dvd (or vob) to .avi

[Will Turner]

Thank you. I just encoded 13 minutes of video using Huffyuv and the file came to 6GB. That would come to about 24GB/hour. That's still pretty large, but better than 120GB/hour.

[Will Turner]

Thank you. I did notice at the link you gave me this comment:

"Panasonic CODEC worked perfectly well with VirtualDub, however it adversely affected Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 DV playback and corrupted viewing on external DV devices and export to tape. Re-installing Premiere does not fix the problem, you must manually remove the codec. This CODEC comes with NO UNINSTALLER."

I am using PPro 1.5, so I would want to avoid that problem.

[John Britt]

Hmm.. I hadn't seen that comment before. That said, it is just one user's comment, so you never know if it was actually the codec's fault or the user's fault.

Of course, that's also why I built a separate machine to run P Pro 1.5 (as well as AE 6.5). There's nothing but the basics on my new machine, allowing me to fool around with things like VirtualDub and random codecs and whatnot on the older PC (which runs Premiere 6.5, which has not had any problems since installing the Panny DV codec)

As long as you've got space for that extra 10 GB per hour, though, the huffyuv codec might just be enough for you.

Still, I want someone with a more discerning eye than mine to try the VOB -> MPG -> Windows Movie Maker -> DV AVI method and let me know if they see any problems that I don't (new artifacts, etc). Any takers?

[Will Turner]

Well, I tried it after it was suggested in this post, and I found two significant problems:
1) the video is truncated on the left and right sides.
2) the audio level is reduced significantly.

Both of those problems make that method unsuitable for my purposes.

[John Britt]

Will -- you mean when trying to convert the mpg to avi in Windows Movie Maker? Those are two problems I have not encountered. I assume you mean that somehow it cuts off the sides of the image? Strange. And I haven't had any problems with the audio from the conversion, either. But I've only done it a handful of times, so their may be variables in how the MPG or VOB file is created that can effect the output to AVI.

Oh well. Sorry it didn't work out for you. [but I'm glad it still works for me! :) ]

[Graham Hickling]

Virtualdubmod is the most straightforward way.

Regarding what compression to select: the huffyuv codec is great quality but (as you know) produces large files. Recompressing with a DV codec will give you much smaller files but with some degradation in quality. So .... you might want to consider one of the mjpeg codecs like Picvideo or mogan multimedia, as these let you vary the degree of compression depending on what trade-off between file size and quality suits you best. (Picvideo at quality 21 is nearly as good as huffyuv).

You haven't mentioned how your audio is encoded - it will be either 48KHz PCM (i.e. a normal wav file), or mp2, or AC3. All the stuff in an earlier post about besweet was good advice IF it is mp2 or ac3 that needs conversion back to wav. But if it is wav already, which is quite possible with home-authored DVDs, then that step isn't needed.

And finally, if you just need to recover mpeg from a vob file then no recompression is necessary - all you need to do is quickly remux the vob using something like "mpeg tools" in Tmpgenc.

[Will Turner]

I worked on this last night. Huffyuv encoded a two-hour movie at about 30GB. I have a 160GB drive, so this was managable. Yesss!I brought the Huffyuv files into Premiere, edited them and then rendered. The quality is fantastic. Yes, yes, YESSSSS! The final trick was to open the .AVS file, not the VOB file, in VirtualDubMod then encode with Huffyuv.

Many thanks to all who've contributed to my request for help. I've been developing this process and refining it for about three months. Now it looks like I've finally achieved what I've been striving for.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you, very much.

[Jim Pulfer]

Will,

Can you post your steps here - I've hacked my way through this process a number of different ways, but I still believe that a better way exists. If you could list out the steps you took with the software used that would help (plus people searching in the future could find the answer in one entry within the post instead of trying to read and interpret the different posts!)

Thanks

[Will Turner]

My time is pretty limited, so I don't think I can provide every detail. But, I'll do what I can. If you have more questions later, I'll try to answer them, but I qualify that with an admission that I've only been doing video for about three months. I'm still a newbie.

My process uses four pieces of software:
-DVDshrink (DVD Decryptor comes with Gordian Knot which you may use instead of DVDshrink if you prefer)
-Gordian Knot
-VirtualDubMod (it comes with Gordian Knot) and
-Besweet (also comes with Gordian Knot)

I use DVDshrink to rip the VOBs from the DVD. I prefer to rip to one complete VOB rather than several VOBs. That makes the whole process later much easier.

Then I use Gordian Knot. I follow the instructions here:

http://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?guideid=731#731

to process the VOB file.

-Process the VOB file then save the project as a .dv2 file.

