Mix . Mux . Muck. Help with DVD Editing Project Extraordinaire.

[DrDr]

1. I am a "newbie."

2. I read as much as I could digest and understand during the past several weeks in order to feel warranted that I be allowed to post this message.

*** What I am trying to achieve:

I am putting together a wedding proposal on video. It will consist of still images from scanned color photos, in concert with a soundtrack consisting of partly my own narration, and partly song clips, etc. Interspersed among these still clips will be a number of different movie clips that I am ripping from DVD (where Doom9 comes in).

When it is done, I will sent it to the folks at DVFilm (www.dvfilm.com) and have it transferred to 35mm film for projection.

*** What I have tried:

Initially ripped with DVD Decrypter, then used the .vob files in DVD2AVI to create an AVI film and then GKnot to mux it all together and get a final product. Imported that into an editor where I cut and spliced. The problem is that this process is cumbersome and difficult to reproduce with different DVDs (i.e. unpredictable quality). DVD2AVI is very hard to use (for me), and while I have gotten some great results, I have also had numerous troubles (and that's despite referring to the "What is DVD2AVI telling me thread"). For example, the ghostbusters films was giving me Bits/Pixel-Frame target values that I could not seem to achieve no matter where I moved the resolution bar. I'm sure it reflects an error I made earlier in DVD2AVI (in which the FILM box flickered between FILM and NTSC).

I got frustrated and someone turned me on to WinDVD Creator Plus (Intervideo) since you are able to edit .vob files directly in Creator Plus (thus avoiding conversion, etc). While I have found that to be true, for some reason the .vob files that have soundtracks in .ac3 are not playing audio within DVD Creator Plus. However, the .vobs I ripped from music DVDs I own (e.g. U2 Best of DVD) have soundtracks in LPCM and these audio tracks play without a problem in Creator Plus.

*** My questions:

A. Should I give up completely? This seems like it will be far too hard for me to accomplish.

B. If not, anyone have thoughts on why .ac3 associated .vob files aren't playing in DVD Creator Plus? The same .vob files play in Windows Media or Power DVD without audio problems.

C. What is the best way to accomplish this project?

Any help would be most appreciated.

Until then,

DrDr

[jggimi]

You certainly have your work cut out for you!...was giving me Bits/Pixel-Frame target values that I could not seem to achieve...That's because your target size was 1-CD, and you were using only a clip. You can either input your intended size manually, or you can switch Gknot from calculating based on an intended size to calculating based on an intended bitrate.

But I'm not sure Gknot is the tool you want to use for this purpose, since DivX is a lossy codec, and your results are going to (gasp!) 35mm film. It's a DivX encoder, not an editor. But all the tools that come with GKnot's suite can be used, as follows.

If this were me, I might use a series of DVD2AVI projects in concert with AviSynth scripts (.avs files) to frameserve the DVDs' video streams in avi form. At the same time, I would use DVD2AVI to demux the audio, then use BeSweet to transcode it to LPCM (.wav files). I would then add the audio back in to the AviSynth scripts using the WavSource command, and then assemble the complete (and in-sync) sound and video in an AVI using Vdub and a DV video codec the transfer-to-film vendor supports, such as the Panasonic, Adaptec, etc... You can find links to those in the DV Capture FAQ (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30495).

You are not hearing ac3 audio because you don't have the Ac3Filter (http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/Filters/ac3filter_0_63b.exe) installed.

Good luck!

[DrDr]

Actually, I DID have the AC3 filter installed. Just to be certain, I removed it through the XP control panel, downloaded your link and reinstalled it. The rebooted and still no luck.

Again, I can play those same .vobs with Windows Media and they play without a problem. Really puzzling.

[jggimi]

You've got me with that one. However, if you're transcoding the audio to LCPM, it's academic.

Just as an additional thought ... when using AviSynth scripts to tack these things together, I wouldn't bother with cropping or resizing; in my small experience, both NTSC DVDs and NTSC DV run at 720x480.

[killingspree]

hey
i'm just wondering how you want to transfer the movie to the dv - company? do you want to be it on one cd as an avi or are you going to burn it to a dvd-r (rw) or are you going to play it onto a DV- tape, or (better not) VHS?

furthermore , how long is the clip going to be? i can't imagine it being so long so if burning to dvd-r (or cd) why don't you use a lossless or near - lossless codec (i'm thinking of MJPEG atm, but it could also be huffyuv). this way you will end up with the best video quality possible, but i doubt it will be possible without dvd-r as the amount of data will just be too large! be aware that the MJPEG codec is not free though...

anyway i too would handle it with a bunch of avisynth scripts as jggimi described!

regards
steVe

[DrDr]

DVFilm Has a minimum charge for a transfer of 3 minutes. Therefore, I will try and use all three (they charge $350/minute). While that seems exhorbitant, I'd rather spend the money on a cool proposal than on a ridiculous ring.

Anyway, not sure what 3 minutes would cost me in terms of gigabytes.

[DrDr]

By the way, DVFilm will accept my hard drive. So I could send them my smaller drive (40 gigs) and it really wouldn't matter what kind of compression I used) . . .

In the large scheme of things, if the hard drive were to get damaged, it's about 70 bucks to replace. Less than 10% of the total cost.

However, I really don't want to do that anyway since my system is loaded onto that drive and I just don't feel like transferring it right now.

[killingspree]

well... at this price i'd consider buying another harddrive as you'll get by far the best quality out of this. but only bother with this if you have a NTFS file system... FAT32 will "kill you"... anyway you'll get the most quality out of it... oh and actually i think something like 10 Gigs should be enough... i'm not really sure how to, but i think you can calculate the size of the video like this...
(would be nice if someone could verify this)
anyway here's the calculation:
width*hight*number of frames = bits total (divide by 8 for bytes then by 1024 for kbyte and again by 1024 for mbyte)

oh and the number of frames for the clip can be determinded as follows
seconds of the clip * framerate
so you'll have 180 seconds * NTSC framerate of 29.97; therefore you've got roughly 5400 frames!

hope this helps
regards
steVe

[jggimi]

You forgot colorspace, killingspree. Each pixel may consume a significant number of bits for color.

My experience with DV codecs (albiet small) is that they are lossless or nearly lossless -- and the space consumption is similar to Huffyuv - huge.

But a simple test with 30 or 60 seconds worth of video with the appropriate codec should be a better predictor then trying to use math. :-)

[killingspree]

damn it... i somehow knew it couldn't be right but on the other hand it seemed ok and i had seen similar calculations some time ago...

anyway sorry for this mal-information

regards
steVe