Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 4/5/2004, 1:22 PM
> Is there any way to get the footage off this DVD and edit it in a way that does not lose quality?

No. DVD camcorders are targeted at customers who just want to shoot and view. Because the video is already recorded to a highly compressed lossy format (MPEG2 at 25:1 compression) they will suffer quality loss if edited and re-encoded. If your friend really wants to edit the videos they shoot, then they bought the wrong camera. Tell them to get a miniDV camcorder instead.

To be more precise: You can get the video off the camera without loosing quality by simply copying the VOB file off of the DVD. The problem is you can’t edit it without having to re-encode it and that’s when you loose the quality.

~jr
Jsnkc wrote on 4/5/2004, 1:47 PM
Also tell your friend if he just bought that camera to return it and buy a MiniDV one instead :)
johnmeyer wrote on 4/5/2004, 2:16 PM
You can edit MPEG2 and VOB files (cuts only) without degradation by using Womble's MPEG Wizard software.

Hopefully Sony will realize the many, many reasons why users need to do edits on MPEG files and will include this capability in a future release of Vegas.
chumash wrote on 4/5/2004, 2:17 PM
Thanks for the replies. I was afraid that was the case. Unfortunately, he bought the camera quite awhile ago ( at least long enough ago that a return would be hard) and had no interest in editing the vieo at the time. After talking to him about Vegas and the ease of use, he's changed his mind on that. So I think a DV cam will be on order for him soon. Thanks again for the information.
dvdude wrote on 4/5/2004, 2:24 PM
There's always eBay :)
farss wrote on 4/5/2004, 2:25 PM
ULead Mediastudio Pro SGOULD be able to edit it. It can handle a mpeg file with ac3 audio. I'm trying it out with the Sony version of that camera and so far I'm not having any joy, but I suspect it's how the camera records the DVD.
The DVDs from the camera will only play in some players.
Problem with editing the mpeg is the audio disappears after around 3 seconds, Demuxing the audio and converting to .wav with BeSweet produces the same result, a 3 second .wav file!
chumash wrote on 4/5/2004, 8:20 PM
The Womble product sounds like it might be worth a shot. What do you mean it will edit a VOB file (cuts only)? What do you mean by "cuts only"? Thanks for your help.