DVD Ripping

dsg1963 wrote on 11/27/2005, 6:24 PM

I am making a DVD that includes source material ripped from my wedding DVD, as well as from AVIs captured from my digital camcorder. I have bought I'mTOO DVD Ripper, and have a question about the output settings.

ImTOO allows you to rip the DVD to MPEG or AVI format. Since I want to do some things like slow the video down, what is the best output format for the ripped video to be in so I get the best quality possible on my final DVD?

I've been using Vegas Studio for a while, but the ripping software is new to me, so if anyone could suggest the best settings to use, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

Don

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 11/27/2005, 6:49 PM

AVI is almost certain to be a better choice than MPEG. Unless it's AVI using some weird high-compression codec, you'll lose less quality than with MPEG. The other advantage of AVI is that each frame is a complete picture so that editing and rendering will be faster and smoother. MPEG files build up most of the frames piece by piece with data from previous frames, so a lot more work is involved accessing and displaying each frame. This may or may not be helpful when dealing with slow motion, but it certainly can't hurt.

Tim L wrote on 11/27/2005, 8:00 PM

Ummm... I really hate to question any Chienwork's answer, because he's very knowledgeable and a definite power user, but...

...Kelly -- did you catch the fact that the source material in question is coming from DVD's -- already in MPEG2 format?

Since Vegas Movie Studio 6 is supposed to be able to edit DVD files (though I've never tried it), I'm wondering if it would be better to keep the DVD footage in MPEG2 format when bringing them into VMS. My concern is converting from MPEG2 colorspace subsampling (4:2:2) back to 4:1:1 for DV / AVI, and then converting again back to MPEG2 (4:2:2).

It just seems to me, though again, I have no experience, that if VMS can handle editing the MPEG2 files, just leave them in that format. It's worth a try, anyway. (And I guess one of these days, I should try it myself...)

Tim L

Chienworks wrote on 11/28/2005, 4:24 AM

One might think that, but Vegas really isn't an MPEG editor. It will decompress and recompress all MPEG frames, which is very time consuming and ends up with the same quality issues that decompressing and recompressing AVI has. It's also quite likely that the original material was DV, so the video has already been 4:1:1.

You should try the DVD import sometime. Best to make a batch of popcorn and get real comfy. Or perhaps go out for dinner and a movie. Or even away for the weekend. On a 2.6GHz machine i let it run for 5 hours and it had only done a few percent of a half hour file.

dsg1963 wrote on 11/28/2005, 6:31 AM

Chienworks and Tim, thanks for responding to my post.

Ok, if I should use AVI, then I have to ask what settings to use for the output. Mostly this is about which codec to use. ImTOO lists 7 or 8 codecs you can use, but doesn't descibe them, so I don't know which one will give me the highest quality.

I did try ripping the DVD once to AVI, but the results were terrible: the video was ultra-low quality. I don't know if my settings were screwed up or I chose the wrong codec, or what. By the way, the quality of the source video is high. I also tried ripping a small sample to MPEG, which gave much better results; I just had a nagging feeling that I might get even better results with the right AVI settings.

Any additional suggestions you care to make would be appreciated.

Chienworks wrote on 11/28/2005, 7:11 AM

To be the safest, don't use any codec at all. Ripping to uncompressed is the best choice. Just beware that it will eat up about 1.7GB per minute. If you see a DV codec listed you could try that since that's the same codec used by your digital video camera and uses about 225MB/minute. You may have gotten the SONY YUV coded with Movie Studio (not sure if it comes with the studio version) and this is a very high quality codec. You can also search for Huffy or HUFFYUV, which is free.

artone wrote on 11/28/2005, 10:08 AM

Hi Kelly,

On my 1.8GHz machine, it only took 20mins to import a one hour DVD.

Chienworks wrote on 11/28/2005, 10:49 AM

Wow! I should try more experiments i guess. I've tried it 3 or 4 times and had similar slowness each time.

dsg1963 wrote on 11/28/2005, 8:10 PM

Chienworks, I tried ripping to AVU and chose the Sony DV software codec, but I immediately get an error at the start of ripping: AVIStreamSetFormat (video) failed. Check AVI codec settings.

I don't understand this, since there are really no settings I can see for AVI. I left the expert & export settings at default since I don't think I need them.

Any suggestions?