Need best method to rip DVD-R & Edit (re: Quality)

[Jonodan]

First off... thanks for taking a moment to read my message. Its cool you more experienced people help us "newbies" out!

I want to rip programs I recorded on my standalone DVD-R burner (home movies, etc) to my harddrive and then edit them to reburn onto disk again as a finished product (w/menus, music, etc).

I want to minimize the loss of quality during the process. Here's what I do currently...

1) Record onto standalone DVD-R recorder at XP speed.
2) Rip to hard drive in MPEG2 format from DVD-R (using ImageToo ripper)
3) Edit using MovieFactory Video editor.
4) Export final video to MPEG2 file
5) Use MovieFactory to record onto new DVD-R with best record speed

I have noticed some of the resulting product were not as sharp as the original video or "raw footage" DVD-R.

Is this a matter of using MPEG2 too many times during the process?
Should I be ripping the "Raw Footage" DVD-R in some uncompressed fashion prior to editing? (The editor seems to only accept avi or mpeg files for editing...)

Any info or suggestion are greatly appreciated.

Dan M.
Baltimore

[Dimmer]

Of course you lose quality if you re-encode MPEG file. Check out this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=71346) where I described a method of making a standard DVD out of a disc burned in a standalone recorder. The program I recommend for that purpose is TMPGEnc DVD Author (http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tda.html) (TDA), easy to use yet quite powerful for non-professional applications. Your video would stay untouched thus retaining the original recording quality.

Hope this helps.

[Jonodan]

Thanks, I'll give it a try... I See the program you mention has a 30-day free trial. Thanks...

I'll post again later on about how it worked for me...