how do i capture dvds into vegas 9? into avi files

[William Boehm]

ah yet another newbie question. a friend has transferred old family videos onto dvds. i cannot seem to find a way to import these files into Vegas Pro 9. i believe they are vob files. thanks in advance...

i have cineform neoscene 5 and Vegas Pro

[Edward Troxel]

File - Import - DVD Camcorder Disc - but you'll get MPEG files and not AVI.

You could get DV by playing the disc in a DVD player through a convertor/deck/camera and capturing via DV capture.

[William Boehm]

thanks ed for responding...again i am not sure if they came up vts or vos? files. one of them i couldnt play. so file import dvd camcorder disc...and it will become mpeg. what do i then do to convert to avi files without the intermediate through a converter/deck camcorder. these are standard sd dvds he made for me...probably on a mac...i will check more toninght when off work to recall what the actual files are. thanks in advance. bill

[Edward Troxel]

To just import them, you really need to just use the File - Import - DVD Camcorder Disc which will then automatically add them to the project media. You can then just drag them to the timeline. If you really, really want them back to AVI, you could then just render them back out of Vegas to AVI or use the alternate (real time) capture method I mentioned above.

[William Boehm]

thankyou ed...i hope they will drag to the vegas file. i couldnt open the one, but will give this a try tonight. ...bill

[Adam Stanislav]

As a general rule, VOB files are MPEG files with a different file extension. Occasionally, you will find a VOB file where everything is not in linear time order, but those are exceptions.

[Eric Mayrand]

Get MPEG STREAMCLIP. Its free, supported on multi-platforms in multiple languages, and is a wonderful conversion tool! It will open your DVD's Video_TS folder, fix breaks and convert to whatever flavor you want for editing. And it does much more and has saved me more than once when Adobe Media Converter nor Apple Compressor were unhelpful.

[Edward Troxel]

William, please follow the instructions I listed. I am NOT saying to simply drag the VOB files to the timeline (although some claim that works fine too), Instead, the process I listed does any necessary conversions and adds everything to the Project Media and you can just drag it from the Project Media to the timeline. It is NOT the same as just dragging the VOB files.

[William Boehm]

Ed..thanks i took your advice and the files were successfully transferred. It took some time to render them..over an hour for each dvd...but it worked.

then my second step but first thankyou again to all on this forum for helping new people out. I havent tried this yet after transferring last night, but i want to intermingle the old family shots on the mpeg 2 with the dv avi files i had transfered from the old camcorder. any suggestions? do i just save everything into a .veg files...how do i attach these different codecs mpeg 2 and the dv avi to make a video for each of the kids...segments for each of their lives from birth to soccer to hikes etc. ie...should i transfer the mpeg2 files into a cineform codec? if that is even possible, or do everything in Vegas? again i am new, and havent attempted to merge or edit yet in vegas other than cutting out segments i dont want. . bill

[Edward Troxel]

Just drag whatever files you want to the timeline in the order you want them. It doesn't matter is some are images, some are MPEG2, some are DV-AVI - just intermix them on the timeline as needed.

[William Boehm]

okay...then apparently vega saves it as a .veg file...? then when i make a dvd sd quality for the kids...i do it from vegas .veg file or store it in another format? bill

[Seth Bloombaum]

A .veg is not a video file. It is a record of all edit decisions that were made, including placement and duration of media on the timeline, filters applied, generated media created, etc. It also includes pointers to where all the source media was stored.

A .veg does not contain video or audio. Only Vegas can open a .veg file. When you open the .veg in Vegas, it looks to all the storage locations for the media, loads the media, and is now ready for further editing or output (using "render as").

A new video or audio file is created from the .veg only when you select File | Render As, and specify a type of video file and template to be used in the creation of the new media file.

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To create a DVD using DVDA, you have to render your edit. You may render it in the final form that will be used by DVDA on the DVD (an MPEG2 of a certain specification)(this also requires a separate render for audio), or, render an "intermediate" file of high quality that DVDA will automatically render to the DVD specification.

There are pros and cons to each. I highly recommend you review Edward's excellent newsletters for an overview and workflow description. Try Volume 1 Number 7. This is written for an earlier version of Vegas, but, nothing has really changed for DVD prep.

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Another method is to create a DVD from the timeline. You can find info in the Vegas Help or the manual on that process. It's fine for a DVD where you don't need a menu.

[William Boehm]

seth thanks for taking the time to explain .veg file to a biologist, and not particularely savy with video editing yet. what do most users use to mix hdv, dv avi , mpeg2 to just archive, and ready for making a dvd that is of hd quality? with some hdv footage in it, versus dv-avi mix with mpeg2...i think i just about have this down conceptually thanks to you guys. bill

[Seth Bloombaum]

William, glad this is helping.

Most often I'll be guided by the resolution of my project, which is usually set per the highest rez I expect to render to.

For standard definition, which includes every project for standard DVD-Video distribution, I'll use the AVI-DV template, at about 13GB per hour for storage space. This is a fairly hardy codec for standard def, at least for typical projects.

Since you have NeoScene, AVI-Cineform is probably your best choice for any HD projects.

In previous versions of Cineform, you could render standard def in it, not just HD. Arguably, that would be a better archive of SD projects, at some expense of storage space. Cineform certainly holds up better for color correction and compositing.

[William Boehm]

then if cineform is the best codec that approaches lossless features...then should i render as you called this all dv avi, avchd, hdv and mpeg2 mixed and matched in the .veg timeline to a cineform codec? to keep the best resolution etc.../