DVD Home video footage from 1950's - help!
 

My father has a 45 minute dvd with some home movies shot originally on 8 mm in the fifties. He wants to rearrange and cut some things to give to a relative. Is there any way I can snag the video in AVI to edit in Premiere Pro 2.0? I was hoping I wouldn't have to use any ripping software. Any alternate methods? Thanks.

Nick - I would take the DVD output from the S-video connector and feed it into a DV camcorder (there are fancier solutions using convertors too) and tape it. Your audio can go in by standard audio connectors. You can then feed it into your computer NLE for editting.

In an earlier post, I saw someone indicate that they could actually offload the .vob files and edit them in Vegas. I actually just tried it in Vegas Movie Studio, dragging a .vob file from a dvd disk image I have on my hard drive, and sure enough, it dragged right to time lime. Vegas movie studio Platinum is a stripped version of vegas available for about $100.00 and includes DVD Architect, also in a stripped version.

Or you can just use DVD2AVI and save them as uncompressed, edit, and then back again to dvd. The downside is that you have to recompress to mpeg 2.

Or you can use vobrator to de-mux the video and audio streams and feed them to the timeline as mpg files. Again, the problem is recompression.

Canopus Edius (versions 3+) can read and edit the VOB files once you change the file extension to M2P. Audio might be an issue if that's encoded to AC3, but I think version 4 even solves that problem. Some encrypted DVDs may not work.

You can also edit the VOB files in PP2.0 once you rename the file extension.

...to mpg.

Ulead Moviefactory 4 or 5 will edit the DVD for you just fine. Even just download the 30 day demo. I did and have bought for $39 as a very usefull fast program rather than have all the hassle with the more complex NLE's that do not support AC3. I think Premiere Elements may also do the job too.

Ron Evans

I just tried changing the extension of a .vob video file with a Dolby Digital (AC3) audio track to .mpg, and then importing it into Premiere Pro 2.0. It imported just fine, and played back with audio on the Timeline without any problems. So Premiere Pro 2.0 does support importing and editing audio encoded with the Dolby Digital codec. There's no need to purchase a separate NLE to edit vob/mpg files with Dolby Digital audio tracks.

Thanks for the replies everyone!

A little update for you: I actually have that stripped version of Vegas, but I find that it's almost completely worthless as it ruins any video after rendering...maybe I have something setup wrong!

Regardless of that, the DVD in question must be mucked up because when I copied the VOB files and changed them to mpegs, one of them had was 17 seconds long, one worked fine, and the other had no time stamps! Haha.

My father was willing to pay the fee to have a pro joint convert the dvd to uncompressed AVI, so here I have three DVD's with 15 minutes each of home videos from the '50's...showing every possible flaw!

Nick, with as many Veggies that frequent this board, I would have to say the fault lies somewhere other than Vegas. It may be the fact you are right, in having something set wrong. Getting stuff to compress and still look pretty can be a bear at times.

I recently discovered that little ole' Premiere Elements (a copy of which I won in a draw) can rip non-encrypted VOB files off of DVDs. It's intended for people with DVD camcorders. Didn't figure I had a use for it until I discovered that feature. Too bad they don't include the same thing in Premiere Pro.

adding sound
 

I edited down some home movies of me and my brothers as kids - and added sound effects and music. What a difference!

running around in the woods with cricket and bird sounds, swimming with splashing sfx.

The sound really makes them come alive

I get sound effects CDs at the library for this kind of "non-commercial" project - you'd be surprised how many they have!

Hello , No Budget approach:

If You just want to do some simple Cuts - demuliplex with VobEdit and then do Your cuts with Cuttermaran. Then import the created video and sound files into Ifoedit and You get Your new DVD. All tools are freeware and work perfect.

Greetings Richard