-Open the .dv2 file according to the instructions. Follow the instructions for bitrate and resolution. Tip: Slide the resolution slider so that the "Width" is at least as wide as your final video format. For example: My video dimensions are 720 x 480, so I slid the slider until the width was at least 720. On my project it didn't matter that the width in Gordian Knot was less than 480 because the movie was in widscreen, so the gap at the top and bottom wouldn't show anyway. You should experiment for your own best results.

I chose to select the DIVx 3.11 encoder though I don't actually use Gordian Knot to encode the movie. I encode later. Given that I don't know if it matters what encoder I select since I'm not encoding from Gordian Knot, I select that one anyway. Maybe it doesn't matter. I don't know.

-Now save the movie to an .avs file according to the instructions.
DON'T GO ANY FURTHER than saving the .avs file as described in the guide. DON'T ENCODE. Just save the .avs file and then stop and close Gordian Knot. You're going to do your conversion and encoding later in VirtualDubMod.

Note: I decided not to process the audio in Gordian Knot. I had trouble understanding how to do it there, and it was easier to do with Besweet (see below).

-After exiting Gordian Knot, open VirtualDubMod which came with Gordian Knot.

-Now that you're inside VirtualDubMod, open the .avs file you just created. You should see your movie appear in the VdubMod window.

-Next, select "Save As."

-Name the movie.

-Select "Full Compression."

-Select the button to the right to choose the encoder Huffyuv which came with Gordian Knot.

Then click "Save" or "Okay" or whatever button you're supposed to push to begin encoding. Two-hours worth of movie came to about 30GB of hard drive space. That's relatively large, but your're going to render it down to a smaller file later in Premiere, so it's good to first have a large high-resolution video to begin with.

After it's done encoding, close VdubMod.

Now use BeSweet to open the VOB file you ripped from the DVD. Use it to demux (to demultiplex, to separate) the audio. Save the audio in the format you prefer but remember that Premiere Pro can't open ac3 files (Ahhh! Dont' get me started).

-Open Adobe Premiere.
-Import the video.
-Place it in your timeline. You may edit it now or later.
-Adjust the dimentions of the video so it fits within the screen. (Note: Premiere has a Preference setting that will do this automatically for you if you select it before placing the video on the timeline.)
-Export the video as Microsoft DV AVI,
-Select "Add to Project When Finished"
-Select "No Fields (Progressive Scan)

After the movie has rendered and automatically shown up on your Project window, place it on a timeline.
-Delete the first video you imported.
-Import the audio you demuxed from Besweet.
-If you didn't edit the first video, you can now edit this final version.

Voila.

Again, I'm by no means an expert. If anyone reads this and knows of some improvements I can make, please say so.

Let me know if this works for you.

[Graham Hickling]

>Then I use Gordian Knot.

Hmmm... I'm missing something here. Why can't you simply open the VOB directly into VirtualdubMod (and resize there if necessary)?

[Will Turner]

Because Premiere won't be able to import an .AVI that VirtualDubMod created directly from a VOB . Maybe you could get it to work, but I couldn't. Whenever I tried, Premiere brought up a dialog box that said "Importing Files..." and then it just sat there doing nothing. When I tried it the way I described earlier, voila. Premiere could import the .AVI. Let me know if you get different results. Maybe there's a setting I can change that will shorten the process.

[Graham Hickling]

OK, I see.

I open my vobs in VDubMod, save with Huffyuv as the compression codec, and they load straight into Premiere. But now that I'm thinking about it, my vobs have pcm audio whereas yours have ac3, so that's the difference probably.

So one possibility would be to demux your vob to separate mpg and ac3 streams, load the mpg directly and convert the ac3 to wav and then load that as well.

But then that would probably take as long as the way you do it now, which works well for you, so I probably havent helped.

[Will Turner]

Yeah, that makes sense. Can I demux it in VdubMod and by doing so, circumvent Gordian Knot? I don't know if VdubMod can do that.

[Will Turner]

I just demuxed in VdubMod, but I still can't open the .AVI in Premiere after demuxing. My guess is demuxing doesn't actually affect the VOB file. It just creates an additional file consisting of a copy of the audio from the VOB file. Thus, I still can't open the .AVI.

[Graham Hickling]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. What I meant was demux to a separate m2v video stream and ac3 audio stream (I use the "mpeg tools" demux option in Tmpgenc for this).

Vdubmode will convert the m2v to avi, and besweet will convert the ac3 to wav file .

Then load the avi and the wav together into Premiere.

(But as I said, this workflow may actually not be any improvement on your GKnot method.)