Importing DVD into PP 1.51
 

I'd like to import a short movie scene I recorded to DVD using variable bit rate and progressive. It's letterboxed 4:3. I can find nothing about importing DVD material in help. Anyone know if and how this can be done? Thanks in advance!

Tip

Copy the files ending in .vob off the DVD, rename the .vob extension to .mpg, and then import the files into Premiere.

Thank you...
 

Haven't tried it yet, but it makes sense. Thanks.

Tip

I've tried that but I can't seem to get the file to make the change. I put .mpg at the end of the file name but when I place the mouse arrow over the file it still displays it as a VOB.

PPro 1.5 still doesn't like it?

Any ideas?

Do you have Windows XP set to display file extensions? If not, you might just have added the .mpg extension before the .vob extension (e.g., my file.mpg.vob).

To display file extensions in Windows XP, open Windows Explorer and go to Tools > Folder Options > View tab, and uncheck the option "Hide extensions for known file types."

Okay, changing that worked. I can now get it into PPro1.5 as an .mpg but the speed of the clip seems sped up and the audio is gone?

Any ideas?

Select the MPEG-2 file in Premiere Pro's Project Bin, then go to File > Interpret Footage, and make sure the clip's frame rate is set correctly. As for the audio, I don't know what is wrong there, unless Premiere Pro 1.5 does not support the codec used to encode the audio stream.

Very odd? I tried that, it is set to 29.97 FPS. Still doesn't work!

I really don't know what is wrong here, I hate having to convert every file with the ripper. :(

Any other suggestions? I'll try anything at this point.

Mike

You could try frameserving the MPEG file(s) into Premiere Pro. This would eliminate the need to transcode the MPEG-2 files into another format, with the resulting drop in quality such a transcode would create - not to mention the time and disk space involved.

There are a couple methods you could try. One is this: How to frameserve DVD/MPEG2/HDTV to an advanced video editor

The other would be to feed the file(s) to Premiere through an AviSynth script. You would need to install AviSynth first, then make a text file with the following line in it:

AviSource("C:\myvideos\myvideo.mpg")

Obviously you just replace the path and video file name with the path to and the name of your video file. Save the text file with the extension .avs (e.g., myvideo.avs).

If the audio in your MPEG-2 files is in the MP2 format, you will need to install the MPASource AviSynth plugin, which can be found on the AviSynth Filter Collection Web page. If the audio is in the AC3 (Dolby Digital) format, you would need to install the AC3filter plugin. Simply download the necessary filter and copy it to the plugins folder in the AviSynth program folder. Normally this is located at C:\Program Files\AviSynth [version number]\plugins.

Then import the .avs file(s) into Premiere Pro. Premiere Pro will see the .avs file as an AVI file, as AviSynth does all the converting necessary.

And this is just the very tip of the iceberg of AviSynth’s capabilities.

This seems to work for the most part. I still find that the VOB file looks better than what I end up with AviSynth, looks slightly wider in scope as well. I seem to get a bit of tearing with the final avi as well.

I asked this in the other thread, does PPro 2.0 accept VOB as is?

Thanks again everyone, you've been a ton of help.

Mike

Whoops, looks like a different AviSynth command is needed for MPEG files. Try this instead:

DirectShowSource("c:\folder\myclip.mpg", fps=29.97)


Of course set the fps to whatever your source file's frames per second happens to be.

As for Premiere Pro 2.0 accepting VOB files directly, I'm afraid it does not.

GAK!! Really? Who's fault is this... Sony's?

Probably. :)

Thanks for all of your help. I need a break from it but I'll try what you posted a little later.

Thanks,

Mike