Topic: DVD editing help

[divamum]

gawwwwd but I'm out of my depth on this!  Silly me - figured that DVD editing progs would be similar to audio editing and/or photo programs, but I am stumped.  I have access to Premier, the editor that comes in the Roxio bundle and something called AVI Tricks but I am completely clueless!  I can barely manage to open the damn file. 

And yep, I'm reading the help files in each program ... but they all seem to assume you know something about video'ing and to be more designed to mix down a movie than the basics I want!   ALL I want to do is extract one short section and tweak the light levels on it (if possible)and save those as single files suitable for playing on a website and/or including on a demo.   

I have ripped the original to an AVI on the hard drive, but that's about as far as I'm getting. I gather you have to open it both as "video" and "audio"? I need the video equivelant of wavlab or Nero wav editor...

Sorry for the slight hysteria on this - I'm no technological expert, but I"ve worked my way through basic pc maintenance, digital picture editing, sound editing and HTML and figgered I'd stand a chance with this, but so far I'm hitting a brick wall of complete ineptitude and can't figure it out AT ALL.

If anybody knows any good EASY video editors (think "total moron" level) and/or tutorials or articles that may shed some light on what I'm tryign to do, I'd be ever so grateful. Thanks!!

[hyperplane]

Which version of Premiere do you have access to? Either way, I suggest checking out the Premiere 6.5 tutorials (link below) first. Yes, there are some layout differences between 6.5 and Pro, but it's close enough to where you can figure out what is what.

For Premiere 6.5 tutorials, check this out.

For Premiere Pro tutorials, check this out.

If you can spend an hour or two watching those tutorials, you will learn the basics of Premiere and just about every basic type of "trick" you would use for typical editing. The guy who makes those video tutorials (Curt Wrigley) does an excellent job and you learn a lot of good tips in each tutorial.


Happy editing.

[divamum]

Thanks for those - I'll check them out.

I finally got the thing OPENED in AVI Tricks and (maybe) have figured out how to clip out the section I want but I can use all the help I can get! 

[firmdragon]

sony vegas has a pretty easy learning curve as well.

[BayTaynt3d]

Back up a minute, what are you actually trying to do?

And when you say "you ripped it to avi," you ripped WHAT exactly to avi? And using what app?

If you ripped a DVD to AVI, something tells me you ripped it to an MP4 format like XVID or DIVX, which is not going to be ideal or easy to edit in any app. Are you trying to re-edit a DVD? If so, that can be a challenge, and even if you get it to work, it's going to be like re-encoding an MP3 to another MP3, but sometimes that's you're only choice. Working with the original source would be WAY BETTER though...

[divamum]

Here's the scoop:

I have DVDs of some recent performances (I was onstage) that were shot and produced by 3rd-party photographers.  I want to extract short sections of myself to add 1. to my website and 2. to a demo disk (always useful to have this stuff when self-marketing).  In the case of one of hte shows, the MOST significant section I sing was totally !($)*!*!@#*&)*!@ up by the videographer since he let the camera adjust for the bright backlighting generated by the slide show BEHIND me rather than the action on the stage; earlier in the show it had been fine under similar conditions, but here he either was snoozing and not watching the monitor or just screwed up.  Whatever his reasons, the resulting underexposure has rendedered some of my best singing not much better than a voice-over for the slideshow (grrrr) and I'm hoping against hope that maybe I can tweak the levels enough to get SOMETHING useable out of it.

So, what I want to do is:

1.  Extract the relevant sections
2.  Try to clean up the underexposed part so that the stage action is visible.

The original source files are in a folder that just says Video_TS and Audio_TS (please forgive my ignorance - I really am major clueless on this and haven't had time to read-up in general... yet ).  To get them onto the hard drive, they needed to be converted to something, and this was recc'd to me as an option - if there are other better ones, then I'm all ears!

Again, my apologies for being this clueless - I'm willing to learn, but on this occasion I'm short on time and sort of trying to find out the "need to know" stuff  to fit my precise needs with the intention of learning about it more generally (and thoroughly) when I'm not quite so busy!

Thanks for any and all help pointing me in the right directions - much appreciated!

[BayTaynt3d]

I mean the REAL SOURCE FILES -- these "files" will most likely on a MiniDV TAPE. If you can get and import the masters yourself, that would be ideal because you would be starting with the best copy available before ENCODING it into multiple formats (like to DVD, but also to WMV, MOV, and Flash for the web). Ripping from the DVD can be done, but you're going to have your work cut out for you and you'll be re-encoding lossy on top of lossy -- but it can be done and it can look fine (just more "Tivo'ish" or VideoCD'ish if you know what I mean. Anyway, you're going to have to learn a whole lot of shit before you pull it off.

If you are just going to take "clips" from various DVDs, and not re-edit or make a mash-up of multiple clips, then you might be able to find various ripping apps that can rip straight down into various formats like MPG, WMV, MOV, and FLV. Then just rip down segments into the format you want. Otherwise, you can try editing the MPEG2 in the timeline of your video editor, but most NLEs can't edit MPEG2, and often you run into even more problems because the audio is in a seperate file, so you have to get that into the timeline and synced up before editing it.

