How: Partial Rip and Join of Two DVDs?

[internetpilot]

I searched the forums for this topic, but can't find anything (might be using wrong words), so forgive me if this has been discussed previously.

Background: I have DVD2SVCD, VCDEasy (Commercial Version), TMPGEnc 2.5 (registered), a P4 1.8ghz with CDRW and DVD-ROM drives, and a KWorld TV878RF-Pro tuner/capture card. I've successfully burned quite a few of my VHS tapes to (S)VCD using the KWorld card, InterVideo WinProducer, TMPGEnc, and VCDEasy. I've also successfully done about a dozen DVD backups to SVCD using DVD2SVCD and then burning them with VCDEasy. So when it comes to video mangling, I'm not exactly dumb as a rock, but not much smarter than a tree stump -- I'm basically at the mercy of mostly canned software packages, and have never attempted to do all this with individual programs.

Question: My son wants all the action/battle scenes from the the first two Lord of the Rings DVDs on one SVCD. What is the easiest way to do this?

What I've Tried: I've tried just ripping and converting the entire DVD via DVD2SVCD, and then attempted to edit/cut/join the various scenes from the MPG files generated by the process. I've tried using the results from BBMpeg (three files) and TMPGEnc (one big file), but to no avail. I've tried editing the files with TMPGEnc's MPEG tools as well as InterVideo's WinProducer, but both of them crap out saying they can't edit or read these files, even tho all of the MPEG files I'm trying to edit play just fine in the Windows Media Player and PowerDVD. It's annoying because I've edited dozens of MPEGs (both MPEG-1 and MPEG-2) in these programs, but now they don't like the output that's generated from apps with DVD2SVCD. I've also tried using VirtualDub, but it tells me something about a bad pack file. I've also tried a couple of the FAQ's and How-Tos on VCDHelp.com, but they all end up with files that cannot be editing with programs I have.

Admission: I'm whining. But this should not be this difficult considering all the video editing that I've done. I'm definitely not a genius at this stuff, but I'm beginning to feel like a moron.

What am I missing? I'm hoping it's something obvious. It's getting to the point of just recording the frickin' DVD scenes to a VHS tape and then capturing them through my capture card, but that's a bit ridiculous.

Thanks for any help.

[killingspree]

hi and welcome to the forum
now that's how I like first posts :D everything explained nicely and in detail as it is supposed to be ;)

but on to your problem/task. There's actually two approaches, one of them i'd choose as I use CCE and is a bit faster.
so choice one is: rip your DVD using your favourite ripper (recommended: DVDdecrypter), create a DVD2AVI project, then (and that is the little harder part) create an avisynth script. basically like this: (fragment)

mpeg2source("yourd2afile.d2a")
crop(*)
resize(*)
#and then choose the sections you want using the trim command)
trim(startframe, endframe)++trim(startframe, endframe)++

now for start and endframe you just fill in the exact frame where the piece you want starts and ends, the ++ appends the segments again. The exact frames can be found in virtualdub(mod). just create a seperate script just inclduing the mpeg2source line and load it into virtualdub. now you'll have the whole movie on display. then just scroll to the scenes you want to select, write the framenumbers displayed on the bottom into the avisynth script and off you go.
audio might pose a bit of a problem as avisynth cannot deal with ac3 directly. so i'd suggest you take the demuxed ac3 file that you got when makind the d2a project and decode it to wav. the load it too into avisynth using the wavsource() command then muxing the audio using the AudiDub() command. you'll want to use variables there to get no confusion, maybe like this:

a=mpeg2source
a=crop(a,param)
a=resize(a, param)
b=wavsource()
AudioDub(a,b)
trim(x,y)++trim()...

when done, load the file into your favourite encoder, and encode

come to think of it, the second method isn't really suitable for svcd creation, so you might try this one. for details of avisynth see www.avisynth.org !

hope this helps
steVe

[internetpilot]

Wow...so I wasn't missing anything simple -- I was thinking that a more complex process should be more simple. Hmmm. Using a video enhancer between my standalone DVD player and capture card is looking better all the time!

