Rerendering from Pinnacle Studio mpeg2 files

cndavis wrote on 4/24/2004, 6:01 PM

I am a former Studio 8 user. Some of my finished videos (they are about 5 minutes in length) which I did in Studio are only in mpeg2 format and I would like to simply place them on a DVD using Architect 1.0. However, Architect insists on rerendering them which makes the quality very poor. Is there any way to put them in Architect or Vegas without rerendering them?

Thanks for your help.

Cindy

Comments

kentwolf wrote on 4/24/2004, 7:32 PM

Sony should pay Pinnacle for all the users they send this way... :) (There are may former Pinnacle users here...)

One way to do this would be to get DVD Decrypter and strip the elementary streams from your DVD.

Then, presumably, DVD-A 2.0 can accept elementary streams.

Then you can create a whole new DVD with your elementary streams with no re-rendering. No losses.

I have not yet done this with DVD-A, however, I did it just fine with Adobe Encore, which also accepts elementary streams.

Worked just fine.

If you need some guidance on the elementary stream strip via DVD Decryoter, I can post a procedure I found in the Adobe forums that spells it out very nicely...

See dvddecrypter.com for the free program.

cndavis wrote on 4/24/2004, 9:21 PM

Thanks for the informative reply. I would like to know more about elementary stream strips. I'm not sure what these are. Also, you indicated in your email that DVD-A 2.0 accepted them. Does this mean that 1.0 can't? I'm afraid it will be awhile before I can upgrade to 2.0!

kentwolf wrote on 4/24/2004, 9:36 PM

>>...Does this mean that 1.0 can't?

That is correct. You need DVD-A 2.0.

The post:

[Just take your time, read through it, and it works perfectly: (It's not as bad/hard as it looks) Credit given at bottom. Not mine.]

Place the DVD to be ripped in your DVD drive and launch DVDD. If you have more than one drive (e.g., a DVD-ROM and a DVD burner) make sure the one with the disc is selected in the Source dropdown list in the main program window.

Now we need to set up DVDD to extract video in a way that is “Encore friendly”. This is the toughest part of the whole exercise. Click on the Tools menu item and choose “Settings…”.

Settings

General Tab:
You can leave these set at their defaults if you like. Personally, I specify a custom Default Destination. I put my ripped video assets all in one place anyway, and having a default destination means I have one less thing to do when I rip a DVD.

IFO Mode Tab:
Make sure that “Select Main Movie PGC” and “Enable Stream Processing” are checked. If your hard disks are formatted as NTFS, set File Splitting to “None”. Make sure that “Patch M2V Timecode” is unchecked. The items in the Create Additional Files section are purely optional. The author of DVDD has been kind enough to list which programs need which files; notice that Encore DVD isn’t listed anywhere. I keep the “Stream Information” box checked. DVDD generates very informative default file names so I keep all the items under File Names unchecked.

Stream Processing Tab:
Since we enabled stream processing in the IFO Mode tab, we need to tell DVDD how to process those streams. To save yourself a bit of time and/or confusion later, check the “Convert PCM to WAV” box. Encore requires a demuxed audio stream and a raw video stream. We can take care of that here. In the Demux box, enter “0x8? 0xA? 0xC?”. This ensures that all audio streams in the selected PGC, whether AC3, PCM or MPEG will be set to Demux. In the Raw box, enter “0xE0”. This ensures that the video from the selected PGC will be set to Raw.

Additional Notes about the Stream Processing Tab:
1. For those of you asking the question, “What the heck is a PGC?” it’s just DVD-speak for the titles in a DVD project. And I’m not talking about the opening or end credits, either; I’m talking about the titles that result, for example, from the timelines you create in an Encore DVD project.
2. Sadly, the WAV file that is produced by DVDD after ripping will not import into Encore. You will have import the DVDD WAV file into, and then export it from, a sound editing program like Adobe Audition, Goldwave or SoundForge. The PCM audio inside the WAV file will be Signed, 16-bit, Little Endian, Stereo 48kHz. That’s important because your audio editing program will ask you for that information. If you think you’ll outsmart Encore by unchecking “Convert PCM to WAV” inside of DVDD and just import the PCM data into Encore, you’re going to be disappointed. The PCM data won’t import correctly, either. Nyaah.

Events Tab:
For convenience, I recommend setting “Set Program Mode” in the Startup section to “IFO”. That way, whenever you launch DVDD, it will look familiar to you.

You may safely ignore all of the other tabs in the Settings dialog.

Ripping

1. Under the Input Tab of the main program window, select the PGC you want to rip. You can only do one at a time.
2. Switch to the Stream Processing Tab. Verify that Enable Stream Processing is checked.
3. Check or uncheck any or all of the video and audio streams that are listed. Highlight each one to verify that all audio streams are set to Demux and the video stream is set to Raw.
4. If you didn’t select Default Destination in the General Settings Tab, then you need to tell DVDD where to put the ripped files now.
5. Click on the big DVD-to-Disk icon.
6. DVDD will announce, quite loudly, when it has finished. At that point you can rename the files or import them as is into Encore.

Credit: Guide © Jeff Bellune 2004

...and there ya go.

Thank you.