straight path for reauthoring

logiquem wrote on 7/9/2004, 8:33 AM
Could somebody suggest the straightest path to extract all the audio/video content (assets) of a DVD for reauthoring purpose?

There is no question of macrovision removing (or illegal ripping) here. This is for a client who just lost assets of a DVD project, and want to bring modifications now. Any help for this?

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 7/9/2004, 9:25 AM
I have been complaining about this for over a year, but Sony has so far not addressed this. According to Sony's own survey several months back, virtually everyone is delivering their video primarily on DVD, yet Sony provides no direct way to re-purpose assets once they are on DVD. Adobe, by contrast, is already addressing this with additions they announced at NAB.

Sony, please wake up.

End of semi-rant.

In answer to your question, if you authored the DVD in DVDA, you can usually put the VOB back into DVDA and it will find and use the video and audio. The only problem is that Sony doesn't offer any way to cut MPEG in DVDA, so you can't just put a bunch of VOB files into DVDA, set some in/out points, and create a new DVD. If you do this, the ENTIRE VOB gets used.

You can cut the VOB in Womble's MPEG Wizard. I am not sure, however, whether you can cut the AC3 file.

[Edit] You can cut AC-3 files in MPEG Wizard. Works great.

You can also put the VOB file on the Vegas timeline (although many users have reported problems with this -- it works for me with DVDA-created VOB files), and then use DVD2AVI to convert the AC3 file into a WAV file that Vegas can handle (Vegas cannot use AC3 files).

I have done this several times, but it is always a painful experience. I usually do it by converting the AC3 file in DVD2AVI, putting the VOB file and the WAV file that resulted from the DVD2AVI conversion into Womble's MPEG Wizard, then cutting to within a few seconds of what I need. I then put this into DVDA and trim the ends to exactly what I need. It is a horrible workflow, and I get angry at Sony every time I do it, which is one of several reasons I sound so "prickly" when I post in this forum. I really don't think their engineering and marketing people spend much time doing video projects, or if they do, they must only do one or two types of projects.
logiquem wrote on 7/12/2004, 6:29 AM
Thanks a lot John for this informed and detailed review. I will try something and let you know what is working for me.
johnmeyer wrote on 7/12/2004, 7:41 AM
Further info on Womble's product for re-using the VOB. I use Womble's MPEG Wizard. If you put the VOB from DVDA on the video line, you can preview both audio and video, and then cut this video/audio. You then export the result to an MPEG file.

So far, so good.

However, for some reason, DVDA won't let you use the audio in the MPEG file. I have tried creating various types of MPEG files (Womble's product gives you several options), but to no avail. Fortunately, I found a way to extract the AC3 file (finally). What you do is take all the segments on the video timeline (in Womble) and MOVE them to the audio timeline. You then perform a second Export and rename the resulting file to have the extension "AC3." You then specify this file as the audio in DVDA. If you have two hard disks, the if you do the Export (of both the video and then the audio files) to a separate disk from the one that holds the VOB files, then the export can be done in just a few minutes.
MrMikeC wrote on 7/16/2004, 1:02 PM
you simply have to conver the ac3 back to wav because as you said vegas won't read AC3 files....which really becomes a pain in the ass considering DVDs should be made with ac3 as it's the standard. So if you take a standard DVDs and take the VOBs off, you CAN open them in vegas, but it will only recognize the video stream. I use Clier's AC3 Tool to convert the ac3 back to wav and then open it in vegas, ando what needs to be done..