Help: Home videos to laptop to newly edited video

[guitarmy]

Hi all!

First post after lurking for a while and learning a bunch. I'm hoping the community here can help me out. Here's what's up.

Friends and I made about 4 skiing/snowboarding videos between 2000 and 2005. The footage was recorded on older camcorders, edited and compiled onto VHS tapes. We also have one video that a friend of mine edited digitally - I think it's in MPEG format, but I'm not sure (not at home right now).

What I want to do is get the footage from these VHS tapes on to my MacBook Pro, and then pick & choose clips from the videos and compile these clips into a new video - a 'best of' kinda deal. I would like the end result to be a DVD.

I found a local place here that can take the VHS tapes and transfer them (lossless) onto DVD. I figured I'd then use Mac the Ripper or something to rip the DVDs onto an external drive, then edit them with a program of some sort.

I've done editing before, but it was old-school with tons of giant analog equipment - no digital editing. So I'm not sure what the best program would be to handle this. It's just for a Christmas present between friends - nothing serious. Although it would be fun to try some effects in post, etc.

So, I guess my questions are:

1. What software do you recommend?
2. What format should the files be in (when I import/rip them as well as when I export them) if I want to have a DVD at the end?
3. Any other tips/suggestions/hints?

Thanks!

 

[b1u3b0y]

First off I would ask the company that is burning the data from the vhs tapes to dvd if they'll give you access to video files for editing purposes. Most companies that convert older movies to dvd will compile the dvd in two ways. Usable on a dvd player and usable on a computer for retrieving the video files. That would make it much easier for you and keep the quality you want. Also I would suggest just using imovie to do your editing as it's easy, simple, and has good output quality.

 

[guitarmy]

First off I would ask the company that is burning the data from the vhs tapes to dvd if they'll give you access to video files for editing purposes. Most companies that convert older movies to dvd will compile the dvd in two ways. Usable on a dvd player and usable on a computer for retrieving the video files. That would make it much easier for you and keep the quality you want. Also I would suggest just using imovie to do your editing as it's easy, simple, and has good output quality.

Cool, thanks man. I'll ask them that.

With iMovie: say I bring in a 30min video clip. It has functions so I can break this clip into more usable sections? Like - I want to use this 5 second span, I don't want these 3 minutes, I want this 10 second span, etc. When all is said and done, I'm going to have a pretty large amount of 4-5 second clips to arrange.

(sorry for my lack of clear terminology - this isn't my area of expertise)

 

[b1u3b0y]

Yep imovie allows for splitting clips and editing anyway you'd like. You can add music, video effects, transitions... It's a very good program that generally comes free with your mac.

 

[guitarmy]

Yep imovie allows for splitting clips and editing anyway you'd like. You can add music, video effects, transitions... It's a very good program that generally comes free with your mac.

Great. I will play with it a bit when I get home.

For ripping the DVDs, as well as exporting the final cut - what format should these be in?

 

[b1u3b0y]

I would say for importing the best would be .mov since that is generally what is used for mac...but then again .mpg and .avi should be fine. When exporting the video from imovie i would suggest exporting it as a quicktime movie at the full quality setting. That way you'll get the best quality possible.. Then you can import that file into idvd and burn it as a dvd if u want.

 

[arjen92]

The one above me, I don't think .avi would be a good idea. First, he needs to be able to encode it (which is fairly simple, but still) for example with perian. And second, avi is always a very small size, and therefore I think there will be a great loss of quality. (that's what I personally think, but I'm not sure, so sorry if this one is not true). For the rest, .mov and .mpeg would be more than fine.

 

[guitarmy]

Yeah, I've been reading around a bit more and it's sounding like I want to keep it in DV format for editing. So, I guess I'd rip the DVD to my hard drive with HandBrake (*edit: I think I'm confused; HandBrake is a converter, not a ripping program like MacTheRipper), and then use something like MPEG Streamclip to convert to DV, and then bring it into iMovie for editing. Then I suppose iDVD will convert it back to something that a DVD player can read?