Importing DVD into an NLE?
 

How can I import DVD footage into my NLE? I have Vegas 7 and Avid Xpress Pro.

I've tried capturing by plugging the DVD palyer into a Canonpus ADVC 110, but even using S-Video (the Canopus doesn't have component) the footage has pretty noticable loss.

I am hoping that there is some kind of file conversion solution. Thanks much!

Hi Peter,

I don't know if 'High Definition Video Editing Solutions' is the right forum for this post, but anyway, I did a quick search on Google for 'rip dvd to avi' and got a bunch of links. This was near the top:
http://www.wikihow.com/Rip-DVDs-to-S...ormatted-Files

There's some good info there.

You'll want to 'rip' the dvd to a file, same way you 'rip' a cd when you want to use the audio from it, vs playing back the cd and recording the audio from it.

Hope this helps :)
Eric

Eric, Yes it does. I'm giving it a shot right now. THANKS!

Okay cool, let me know how you make out. :)

If you want the entire DVD captured into Vegas 7 you can also do it simply by going to "File", "Import", "DVD Camcorder Disc." Don't worry about the fact that the DVD is not a "DVD camcorder disc." In the window that pops up, just select the drive that the DVD is in, select a destination for the files and then click "ok."

Some other capture programs will let you select specific vob files from the DVD rather than capturing the entire DVD, but I have not found a way to do that in Vegas 7.

Alternative ways
 

Most NLE's will decompress the .vob files, but there will be a loss; besides, NLEs are not meant to deal with delivery formats, thus will not be too happy about it, and the quality will suffer.

If you don't have to process the file (no corrections, etc), you can simply cut the part of the DVD you need using MPEG Streamclip. Open the .vob, select in and out points, then "save as mpeg". There will be no re-encoding at all, the software will simply eliminate some non-video parts of the file and save it as clean mpeg. Then, when authoring your DVD, simply insert this mpeg file into your own DVD project - the original quality will be 100% preserved.

If you do have to edit, then decompress to either uncompressed avi or a lossless format like HuffYUV with a good program like VirtualDub, and import the resulting file into your NLE and edit.

Hope this helps,

It worked, DVDx, but there is a lot blocky distortion to the results.

It may be a PAL DVD, as it was released in the Middle East and Israel. But it does play fine in my DVD player. So I'll be fiddling around with different settings, and trying some the other suggestions here as well; thanks much to everyone :).

Hmm, that's strange. Sounds like it didn't read it properly. Does DVDx suppoer PAL format? Your NLE should fine with taking in PAL video. The blocks sound like an MPEG-related problem.

Have you viewed the ripped video footage to see if the video looks right before it goes into your NLE?

Editing video from a DVD
 

I tried several programs/methods/etc. and what worked best for me was Cinematize 2.0

If you don't re-edit the video, you can rip files from the DVD and re-use them, create new menus, edit the audio files, etc. with no loss in video quality at all.

Obviously, if you re-edit compressed video, you must lose quality, so the trick is to not reedit. You can however, use only some of the vob files, create new menus, etc. as I've said.

I haven't tried it this way, but Cinematize will let you use part(s) of the vob file and (supposively) not lose any quality.

Hank Castello

That sounds cool, I'll check it out, thanks :)