[smileLP]

i haven't really found a mac program that does this w/o reducing the quality or being complicated as hell

now i'm thinking, if i just buy a regular old (cheap) cd player, can i hook it up to a cd-recorder? but i would need a tv connected to both to monitor my edits, rt?

i'm basically int'd in editing down 2 hr dvds to 30 mins. each, since much of what is on these dvds doesnt' interest me

should i take the non-computer approach and buy the equipment mentioned above? will the connections on the bk of the equipment work and allow me to do this? anyone attempted something like this?

they have only now started to make DUAL TRAY dvd player/recorders, and for now they're pretty durn expensive

any other thoughts on this?

thanks all

[Apfhex]

Wait, what? I don't understand what you mean in your second paragraph.

So you want to take a DVD, extract certain chapters and burn them to a DVD-R? I think Toast 7 can do this... or maybe Popcorn. If there's enough space you should be able to do it without re-encoding. The problem is most commercial DVDs (I hope you're not copying these except for personal use ) are much larger than single-layer DVD-Rs so the files have to be re-encoded to fit.

[smileLP]

>So you want to take a DVD, extract certain chapters and burn them to a DVD-R? I think Toast 7 can do this<

yes, that's correct, but i want to do more precise editing than "just leave out chapter 2 & 4"

that's why i haven't been able to do this via software/computer

and why i'm now asking about going beyond the computer, to a standard dvd player, and a dvd recorder (hooked up to a cheap-o tv i'd buy, so i can see what i'm doing)

does this make sense?

thanks

[angelmb]

I think Cinematize could help wonders, check it out:

http://www.miraizon.com/products/products.html

[smileLP]

sounds like it might be just what i need

BUT, it mentions that once you extract the scenes you want, it'll convert 'em to QT, AVI's, etc., etc.

my question is, can you put the extracted scenes on another (blank) DVD and not lose any quality?

typically, when you convert from DVD to other movie formats, you lose a lot in quality. i'm looking for exact same quality in original DVD and in pasted together one

any thoughts?

thanks

[angelmb]

Originally Posted by smileLP

my question is, can you put the extracted scenes on another (blank) DVD and not lose any quality?

typically, when you convert from DVD to other movie formats, you lose a lot in quality. i'm looking for exact same quality in original DVD and in pasted together one

any thoughts?

thanks

Yes, it is possible, albeit you are going to get HUGE files… extract from the User's Manual:

Which Video Codec Will Give The Best Quality?
This question has an easy answer: uncompressed video will always have
the highest quality. In Cinematize, choose the codec “Full Quality 4:2:2
Uncompressed” to save uncompressed video. With this codec, Cinematize
will extract and maintain the video data in YCbCr form and save it in full
studio quality uncompressed 4:2:2 video using the CbYCrY format. This
is sometimes called D1 or UYVY video, and it is the native video format
produced by Cinematize.
The problem with uncompressed video is that it takes up a lot of hard
drive space, perhaps 20 MB per second of video at NTSC frame rates.
That means 1.2 GB for just one minute of video! This is why compressed
video starts to look much more attractive. There are a number of choices,
however, when it comes to picking which compression codec to use.
The next step down from uncompressed video is probably DVCPRO50,
a 50 Mb/sec codec (see the next section).

Try to download a trial version, I guess it comes with the user's manual which is really helpful. If the users manual is not included, I can send it to you via mail.

[smileLP]

i did download a trial version and had access to the instruction manual, and DID see that i would end up with gigantic files. this was the same prob. i encountered w/another piece of software (ffmpegx) that looked like it would solve my dvd to dvd editing probs.

so unfortunately, cinematize, despite all their hype and guarantees that it will "do the trick," flunks the test

it appears, for now, that there is no software that will let you edit 1 dvd down onto a 2nd dvd, easily, or w/o creating unworkably huge files, which is why, if you look at my 1st post, i am thinking about a "low-tech" approach of a dvd player, a dvd recorder and a cheap tv hooked up to them, and do my editing that way. (i had originally asked if anyone had ever tried this or had any luck w/this notion)

lastly, i read somewhere about something called "dvd studio pro." is it worth investigating? anyone ever used it? or will it too create unusably huge files from what i edit and want to keep dvd quality?

thanks all

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by smileLP

i did download a trial version and had access to the instruction manual, and DID see that i would end up with gigantic files. this was the same prob. i encountered w/another piece of software (ffmpegx) that looked like it would solve my dvd to dvd editing probs.

so unfortunately, cinematize, despite all their hype and guarantees that it will "do the trick," flunks the test

it appears, for now, that there is no software that will let you edit 1 dvd down onto a 2nd dvd, easily, or w/o creating unworkably huge files, which is why, if you look at my 1st post, i am thinking about a "low-tech" approach of a dvd player, a dvd recorder and a cheap tv hooked up to them, and do my editing that way. (i had originally asked if anyone had ever tried this or had any luck w/this notion)

lastly, i read somewhere about something called "dvd studio pro." is it worth investigating? anyone ever used it? or will it too create unusably huge files from what i edit and want to keep dvd quality?

thanks all

I know of another solution that will do what you described, but I think your expectations are a little off.

DVDs are compressed using the mpeg-2 compression codec. Raw DV files (that something like iMovie or Final Cut) can edit are enormous, but necessary for editing with - you can't really edit a compressed copy of the video, it would be like editing an mp3 file.

[smileLP]

hi, int'ing point

i wouldn't mind editing raw (uncompressed) movie data, if i could, when finished editing, get it back into the mpeg-2 (standard dvd) compression codec

is such a thing possible?

thanks for the info

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by smileLP

hi, int'ing point

i wouldn't mind editing raw (uncompressed) movie data, if i could, when finished editing, get it back into the mpeg-2 (standard dvd) compression codec

is such a thing possible?

thanks for the info

Yes, that is exactly what iMovie and Final Cut do - send raw video to iDVD to be compressed into mpeg-2. If you don't want to use iDVD, there are other DVD authoring tools.