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Edit > Edit DVD from DVD Recorder
Article last updated March 14, 2009
DVD
recorders make for excellent capture devices, for recording
television or converting analog formats like VHS tapes. The
quality of some DVD recorders can even surpass the images
quality of professional-grade computer capture cards! A DVD
recorder is also much easier to use than most capture cards.
However, the editing abilities of these machines is very
stiff and rudimentary, offering low-quality edits that are
often imprecise. In addition to inferior editing, the menus
created by DVD recorders tend to be tacky and completely
lacking in visual appeal. Most of the offer only limited
options in how videos are labeled and are selected. Many
people would prefer cleanly edited video, authored with
attractive custom menus.
This presents us with a dilemma: Ease of Use + Video
Quality vs. Poor Edits + Poor Menus. The solution
to this problem is to use the DVD recorder where it excels
(recording), but not where it flops (editing and authoring).
Once the recording is finished, simply extract the recording
from the DVD and edit and author on the computer.
Only two software are needed: (1) A extraction
utility, such as DVD
Decrypter, and (2) an MPEG editor, such as Womble
MPEG Video Wizard.
NOTE: This guide was created for DVD-Video and
DVD+VR recordings. DVD-VR recordings (normally DVD-RAM
media) may not work with this method. To remove DVD-VR
content from a disc, simply copy the VRO file to your hard
drive. While this might make DVD-VR seems
"superior", that format actually has many
disadvantages.
IMPORTANT! This is not the proper method to use if
your discs were created on anything other than a consumer
DVD recorder! To extract video from professionally-made DVDs,
refer to the guide Extracting Video
From a Professional DVD.
Decompile
the Disc
After you launch DVD
Decrypter, go to TOOLS and
SETTINGS. Move over to the IFO MODE tab. Normally a DVD-Video
is broken up into 1GB VOB files. By default, Decypter will
maintain the 1GB splits, which can be pretty inconvenient
for editing. Change it to "NONE" as the split
mode:
Put the disc in the drive. Go
into IFO MODE.
Notice the PGC list. These are your recorded MPEG video
files. In this example, PGC 1 is the first recording of 90
minutes, followed by a handful of 7-minute recordings. Note
the CHAPTER and CELL options.
IFO mode ripping. Each IFO you rip will dump a VOB on
the hard drive wherever you specified. The VOBs contain the
M2V and AC3 in most cases (sometimes MP2 depending on the
recorder), the files you will later edit.
When ripping the VOB files, note that the entire file does
not have to be taken. CHAPTERS and CELLS can be deselected.
Hovering the mouse over the chapter/cell will tell you the
length of that segment. This is useful for those recordings
where you hit RECORD early and walked away, letting it fill
up the disc. Of course, if you only want a 30-minute
segment, no need to waste time ripping the full disc, only
to later edit it out.
In the images above, there were several chapters with a
single cell (JVC DVD recorder with chapters enabled at
finalize). The image below has one long chapter with many
cells (LiteOn DVD recorder with chapters disabled at
recording).
File size limitations. The DESTINATION is where your
new files are located. Remember that a recordable DVD can
currently hold up to 4.38GB of data (future DL discs will
hold almost twice this amount), but certain hard drives
(ones using the FAT32 file system) can only have file 4GB or
smaller. You will get an error if you attempt to rip a file
larger than 4GB on a FAT32 system.
FAT32 is the system found on Win32 system (Windows
95/98/98SE/ME) and NTFS is on NT system (Windows
NT/2000/XP/Vista/7). FAT32 is also optional for the NT systems. To
discover whether you have a FAT32 or NTFS file system, go to
MY COMPUTER, and then right-click on the hard drive in
question, and go down to PROPERTIES. If you have NTFS, you
can make a single file from any modern DVD medium. If you
have FAT32, you'll have to split the files at 4GB.
Help! My disc doesn't rip!
1. Did you remember to FINALIZE it in your DVD-RW/DVD-R
recorder? If not, go finalize it.
2. Does this DVD-RW use DVD-Video or VR mode? This will only
work for DVD-Video mode!
3. Is this a DVD-RAM disc that uses the VRO format?
4. Is this a DVD+VR disc? It should be fine. No need to
finalize.
The VR mode found on DVD-RW and DVD-RAM media cannot use
this guide (not the DVD+VR format found on DVD+R and DVD+RW
media). For VR mode, simply copy the VRO files to the hard
drive. Please note that copying VRO files will often take
considerably longer to copy, sometimes 30 minutes for a full
disc.
Edit the Files in an MPEG Editors
Most recorders use VOB (or
VRO files) with almost zero navigation info and simple
audio/video streams, so a proper video demux is not really
needed. You can open the files directly and edit in a good
MPEG editor, like WOMBLE MPEG-VCR. Follow one of the
MPEG editing guides (such as the Womble
MPEG-VCR guide) and edit the VOB files or
VRO files directly. Save the edited files as FILENAME.mpg.
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