Editing Wedding DVD: Can’t get Vegas to play past the first 15 secs

[Edward Troxel]

DVD raw footage???? You’re not capturing via firewire into DV-AVI?

Edward Troxel

[Jack]

Hi Edward,

No, this is a DVD given to us by our wedding videographer of the raw footage they had taken. So, the format of the files are in the DVD format of VOB files. I loaded one of the file into Vegas and basically played it, but noticed that it would play the first 15 secs and continue to loop this first 15 secs even though there was at least 15 minutes of other video footage. Any advice?

Thx,

Jack

[Liam Kennedy]

1) Vegas does not edit MPEG videos very well.. the sort of thing you are seeing is a pretty common “issue”.

2) Editing MPEG is not a very good idea… as it quicky degrades in picture quality when you render (as it re-compresses).

3) If you really do want to edit… the best answer is to simply capture the DVD into Vegas as DV AVI via a firewire video device (like a camera with passthru).

4) If the above does not seem a good solution for you… then you can download various FREE software that will convert MPEG (DVD) files into DV AVI. Do a search for DVD2AVI. There are many other ways to do this – a search on the web for something like VOB convert AVI will likely yeild some good examples.

[Tom Pauncz]

Jack,
The fact that you have VOB files on the DVD implies that the ‘raw’ footage has been processed by some DVD authoring s/w.

To be able to edit, you must first rip the DVD to at least get an AVI wrapper around the material. Then, when it’s brought into the Vegas timeline, you should be able to handle it just like any AVI clip.

I did this for some promotional material where a customer’s commercials were supplied to me as a DVD (it would play in my settop box).

I used Nero Recode and also DVDDecrypt to rip the material. I think I also needed to used TMPGEnc Xpress at some point to re-encode, but I forget. Some of the ripped files would just not play nice with some s/w combos.

HTH,

Tom

[Jerry Waters]

If you want to make cuts without rerendering mpeg, check out the programs at http://www.womble.com
The programs there are primarily used for cutting commercials or other unwanted parts out without degrading the images but they will do a few other things. You can download a trial free.

[Chris Borjis]

Does womble keep audio synch?

I’ve noticed most of the mpeg editing apps out there don’t
maintain audio synch for long programs.

[Jerry Waters]

It keeps sync perfectly. I’ve probably done 3 or 400 programs with it and never a hitch. Download the trial. The only tricky part is learning the interface and that isn’t bad, just different. Each button tells you what it is about when the mouse passes over it.

[Jack]

Hi Liam,

I used DGMPGDEC together with Avisynth 2.5.5 and VirtualDub to convert the VOB to AVI. However, my raw footage movie has 5 VOB files that are roughly 1GB each and the conversion generates a 27GB uncompressed AVI file per 1GB VOB. I don’t have enough space for all 5 files. When I use the compression options, they all make the resulting AVI movies very pixelated and not as good as the original. Is there another program that can make the conversion without using so much space but still keep the quality of the original DVD. Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanx,

Jack