DVDA project how to.

Cooldraft wrote on 9/16/2006, 8:59 PM

I filled up my main hard drive and needed to delete the source fiiles of a DVD that I thought I would never need. I have the videots files on my computer, but not the source avi. My client wants to add something to the DVD now after a year. Is there a way to do this with these files?

Comments

ScottW wrote on 9/16/2006, 9:48 PM

It depends. You can extract everything you had in term of video clips from the files in an intact format and then re-author everything. I find tools like DVD Decryptor and VOBedit and even DVD Lab Pro (another authoring tool) to be useful in doing this. If you are trying to add just a button to a menu, then something like PGCedit may help - nothing fancy, but I have fixed a project this way.

Lately I've been having people bring me 2 or 3 DVD's and say "I'd like to combine these into one" - so I'll use DVD Lab Pro (I think even DVD Lab will do this though), to demultiplex the VOB files into the video and audio files, then I'll simply create a new project the uses the various files from the DVD's. VOBedit can also be used for demuxing things (though if the audio is PCM, then I find DVD Lab to be the better choice).

--Scott

bStro wrote on 9/17/2006, 7:17 AM

If you have Vegas 6, it has a function to pull files off a DVD (or from prepared DVD files on a drive) and save them as MPEG2 files. It will not grab menus, though, so you'd still have to rec-create those.

File -> Import -> DVD Camcorder Disc

Despite its name, it will work for regular DVDs (meaning, they don't have to be from a camcorder) so long as it's not copy-protected.

Rob

Cooldraft wrote on 9/17/2006, 8:58 AM

I dragged the vob file directly into DVDA4 and everything seemed to be there. Am I going to be OK, doing it this way?

bStro wrote on 9/17/2006, 9:21 AM

Color me confused. I've seen so many people say that they couldn't get a VOB into DVDA, I believed them. ;) Can't recall whether I've tried it myself, but I did just now with DVDA3, and I get the same result as you.

I think where you'd run into problems is if your video takes up more than one VOB (VOBs are limited to 1GB). If the necessary VOBs are all under 1GB, burn the project to a DVDRW and let us know how it goes.

Another issue is that your audio tracks will probably be a bit longer (less than a frame's worth) than your video tracks if this is a DVD that was created with Vegas / DVDA. Problem with their AC3 encoder.

Rob

Cooldraft wrote on 9/17/2006, 10:16 AM

If I use file import, will vegas compress it again when I save as mpeg2? DUH, I just dragged the mpg to the project and all is GREAT. Thanks!!!

Cooldraft wrote on 9/17/2006, 10:23 AM

I went to prepare the dvd and DVDA4 told me that it would compredd the vob. I immediately escaped and tried to import the mpg file from vegas. This worked like a charm and I just dragged the mpg to the project, linked it and bam, the dvd is preparing now. Thank you for all your help.