DVD music video - ripping from DVD

[jamesward]

Hello there everybody,

I work in the music industry and license music from independent labels. We get videos delivered in a variety of formats, and as most people (labels) don't realise that DVDs are a compressed format, we get them delivered on those.

I need to reliably rip these videos (ranging from 1:30 to 5:00) to MPEG2 without losing any quality. Where we distribute to don't accept files under a certain size as they believe it's not of high enough quality.

sometimes we also get them delivered as uncompressed avis racking in at about 6GB for a 3 min song... this is too big as we distribute via ftp or 4.7GB DVDs.

Currently I'm doing this:

DVD shrink to get the video_ts & audio_ts files etc off the dvds.
vdubmod to save as uncompressed avi
cyberlink power director to save as MPEG2 at it's highest quality

I'm well aware that the highest quality of mpeg2 makes a file needlessly big, but when we're given a song on DVD that actually makes the file needlessly large but here's why:

Take for instance one I'm doing at the moment, Jill Scott - Hate On Me.

the video_ts of that song from the DVD we were given is 180 MB
the uncompressed AVI is 6.75 GB
the MPEG2 at HD quality is 633 MB

now they'll probably take this, but is there a trick I'm missing here? Can anyone think of a better method here?

The paramount thing here is that I need it at its highest quality and there must be absolutely no errors/skips/artifacts etc at all.

Any help here would be much appreciated as I have now got about 25 DVD programs on my computer and I really need this to be as smooth as possible.

Another thing, although every once in a while we get given a retail dvd, most of them are internal label copies, so there's no protection on them.

Cheers for taking the time to read this!

:thanks:

[neuron2]

I don't understand what you are asking for.

is there a trick I'm missing here? A trick for what?

There's no point in reencoding your 180MB MPEG2 off the DVD to a 633MB MPEG2. You can't improve the quality that way. Just deliver the original MPEG2.

If the size is not "big enough", just append a bunch of 0's to the end. :)

[smok3]

well, iam getting bunch of videos on dvds 2, hopefully not from you thought... :devil:

[jamesward]

well, iam getting bunch of videos on dvds 2, hopefully not from you thought... :devil:

Harsh!

Anyway, I know the quality isn't increased and there is no point in making 180 VOB -> 6000 AVI -> 650 MPEG2, however what I really wanted to know is if there is a quicker way of making the VOB into an mpeg2. I tried using the Womble thing and it messed up on most of my attempts, either with stutters or the interlacing.

The reason I make it bigger is so that the people who I supply to don't complain as this is the highest quality the label have and they want more. But thankfully they're not that clued up on videos et al so this works.

We should get deliveries mostly in 50Mbps MPEG2 from our main supplier so this won't be an issue, but from the smaller labels who think DVDs are the best you can get (I guess they're more managable than the BetaSPs we sometimes get) we need a way around it.



Sorry, didn't actually answer the question. We get deliveries on normal video dvds, with the menus and stuff, not as the MPEG2 files... which is a shame as that would be handy...

[smok3]

rip with dvddecrypter or similar, ifo mode i use, then avidemux to remux each vob to mpeg-ps. (both programs are scriptable to some point)

[jamesward]

working on an Editors video at the moment.

Ripped it using DVD shrink - 990MB (it's a long outtakes video of the end has no start)

imported into AVI demux

I'm having some interlacing problems again, is there a way to get rid of this? I've been playing with the deinterlace settings and they're not giving me a crisp enough output. This is the first time I've tried de-interlacing (though the deinterlacer in vdubmod seemed to give me a good result) so this is probably why it's not going too well...

[smok3]

what interlacing problems?

[jamesward]

porting it directly to mpeg2 results in a banding thing which looks frubbish.

http://i24.tinypic.com/2n9et5t.jpg

and the deinterlacers on demux don't seem to be deinterlacing terribly well, but then I don't know much about deinterlacing as it's never been an issue before i started here...

[smok3]

the idea (well at least mine) was that the vob just get remuxed (without any actual changes to the video).

[jamesward]

how come when you watch the video on the DVD it's fine, but then when you get it off the dvd the interlacing shows up?

[neuron2]

what I really wanted to know is if there is a quicker way of making the VOB into an mpeg2 The VOB already contains MPEG2 video.

[foxyshadis]

The player contains a deinterlacer, most players do. On a normal interlaced TV you won't see it because that's its native format.

Do they require a progressive video? Because that does take a bit more than a rip, but not a great deal. (Look up ivtc and field-shifted progressive, in case it's not true interlaced.) DVDs are natively interlaced, so unless you're distributing onto computers there's no point in removing it.

If they need it in a .mpg, you can actually just change the name of the VOB and that's what it'll be, in as perfect a quality as it'll get without a lot of time-consuming filtering. 180 MB for that length isn't bad quality, anyway, 6-8mbps, unless it's a bad encoder. I'd push back and inform them that their rules will result in reducing quality, try to get hold of someone knowledgeable. If not, just pad zeros at the end, it won't hurt it.

Alternately, you could just combine a bunch of the videos into one .mpg and make it as large as you want. =p

[jamesward]

Ironically the final destination for these particular videos is a mobile screen, meaning this high quality they're asking for is pretty redundant.

it's cool though, I know that vobs pretty much are mpegs, just we get specs which we have to adhere to and labels think that those specs don't apply to them.

Managed to get the Editors one looking good through a variety of filters without making it look like it's been pushed through a sock, so that route seems to be working ok.

And I wonder when does 'newbie' turn to 'experienced'?

[neuron2]

And I wonder when does 'newbie' turn to 'experienced'? A thread full of newbie questions belongs in the Newbies forum. I moved it because you will get better help here. In the MPEG2 encoding forum, people are not interested in explaining the basics of interlacing, etc.

And BTW, I hope you are not deinterlacing telecined progressive content (film material). You'll trash it that way.

Sorry, didn't actually answer the question. We get deliveries on normal video dvds, with the menus and stuff, not as the MPEG2 files... which is a shame as that would be handy... It's a simple thing to demux the MPEG2 video from the DVD. You apparently continue to confuse MPEG2 video with an MPG container. That's a noob error. :)

[jamesward]

Ah, ok, fair enough.

So now i'm a noob (though I have aversions to that word), could someone explain what mpeg2 video is compared to an mpg container?

If I were to guess I'd say that the container was something like vob which holds an mpeg2 file with some additional information... but that is a guess.

Also, these videos are viewed on computer, so getting them deinterlaced is important.

It seems to have worked using the filters on demux, so that should do for the time being.

[neuron2]

MPEG2 video is an elementary stream containing only video. An MPG file is a program stream that packages the elementary video and elementary audio into a playable unit.

Film that is telecined should not be deinterlaced because the quality will be significantly degraded. For such material, you need to use inverse telecining (IVTC).