What is the easiest way to edit video from a DVD?

July 25, 2005 10:31 AM

What is the easiest way to edit video from a DVD, and then be able to burn it back to DVD?

I have a DVD (no macrovision, not encrypted) that I would like to remove short scenes from. I can copy the VOB files to my drive and convert them to another format (ie: AVI), edit them, convert them back to MPG and burn back to DVD, but that seams like a lot of converting.

What is the easiest way to edit the movie and be able to burn it back to a DVD. And if I do have to re-compress it to MPG format will I be losing a lot of quality?

posted by monsta coty scott to computers & internet (4 comments total)

MPEG-2 is the native format of data on DVD video discs. Google returns many MPEG-2 editors, including this one. Once edited, you can burn the files back to DVD with Nero etc.
posted by Rothko at 10:58 AM on July 25, 2005

1. Download DVDShrink.
2. Rip out the scenes you want using DVDShrink. It is very user-friendly, and it creates VOB files. You can ignore the rest of the files.
3. (Optionally) Use ffmpeg (or ffmpegX for Mac) to compress the VOB files.
4. Use Nero or Toast to author and burn the files to DVD.
posted by vjz at 12:46 PM on July 25, 2005

More of a general suggestion: Video Help is the first stop when you have a question like this.
posted by jtron at 2:27 PM on July 25, 2005

No reconverting is necessary - MPEG-2 is MPEG-2, regardless of the container (.vob, .mp2, mpv, .mpg/.mpeg, .ts, etc). You can store it in an .avi container if you want, but I can't think of any reason why you'd want to...

Assuming you're on Windows, and looking for free tools :

ProjectX : demuxes the DVD .vob or MPEG-2 file to separate video / audio files. Requires the Sun Java runtime to be installed.

Cuttermaran : simple editor. By itself, it'll only cut on I / P frames (every 12~15 frames or so in PAL; dunno what in NTSC). If you want frame-accurate cutting, add a free MPEG-2 encoder like MPEG2Enc + CuttyEnc. This is the only time re-encoding is necessary, and it'll only re-encode the bit to the next I-frame (very quick). Requires the .NET framework from Microsoft; probably already installed if you're using XP or automatic update.

Check out Doom9 for download links.

If you've got the full version of Nero, you'll probably already have a DVD authoring program. If not, look at DVDLab - the trial version is time-limited (30 days?), but otherwise fully functional. Handy if this is a one-off job...

Overall, it is a lot of farnarkling - but it's only converting the container format, not full re-encoding, so it's quick and no quality loss is involved. I can't think of anything off-hand which will handle it all in one application. Using these tools, I regularly do a (2 x 45 minute) DVD in < 30 mins.

Part of the reason it's more than a little complicated is that it's all just a little shady - there's plenty of non-shady reasons for wanting to edit MPEG-2 video, even in .vob format off a DVD, but the reality of it is that 99.999% of people doing it are ripping commercial DVDs...
posted by Pinback at 11:56 PM on July 25, 2005