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Lossless DVD editing

BlueRevolution

BlueRevolution

macrumors 603
Original poster
Jul 26, 2004
6,054
4
Montreal, QC
I've found a few relevant threads on this board and elsewhere, but I can't find a satisfactory answer, so I'm going to give it a shot.

Basically, I have a DVD that I want to edit and eventually produce an AVI, MP4, or something along those lines. The editing is pretty basic, just removing sections and correcting the audio with crossfades and the like. The problem is that the only way I know to do this is to rip with the likes of Handbrake, edit with a program like iMovie or even QuickTime Pro, then export again. I'd really like to avoid the quality loss of the intermediate format. This involves either lossless editing of the already-encoded video à la Fission, or directly editing the DVD video prior to conversion.

Is there any way to do this? I'm not adverse to spending a bit of money, but under a hundred dollars would be nice. I do have access to Final Cut Pro, but I'm not too familiar with it and don't know if even it could do what I'm after.

Any ideas?
 
bigbossbmb said:
no, you can't edit muxed MPEG2 on a DVD. you'll have to convert it to an editing codec, make your changes, then re-burn.
Click to expand...
Is possible to drag the m2v and aic files directly to DVD Studio Pro, and cut there (I know you'd have to just cut to the nearest group of 12 frames of a 24P DVD and would not be able to do crossfades with the audio)?
 
As bigbossbmb said, you have to convert the DVD video, best way would be to use MPEG Streamclip and encode it to DV (PAL or NTSC) and then edit the video with iMovie and the appropriate DV settings/template (PAL or NTSC).

To Chris7: I tried to edit .m2v and .ac3 files with DVD Studio Pro just now, but I couldn't just cut the cilp in half, I had to drag the beginning to my play head (or could set the start time code with the Inspector, and do that with then end time code too, and then all over again for the next clip).
Maybe there is a better way to do that in DVDSP, but I think iMovie is more elegant and intuitive for this.

Editing DVD footage (which is already in a lossy format) will result in image quality degradation, even if not recognizable.
 
spinnerlys said:
...To Chris7: I tried to edit .m2v and .ac3 files with DVD Studio Pro just now, but I couldn't just cut the cilp in half, I had to drag the beginning to my play head (or could set the start time code with the Inspector, and do that with then end time code too, and then all over again for the next clip)...
Click to expand...
Yeah, I just tried it too. Doesn't appear to be a way to cut. Seems like there should be some sort of work around, but maybe not. I wonder if PPro can edit these files natively w/o having to recompress.
-Chris
 
You can do some basic trimming in MPEG Streamclip without transcoding, but your audio needs make that impractical. You'd be better using MPEG Streamclip to rip the video to uncompressed.
 
I would do this:
1) trim up everything as MPEG in MPEG Streamclip. You can only perform cut, copy and paste and it won't be frame-accurate, but it might be good enough
2) once you have the video edited, demux the stream to m2v & AIFF files
3) open the AIFF in FCP or Soundtrack Pro to adjust levels, crossfades, etc. Don't add or remove any more time out of the audio, though, or else it won't sync up with the m2v video.
4) When finished, recompress the audio to AC3
5) bring the m2v and newly-made ac3 files into DVD Studio Pro and author as usual.

By doing it this way, you've edited the audio & video but have not recompressed the video at all.
 
Howdy. I'm in a similar situation and just stumbled on your thread..

I have a collection of non copyprotected DVD's that I need to take clips from in order to make a reel. Ultimate destination for this reel is a promo DVD and a web version. Quality is very important and I know the quality will never be better than what is on the DVD's I'm sourcing from.

Originally I was using Streamclip to export sections from the dvds into DV and from there into Final Cut Pro. As y'all mentioned here thats the route I had been suggested. However, after looking closely at the resulting footage, the quality is pretty poor. (lower than the original DVDs).

Now I am attempting to go the route of extracting a MPEG-2 from the DVD using DVDRemaster Pro (Mac the Ripper crashes on my machine). I end up with .m2v files that I'm thinking I will convert into an apple editing format like ProRes422...

I could really use some advice.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!
 
One way that I've done this is to just hook up a DVD player to my DV camcorder and use its pass-thru to capture directly in FCP, then make the edits and output with compressor to DVDSP. The resulting DVD looked pretty good
 
JasonA said:
I would do this:
1) trim up everything as MPEG in MPEG Streamclip. You can only perform cut, copy and paste and it won't be frame-accurate, but it might be good enough
2) once you have the video edited, demux the stream to m2v & AIFF files
3) open the AIFF in FCP or Soundtrack Pro to adjust levels, crossfades, etc. Don't add or remove any more time out of the audio, though, or else it won't sync up with the m2v video.
4) When finished, recompress the audio to AC3
5) bring the m2v and newly-made ac3 files into DVD Studio Pro and author as usual.

By doing it this way, you've edited the audio & video but have not recompressed the video at all.
Click to expand...

Would you suggest the 1.9.2 version or the 1.9.3 beta version?
http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html

Thanks,
Chris
 
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