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pulling video off DVD
At my work I’ve been asked to add some popup messages to a training video (all this is legal, it’s a company produced video but the guy who did it is no longer with the company). No big deal, except a DVD is the only copy available. I hooked up my dvd player to the camera as a pass-through and just had Vegas capture the whole thing via firewire. The audience for this will probably be watching on PCs as well as televisions. Question: Should I have the DVD player set to “progressive” or “normal” when sending through the camera? And is the default settings for rendering to DVD the best choice considering it will be viewed on PCs and TVs? I tried this once and had a slight but noticable drop in quality but I’m not sure if it’s the settings on all the equipment or simply the fact that I had to leave the digital realm to get to the camera and then back to digital from there.
Thanks
Steven -
6 Replies
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Should I have the DVD player set to “progressive” or “normal”…
If the original video was in progressive format, then that’s what I’d use. Otherwise, leave it at normal.
…is the default settings for rendering to DVD the best choice…
If you mean choosing the “Default Template”, absolutely not. The bitrate is far too low for a decent wuality picture. Render the audio out as an AC3 file and choose the “DVD Architect NTSC video stream” template for your mpeg-2 file. As long as both file names are the same (MyMovie.ac3 & MyMovie.mpg), DVDA will import the audio as soon as you import the video.
Another thought, since this is being re-encoded, is that you might want to try a 2-pass encode for better picture quality. Render times will increase substantially though.
…it will be viewed on PCs and TVs?
You could render it out twice. The first render interlaced for TV viewing and the second render using progressive for computer display.
I tried this once and had a slight but noticable drop in quality…
This is to be expected. From a technical POV, you’re going from a 4:1:1 signal (miniDV) to a 4:2:0 signal (DVD). Now you’re capturing the DVD signal, converting it back to a 4:1:1 signal and then re-encoding it back to a 4:2:0 signal. It’s no wonder the quality drops 🙁
Adam Wilt’s site goes into it in much better detail, pictures included.Mike
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Just out of curiosity, since you have the DVD and it is probably not copy protected since it is in-house made, why not just rip the DVD and work with the MPEG stream? You will see less quality than if you pass it through the cam I would expect.
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What software rips DVDs along with the audio? My understanding is that AC3 files can’t be opened. This would be a huge advantage if it worked…
Thanks
Steven -
[Steven J Casey] “What software rips DVDs along with the audio?”
Vegas Movie Studio (the baby brother to Vegas) 🙂
In fact, if you install Movie Studio, Vegas will ALSO read AC-3 audio!
Edward Troxel
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That’s interesting. The obvious question then is why isn’t this functionality in Vegas already?
Also, this would have me adding popups on top of mpeg. Won’t I lose quality when I render out to mpeg again for DVD? Perhaps it’s so negligible that it won’t be noticed by the naked eye. Maybe I can get the demo version of Movie Studio and give it a try!
Thanks
Steven -
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