After literally running DVD2SVCD overnight, shouldn't I just be able to edit the bbMPEG_Muxed_FileXX.mpg files in say TMPGEnc's MPEG Tools Merge & Cut? I've always encountered tons of issues when trying to go from DVD to SVCD in a non-automated method. I get audio out of sync and some weird video issues at times, and correcting these ends up being a process that takes longer than just running DVD2SVCD, which turns out perfect every time (because it doesn't require much input from me!). Is there no way to use any of the MPEG output from the DVD2SVCD process and just edit it with TMPGEnc, WinProducer, or some other MPEG editor/encoder? This just seems weird to me -- even the encoded output file (MPEG) from the TMPGEnc part of the DVD2SVCD process isn't compatible with TMPGEnc when I try to bring it in for Merging and Cutting. Yet this same file plays in PowerDVD, MS Media Player, and even on my standalone DVD player (when it's small enough to fit on one CD-R). It's obviously a standard enough MPEG file or none of these players would know what to do with it, yet the same program that encoded it (TMPGEnc) can't read it?

Oh, and I'm also open buying commercial software if it will do this job for me. I'm finding myself really missing the simplicity of VHS. I know, I know...blasphemy! :rolleyes:

[internetpilot]

Okay, found a way to do this (using some of your information) that makes sense to me and doesn't have the learning curve of AVISynth, and also discovered why all my video programs have been crapping out on me when I've tried to retrieve the various files in for editing, etc.

The Problem: The Lord of the Rings Two Towers DVD that I have is a pre-release Academy Awards ("For Your Review") type DVD. It is rather poor quality in some regards and don't even ask me about the subtitles because someone who took one 2 week course in conversational English was the one who did the English subtitles. Anyway, VCDEasy's MPEG tools was the only utility that wouldn't crap out on me when examining the MPEG output, and it popped up with some message about this being Chinese formatted and that it wouldn't play in most DVD players in its present form, etc. My Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring DVD is the normal release director's edition, and the MPEG output from it works just fine with all my applications. So...OOPS. Sorry, this was the first time I've attempted a partial rip/join...figures it would be a weird formatted DVD.

My Solution for Partial Rip/Join:
1. Used VStrip (only because it came with DVD2SVCD) to rip the DVD.
2. Used TMPGEnc to encode the files.
3. Used WinProducer to pretty up the cuts and joins with transitions, titles, etc. (TMPGEnc has very inaccurate cuts -- off by as much as 2-3 seconds)
4. Used VCDEasy to create and burn a SVCD with menu, etc.

Anyway, thanks again for the tips. I'm definitely going to have to learn more about AVISynth when I have the time. It doesn't seem to be as "pretty" as other editors out there, but it seems a lot more precise. I also have found a lot more AVI editors out there than MPEG editors, so I'm going to start trying a lot of editors to see which one I like. It might turn out to be better to throw in the DVD2AVI step and edit everything as an AVI instead of a MPEG.

[killingspree]

thanks for your feedback! I'm glad you accomplished your task.

steVe

[oddyseus]

Internetpilot just wanted to welcome u to the forum and wish u a nice stay.

Since this is your first visit here, I want to grab the opportunity to remind u of the forum rules (http://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm). Pls read them and feel free to ask if there is a obscure point in them.

PS. I am really glad that u solved your problem alone. Its a very nice feeling that, isn't it? btw I don't think that we have academy members visiting us often :)

[manono]

Hi-

btw I don't think that we have academy members visiting us often

Hehe. Yeah, I noticed that, too. Who knows, maybe he really is an Academy member and got it legitimately (except that one wouldn't have had subs on it). Or maybe he didn't know it's a bootleg (is that any excuse?).

As for the original problem, I would have ripped the DVDs by chapter, and then deleted the ones that that didn't have the fighting scenes that he wanted. Such things as dissolves and titles can also be handled in AviSynth, before doing the encoding.