Editing DVDs
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From: Charles H. Sampson on 27 Jun 2008 02:14 David Empson <dempson(a)actrix.gen.nz> wrote: > Charles H. Sampson <csampson(a)inetworld.net> wrote: > > > This has got to be an old question, but I've checked my Pogue book > > and searched Google's USENET archive with no luck. > > > > I have some DVD+RWs that I'd like to edit, preferably using iMovie. > > Toast Lite, which came with my new optical drive, correctly identifies > > them as not copy protected, good for all regions. However, iMovie > > doesn't recognize the files on the DVDs. If I try the Import File > > command, set to all importable files, the files that iMovie can see are > > all dimmed. > > > > Either I'm missing something obvious somewhere, or there is an > > application that I don't have that will do what needs to be done. Any > > suggestions? > > I'm sure others will chime in with more suggestions and details, but > this should get you pointed in the right direction. > > The primary issue is that the video on the DVD is in MPEG-2 format, and > it is a encapsulated into a DVD-specific container format (.VOB files). > iMovie can't do anything with files in this format (or with plain MPEG-2 > video, for that matter). You need to extract the video and convert it to > an editable format first. > > A minimal conversion (with no quality loss) would be to extract the > video and audio into simple MPEG-2 program streams (separate files). You > can probably do this with MPEG Streamclip. MPEG Streamclip can also work > directly with MPEG-2 video for basic playback and I think it can do > basic editing tasks. MPEG Streamclip is free, but in order to work with > MPEG-2 video, you have to buy Apple's "QuickTime MPEG Playback" > component, which you can get from the Apple store. (This is not the same > thing as "QuickTime Pro", which lets you do editing tasks in QuickTime > Player.) > > If you want more fully featured editing, or to work in iMovie, you will > need to convert the video to a different format, e.g. DV. This can also > be done with MPEG Streamclip. The catch is that the conversion will > result in a slight reduction in picture quality, and there will be > another quality loss when converting back to MPEG-2 for the DVD. Many thanks for this information. (And to gtr too.) I got MPEG Streamclip and Quicktime MPEG Playback and have been experimenting with them whenever I can find a spare moment. I seem to have the basic steps down, but I've come up with other issues. I haven't been able to create a file small enough to put onto a DVD. The smallest file I've been able to create was over 8Gb and the largest was 29Gb, both from about 90 minutes of recording. IMovie has only one codec, at least only one that Help acknowledges, called the Sorensen codec. There is no explanation in Help of the effects of all the possible settings. Is there a reference somewhere that explains them? What I'm hoping for is a codec that does something like what my DVR does. It's high-quality mode is the usual: about one hour's worth of video per DVD. It has other modes that can do up to 8X compression. I typically keep my number of DVDs down by using the 4X compression. Then there's the behavior of iMovie while it is exporting. This time-consuming operation is perfect for being run in the background, while I'm using the computer for doing other things. That's apparently not possible. If I put iMovie into the background, by either hiding it or by putting another window in front of it, it doesn't just render slowly, it comes close to stopping. Am I doing something wrong? When I put jobs into the background on the Unix system at work, they chug along at the same priority as a foreground job. > ... > > > I'm running OS 14.11 (10.14.11). > > I think you mean "Mac OS X 10.4.11". Just a bit of my wiseing off. If the same numbering scheme that was used through the original Mac OS had been kept up, we would now be up to OS 15. I suppose the idea was to keep OS X as OS 10, but the differences between the cats is about the same as differences between the first nine Mac OSes. > ... Charlie -- For an email response, insert "0824" between the 'c' and the 's'.
