How to cut out parts of DVD video

[ptr727]

Hi, I want to make small changes to our wedding DVD, specifically I want to cut out some scenes.

I own Nero 8, but neither Nero Recode nor Nero Vision allows me to import my DVD and make changes without loosing the menus.

What tools would you recommend I use to remove parts of the the video, without loosing the menu's and chapters?

Regards
P.

[M_Knox]

If you want to cut some parts out without reencoding the whole video, I suggest you used VobBlanker with its cell splitting feature, combined with PgcEdit and FixVTS.
With VobBlanker you can split a cell to smaller parts (on I-frame boundaries only, so you might end up with cells that are not exactly what you want to cut out, but a few frames longer/shorter). Then, after splitting, with PgcEdit you can delete uneeded cells, and finally run FixVTS to remove the deleted cells physically from the video files.

[ptr727]

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

If I want to spend some $$$, what comercial application woud allow me to make this simpler, e.g. Adobe Premier Elements, MyDVD, DVDIt, etc?

[setarip_old]

Hi!

As an alternative, you can first use DVD Shrink in "Re-author" mode to cut out the scenes and then:

Active menu after re-authoring in DVD Shrink


http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=185976

(Don't be misled by the statement "Do not re-author")

The method described works quite nicely, with two caveats, one significant and the other easily resolved:

1) The menu MUST be contained (as the "VTS_0x_0.VOB") in the same .VOB sequence as the movie

2) The .VOB sequence MUST be "VTS_01_x.VOB" (If this is not originally the case, you can change to this numbering sequence AFTER using DVD Shrink to rip the menu/movie sequence of .VOBs (by selecting the menu/movie .IFO instead of the "VIDEO_TS.IFO") and before using (the freeware version of) DVDFab's "Create Video Manager" to create the (intentionally) missing "VIDEO_TS.IFO" and "VIDEO_TS.BUP" files.

[foxyshadis]

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

If I want to spend some $$$, what comercial application woud allow me to make this simpler, e.g. Adobe Premier Elements, MyDVD, DVDIt, etc?

Sony Vegas, Adobe Premier Elements, or Ulead VideoStudio are the big three consumer-level commercial editors. MyDVD is more for authoring the dvd and menus once the video itself is edited, though I guess MyDVD premier has some capability, but Videowave is imho better for that if you go with Sonic. (Easy Media Creator 10 includes both.)

DVDit competes more with the full edition of Premier and the top editions of Vegas; they'd probably be out of your budget.

For editing on a budget, a free tool I know of is avs Film Cutter, the gui in the new alphas isn't too bad, though it's not entirely stable.

[ptr727]

If you want to cut some parts out without reencoding the whole video, I suggest you used VobBlanker with its cell splitting feature, combined with PgcEdit and FixVTS.
With VobBlanker you can split a cell to smaller parts (on I-frame boundaries only, so you might end up with cells that are not exactly what you want to cut out, but a few frames longer/shorter). Then, after splitting, with PgcEdit you can delete uneeded cells, and finally run FixVTS to remove the deleted cells physically from the video files.

I ended up using VideoReDo Plus, and it allowed me to easily cut portions of video from the VOB file, and then re-save the VOB.

Problem now is that the DVD menu that goes to specific locations are wrong.

How do I change the offsets the DVD menu items point to?

Regards
P.

[foxyshadis]

pgcedit has all the tools in the world for menu editing. Import the vob, select the menu on the left hand side (press the menu button to visually see if it's the one you want) then look in the command script for lines like:
Set gprm(3) =(mov) 4106
where the 4106 is the position in seconds. Double-click to change those to the new values.

I'm sure there might be good visual menu editors, this is just what I use.

[ptr727]

Thank you, I will play with PgcEdit.