Anyway, it can be a PITA for sure and should be avoided at all costs for all sorts of reasons -- some may tell you otherwise, but trust me on this. However, if it is the only source you have, then it is possible. You either have to find an editor that can edit MPEG2 or you have to convert it into a format that your editor can handle first. Then edit it, then re-encode to new formats. Vegas is one app that can edit the MPEG2 natively, but it can't edit the AC3 dolby digital files. So, if you're dvds used PCM audio files (think: wav), Vegas would work, but if those DVDs use dolby digital AC3 audio files, then vegas can only edit the video but not the audio. So, a lot of times, you have to go to an intermediary video codec first, then edit that, and then render out new versions. But that of course adds even one MORE step of lossy compression typically.

One thing also to watch out for is "AVI". All avi is is a "wrapper" or container for video files. It can have a lot of different codecs that all use .avi. So, when you "rip" a DVD with some random freeware app, in all likelihood, it's probably ripping down to XVID or DIVX, which is something you probably don't want to do if you want to edit it at all because most video editors can't edit natively in those codecs either. The exception to that is an avi that uses the DV codec. That's the codec that all MiniDV-based camcorders record at, and it is equivalent to "standard def" TV. The files are HUGE. So, if you can capture to that kind of AVI format from the DVD, then at least you can edit using as good of a copy of the DVD as you can get, and then encode out from there.

Good luck!!!

[divamum]

aaarghhh....

Yes, even in my banging-head-on-wall frustration I had clued into the fact that audio/video were separately imported into the editors I've been trying to use - couldn't figre that out at ALL but what you're saying makes sense.

There's no way for me to get the source files, alas - this is what I've got.  Thanks for the info re AVI being a "wrapper"; I can for sure try ripping it to mpeg or another format (and then presumably down to AVI or something else which will be smaller and more suitable to run on the website). 

i can see this is going to be much more complicated than I thought. How do the folks who upload to youtube do it? It's not ALL home video... (that's only partly a facetious question - if there's an answer, it may be halfway towards what I'm trying to achieve!!)

[guitard]

Basically, if the footage is over-exposed, there isn't a whole lot that can be done about it.  Underneath that glowing circle that was your head is not some watchable footage - there isn't anything.

So it sounds like you're stuck just working with what you've got.  In which case, I recommend an mpeg smart editor like Womble MPEG Editor (google for a demo).  You can copy the .vob files from the DVDs onto your harddrive (drag and drop), and then put them on the timeline in Womble.  The timeline is similar to most NLE timelines.  You can chop, slice, and dice the footage anyway you want.  Since they are VOB files, the video and audio will remain together and will be in synch (unless they were out of synch on the original DVD).

When you save the project, you can save it as an mpeg2 (which can easily be used to author a DVD), and the only re-encoding that'll take place is where you made changes such as fade in/out or added text to the picture.  Any footage that didn't get changed (which is normally the vast majority of it), will simply be "copied" to an mpeg2 file.

Very easy project, even for someone who is inexperienced.

[divamum]

UNDERexposed, not over.  He - or the camera - exposed to the projection behind me rather than what was going on on the stage... Earlier in the show - with a similar lighting problem - it was fine, butat My Big Moment either he or the camera decided to take the light off the projection instead of the performance! (grumblemuttergrizzlegripe  )

But thanks for all the info - this is starting to sorta kinda make some sense...

[guitard]

UNDERexposed, not over.  He - or the camera - exposed to the projection behind me rather than what was going on on the stage... Earlier in the show - with a similar lighting problem - it was fine, butat My Big Moment either he or the camera decided to take the light off the projection instead of the performance! (grumblemuttergrizzlegripe  )

But thanks for all the info - this is starting to sorta kinda make some sense...

Sorry about that - usually the problem is over-exposure with concert films.

If I had to choose between the two - I'd take under-exposure.  There's an outside chance you'll be able to fix it.  But it's tricky business.  Here's a link that explains how to do this using Vegas Video.  You'll have to register at the site before you can actually get to the link.

http://vasst.com/article.aspx?id=b6ae8dc8-1929-4047-9ce9-d8621e39d313&type=1

[divamum]

Thanks again. Will be following up on all this.

The problem in this sitch was not mere underexposure, of course, but the high contrast between background (light slide show) and foreground on stage (mood lighting).  Common enough problem in still photography, so I can see how it happened, it's jus ta shame it happened in my big moment!  What DOES flummox me is why he had no problem earlier in the show with a similar situation; maybe he thought the slideshow was SUPPOSED to be dominant (or maybe he just didn't look at his monitor!!).  I think it's a pretty longshot that it can be salvaged, but I figure it can't hurt to try....

In any case THANK YOU for the help.  Have checked out Womble - looks fun (and I love the name - grew in England, so was a big fan of hte Womble stories!)