From: sbt on 27 Jun 2008 07:30 In article <1ij5zhz.4kwjia11si4dhN%csampson(a)inetworld.net>, Charles H. Sampson <csampson(a)inetworld.net> wrote: > Many thanks for this information. (And to gtr too.) I got MPEG > Streamclip and Quicktime MPEG Playback and have been experimenting with > them whenever I can find a spare moment. I seem to have the basic steps > down, but I've come up with other issues. I haven't been able to create > a file small enough to put onto a DVD. The smallest file I've been able > to create was over 8Gb and the largest was 29Gb, both from about 90 > minutes of recording. > > IMovie has only one codec, at least only one that Help > acknowledges, called the Sorensen codec. There is no explanation in > Help of the effects of all the possible settings. Is there a reference > somewhere that explains them? > > What I'm hoping for is a codec that does something like what my DVR > does. It's high-quality mode is the usual: about one hour's worth of > video per DVD. It has other modes that can do up to 8X compression. I > typically keep my number of DVDs down by using the 4X compression. > 29GB seems excessive -- 90 minutes of DV content should only be about 18GB. Are you, perhaps, citing the size of the iMovie "project"? The project package could easily be that size, as it retains the change history for Undo purposes. Have iMovie "feed" the project to iDVD and let iDVD do the encoding and authoring. To quote from iMovie08's Help file: > Select it in the Project Library, and then choose Share > Media Browser. > > Select the size that best matches what you�ll be using the video for. > For iDVD, the Large size is best. > > Click Share. > Rendering can take up to several minutes depending on the size of your > movie. It will also take longer if you render more than one movie size > at once. > > Open iDVD or your other application and then look for the rendered > movies in the Movies window or iLife Media Browser. > For best results in iDVD, select the largest movie that�s available. > I don't use iMovie08 for anything other than playing around/familiarization so that I can work on books that discuss it. If I am actually going to use iMovie for a project rather than Final Cut Express, I use iMovieHD from iLife06 (this has only happened once and in both cases the reason was to turn over a project to someone else for future development and they didn't use Final Cut Express or Final Cut). BTW, Toast Titanium (both 8 and 9) support the Media Browser, so you could also use Toast to do the compression/authoring rather than iDVD if you want a more "DVR-like" end result. -- Spenser
From: Kadin2048 on 29 Jun 2008 18:32 On 2008-06-27, Charles H. Sampson <csampson(a)inetworld.net> wrote: > [...] > Many thanks for this information. (And to gtr too.) I got MPEG > Streamclip and Quicktime MPEG Playback and have been experimenting with > them whenever I can find a spare moment. I seem to have the basic steps > down, but I've come up with other issues. I haven't been able to create > a file small enough to put onto a DVD. The smallest file I've been able > to create was over 8Gb and the largest was 29Gb, both from about 90 > minutes of recording. The DV video format runs about 36 megabits per second, so somewhere between 24-29 GB sounds about right for 90 min of material, without further compression. > IMovie has only one codec, at least only one that Help > acknowledges, called the Sorensen codec. There is no explanation in > Help of the effects of all the possible settings. Is there a reference > somewhere that explains them? That doesn't sound right. When you export from iMovie, there should be a choice of several codecs there. (What version of iMovie are you running?) It's been a while since I've fired it up myself, but my recollecion is that it ought to have a bunch of presets plus a way to configure it yourself with whatever codecs you have installed. This Apple TIL might have information you'll find useful: <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60766> It says iMovie 6.01 and higher should have five default Export presets, ranging from "Email Movie" (H.264 160x129, truly pitiful) up to "Full Quality" which is basically a DV dump encapsulated in a QT MOV file (36Mb/s). IIRC there should also be a "Custom" setting where you get the standard QuickTime Export dialog and can pick audio/video codecs manually. If the only codec you're seeing is Sorenson, I'd really wonder if something is hosed about your QT install. That's the only thing I can imagine would cause that. > What I'm hoping for is a codec that does something like what my DVR > does. It's high-quality mode is the usual: about one hour's worth of > video per DVD. It has other modes that can do up to 8X compression. I > typically keep my number of DVDs down by using the 4X compression. What you want is probably MPEG-2 or MPEG-4. If you're just going to play it back on a computer (you don't care about putting it on a DVD and actually playing it on a set-top DVD player), I'd either use the "CD-ROM Movie" preset in iMovie (H.264 320x240), or do custom and choose H.264 at 720x480 @ 29.97 FPS (25 FPS if you're PAL) with AAC audio. That should look acceptable at only a few megabits/s. You might want to experiment, using a short segment of video or something. However, if you want to actually *author* a DVD-Video disc, what you want to do probably isn't to export and compress the footage using iMovie, it's to author the DVD using iDVD. It handles designing the disc's menus and also compressing the content into MPEG-2 (and doing the audio as well, which is a separate can of worms). Using iDVD is actually