now, just sit tight a few years. In the big book of human history we are on the cusp of one of the most constrictive periods ever...

[eric_darling]

I've heard that you can just change the extension to mpg, and you're back in biz

Actually, that probably won't work. The .mpg file extension indicates MPEG-1, not MPEG-2, which is the format used on DVD discs. The VOB files are easily separated into their elementary streams, but that may even prove tricky to work with. M2V video doesn't edit well (it's GOP-based). Furthermore, the audio stream is likely to be AC3 - extremely hard to work with in post production. If it's not AC-3, it could be MPEG-1, layer 2, which is also somewhat dicey. Or, it could be uncompressed PCM/AIF (although that's pretty unlikely in this scenario).

The great thing about Cinematize (and a handful of other products) is that you can export direct from DVD to QuickTime format, which is much more suited to editing/further compression in Squeeze, Procoder, etc.

[AXXESS]

or.... you could just capture the DVD output to the PC...

[yosik]

I would suggest to try TMPGEnc family of programs.
It has even a Mpeg Editor with which you can import DVD (read vob) files and edit them, albeit basic editing (even with the IPB sequence). With its AC3 plugin, you can import this typr of adio compressed files also.
I differ with the statement that .mpg denotes Mpeg1 and not Mpeg2. Although it usually is the case, there is NOTHING preventing you from using this extension with Mpeg2. And actually quite a few programs do use this for their program stream (as opposed to elementary stream which is m2v, while for Mpeg1 it is m1v).
I have done quite a few "ripping" from DVD discs and it was smoothly enough.

Yossi

[rhosk]

Actually, that probably won't work. The .mpg file extension indicates MPEG-1, not MPEG-2, which is the format used on DVD discs.

Yep, have to disagree with the video expert here as well (respectfully). I've changed the extension on many video streams and was able to trick the [editor/player] into thinking it was a compatible format. ALL the authors/editors I have, when outputting to mpeg2, the extension remains *.mpg...

And yes, sometimes the streams are separated, but it depends on how the DVD was authored; the different *.vob files on a DVD (if there are more than one) are either different chapters or animated menu content. Once imported, you can determine which video needs to be edited (in this case, probably the larger file). And since this is a camcorder recording, I'd venture to conclude that there are no menus, background music or links to chapters, so we're only talking different scenes that were recorded.

[eric_darling]

Well, I did say it "indicates" MPEG-1, which is true. Using it to "trick" your software is fine, so long as you understand some limitations. Computers without MPEG-2 decoding won't fail gracefully - there will be error messages. Furthermore, if your output happens to be a more esoteric variant, you could also be out of luck when trying to playback the video you extract on another system. But, if it works for you, then great. There really is no single agreed-upon standard for muxed MPEG-2 program streams. There are many flavors and variants. Elementary streams from DVDs are a much safer transport method.

"VOB (DVD Video OBject) files are closely related to MPEG-2 files. VOB files are assembled by DVD producers, and they contain the actual Video, Audio, Subtitle, and Menu contents in stream form. The Wikipedia entry for VOB (as of August 4, 2005), reports that "VOB files are encoded very much like standard MPEG-2 files. When the extension is renamed from .vob to .mpg or .mpeg the file will still be readable and will continue to hold all information, although most players supporting MPEG-2 don't support subtitle tracks. In order to burn the VOB files to a DVD±R disc, other standard DVD-Video files are needed as well, including IFO and BUP files."
--Source: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/f...dd000028.shtml

[rhosk]

Well, I did say it "indicates" MPEG-1, which is true. Using it to "trick" your software is fine, so long as you understand some limitations. Computers without MPEG-2 decoding won't fail gracefully - there will be error messages. Furthermore, if your output happens to be a more esoteric variant, you could also be out of luck when trying to playback the video you extract on another system. But, if it works for you, then great. There really is no single agreed-upon standard for muxed MPEG-2 program streams. There are many flavors and variants. Elementary streams from DVDs are a much safer transport method.

"VOB (DVD Video OBject) files are closely related to MPEG-2 files. VOB files are assembled by DVD producers, and they contain the actual Video, Audio, Subtitle, and Menu contents in stream form. The Wikipedia entry for VOB (as of August 4, 2005), reports that "VOB files are encoded very much like standard MPEG-2 files. When the extension is renamed from .vob to .mpg or .mpeg the file will still be readable and will continue to hold all information, although most players supporting MPEG-2 don't support subtitle tracks. In order to burn the VOB files to a DVD±R disc, other standard DVD-Video files are needed as well, including IFO and BUP files."
--Source: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/f...dd000028.shtml

Well, I wasn't doubting your intelligence nor was I challenging you in any way (not an expert here ), just letting the thread know that it can be done - I do it all the time (without any problems or errors), can't emphasize that enough, and ALL of my resulting videos/DVD's turn out perfect (objectively speaking mind you).

And as usual, thanks for the lesson, Eric