pretty well covered on Apple's site: <http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/#idvd> It'll work either "push" from iMovie or "pull" from iDVD; you can either 'send to iDVD' or you can make a new iDVD project and import the iMovie project. Either will work. > Then there's the behavior of iMovie while it is exporting. This > time-consuming operation is perfect for being run in the background, > while I'm using the computer for doing other things. That's apparently > not possible. If I put iMovie into the background, by either hiding it > or by putting another window in front of it, it doesn't just render > slowly, it comes close to stopping. Am I doing something wrong? When I > put jobs into the background on the Unix system at work, they chug along > at the same priority as a foreground job. I'm not an expert on how the Finder deals with background vs foreground tasks but it's clear just from use that foreground tasks take a certain priority, background tasks seem to automatically be "niced" a little. (I've noticed I can speed up Handbrake encodes slightly by keeping it in the FG, for instance.) iDVD handles background encoding a little better than iMovie, since it's really designed to do this. It will actually start to encode all the "assets" (audio, video, menus, etc.) as you futz around with the DVD authoring. The encoding process only moves to the foreground if you start to burn a disc before it's completed. The only alterntive to iMovie that I'd even consider recommending would be using Toast to author the DVD ... but even that I'd recommend with some reservations. Its MPEG-2 encoder is, at least in my experience, a lot flakier than Apple's. YMMV. I think the way you'd want to use it would be to export to DV and then drag the DV file onto Toast, after you've selected that you want a DVD-Video disc (rather than data). It ought to encode it when you go to burn, assuming you installed the encoding components when you installed Toast originally. Unless you have a reason to, I'd go with iDVD over Toast, though. >> > I'm running OS 14.11 (10.14.11). I think which version of iMovie you're using is actually the more important question. (My apologies if it's somewhere upthread and I missed it.) My experience dies out with some of the later versions (I switched to Final Cut), but I used it pretty extensively earlier on. I can't imagine they've taken out that many of the Export options (certainly, going back to nothing-but-Sorenson makes no sense -- Sorenson is dead, MPEG-4 variants are the new hotness), and the Apple TIL above doesn't seem to indicate anything different in iMovie '08 (version 7.x) from the 6.x series. Good luck, Kadin.
From: Charles H. Sampson on 1 Jul 2008 02:17 Kadin2048 <Kadin(a)address.invalid> wrote: > Lots of good information You brought up something I had started thinking might be the cause of my problems: the versions of iMovie and iDVD I'm using. Trying to do things on the cheap, I've been playing with the versions that came with my G4 when I bought it about 7 years ago. That would be iMovie 2.1 and iDVD 1.0. The iDVD only runs on OS 9, not even on Classic under OS X. I figured these would have the basic capabilities, with later versions having lots of bells and whistles. To me, a decent codec is basic. So, given that what I want to do is a little bit of editing of some programs I've recorded (for my own use) and some standard DVD things like chapter marks, what's my choice? Should I fork over the $80 for iLife08 or is there something else? Charlie -- For an email response, insert "0824" between the 'c' and the 's'.
From: sbt on 1 Jul 2008 11:18
In article <1ijdex0.1vej1hs3wdfiaN%csampson(a)inetworld.net>, Charles H. Sampson <csampson(a)inetworld.net> wrote: > Kadin2048 <Kadin(a)address.invalid> wrote: > > > Lots of good information > > You brought up something I had started thinking might be the cause > of my problems: the versions of iMovie and iDVD I'm using. > > Trying to do things on the cheap, I've been playing with the > versions that came with my G4 when I bought it about 7 years ago. That > would be iMovie 2.1 and iDVD 1.0. The iDVD only runs on OS 9, not even > on Classic under OS X. I figured these would have the basic > capabilities, with later versions having lots of bells and whistles. To > me, a decent codec is basic. > > So, given that what I want to do is a little bit of editing of some > programs I've recorded (for my own use) and some standard DVD things > like chapter marks, what's my choice? Should I fork over the $80 for > iLife08 or is there something else? > There is, indeed, "something else", but the price will be considerably higher than the $79 for iLife08 and the alternatives also have much steeper learning curves (albeit allowing more advanced editing and authoring). Final Cut (Apple) costs about $1300. Premiere Pro (Adobe) costs about $800. Both alternatives require even more RAM and processor power than do the iLife components, as well. For DVD authoring, DVD Studio Pro is still my favorite, but it is no longer available as a standalone product as it is now only a piece of the Final Cut suite (fortunately, I got mine before that availability change took place). If you're still using your 7-yr old G4 as your video platform, I don't think that iLife08 is a viable solution for you. If you have enough RAM (at least 1GB), iLife06 (or even 04) could well be a better fit. If you're on newer hardware that would support iLife08, you should also become adept with GarageBand, because that is where you'll end up doing most of your chapter marker setting if you're using iMovie08 rather than iMovieHD. -- Spenser |