Hi

I had an idea instead of connecting my MiniDV cam to computer via firewire
and transferring the tape at 13gb an hour in order to edit - just burn a
DVD-RW on my DVD Recorder then import the .vob files off the disc onto the
computer using much less hard drive space.

I can't use moviemaker anyway as I run Windows 2003 so getting a free
editing program to capture and edit straight off the camera has been
difficult.

However there must be a lot of free programs to edit .vob files can you tell
me which program you would recommend - I just want to be able to cut
sections maybe add some titles and transitions etc

What is good and easy to use and most important FREE.

Thanks

"Nick Le Lievre" wrote in message
. com...
Hi

I had an idea instead of connecting my MiniDV cam to computer via firewire
and transferring the tape at 13gb an hour in order to edit - just burn a
DVD-RW on my DVD Recorder then import the .vob files off the disc onto the
computer using much less hard drive space.

I can't use moviemaker anyway as I run Windows 2003 so getting a free
editing program to capture and edit straight off the camera has been
difficult.

However there must be a lot of free programs to edit .vob files can you
tell
me which program you would recommend - I just want to be able to cut
sections maybe add some titles and transitions etc

What is good and easy to use and most important FREE.

Thanks


It appears you need frame accurate editing which most video editors don't
support when editing .vobs so you need a specialist package like MPEG Video
Wizard http://www.womble.com/products/DVD.html or VideoRedo
http://www.videoredo.com/ProductPlusSpecifications.htm which cost money and
I doubt there's anything free available to do this.

Darn!

Nick Le Lievre wrote:

I had an idea instead of connecting my MiniDV cam to computer via
firewire and transferring the tape at 13gb an hour in order to edit -
just burn a DVD-RW on my DVD Recorder then import the .vob files off
the disc onto the computer using much less hard drive space.

What you gain in hard drive space, you'll lose in flexibility, processor
demands, and choice of programs.

".vob" files are, basically, MPEG-2 program stream files that have been
multiplexed in a special way, as required by the DVD standard. You can
edit simple VOB files directly in some programs, but in order to retain
everything that is possibly packed inside a VOB on, say, a commercial
DVD, such as subtitles, multiple sound tracks, angles, etc., you really
need to demultiplex the VOB file into elementary streams. Moreover, the
DVD format requires splitting large video segments into multiple VOB
files. VOB is not really a too "editable" format in itself.

I can't use moviemaker anyway as I run Windows 2003 so getting a
free editing program to capture and edit straight off the camera
has been difficult.

Had you settled on Firewire and the DV format, you could have used Avid
Free DV. It's not without its faults (it can't edit 16:9 material, for
example, or at least imports it as if it was 4:3), but it's better than
nothing. Here's a screenshot:

http://ronsu.homeip.net/avid-free-dv.png

That, of course, would still have left you with the problem of finding a
free MPEG-2 encoder and a free DVD authoring application. I could
suggest googling for "mencoder" and "GUI for DVDauthor", but I have not
really used either.

However there must be a lot of free programs to edit .vob files

Why do you say that? Editing intraframe-coded AVI files - such as DV
AVIs - is a much simpler process than editing MPEG-2 program streams.
Windows has the interfaces for dealing with AVIs - you don't need to
write everything from scratch - and the programming documentation is
freely available on Microsoft's site. With MPEG-1/2, the stream format
and the structure of the files is defined in certain ISO standards,
which are not available for free, and the DVD VOB files are documented
in the DVD specifications which cost a lot and getting your hands on
them requires signing an NDA. If anything, I would expect there to be
more AVI tools than MPEG/VOB tools - and there are.

Simple MPEG-2 editors (such as TMPGEnc MPEG Editor, VideoReDo, and
Womble MPEG Video Wizard) have only become available in the recent
years. None of the ones I've seen is free (excluding ProjectX, which is
not really an MPEG-2 editor but just happens to incorporate an I-frame
based cut tool for MPEG-2 transport stream files.)

can you tell me which program you would recommend - I just want
to be able to cut sections maybe add some titles and transitions
etc

Womble MPEG Video Wizard sounds like what you would want, but it's not
free. There's a free, fully functional 30-day trial version, though.

--
znark

On Tue, 5 Dec 2006 13:28:25 -0000, "Nick Le Lievre"
wrote:

"Nick Le Lievre" wrote in message
.com...
Hi

I had an idea instead of connecting my MiniDV cam to computer via firewire
and transferring the tape at 13gb an hour in order to edit - just burn a
DVD-RW on my DVD Recorder then import the .vob files off the disc onto the
computer using much less hard drive space.

I can't use moviemaker anyway as I run Windows 2003 so getting a free
editing program to capture and edit straight off the camera has been
difficult.

However there must be a lot of free programs to edit .vob files can you
tell
me which program you would recommend - I just want to be able to cut
sections maybe add some titles and transitions etc

What is good and easy to use and most important FREE.

Thanks


It appears you need frame accurate editing which most video editors don't
support when editing .vobs so you need a specialist package like MPEG Video
Wizard http://www.womble.com/products/DVD.html or VideoRedo
http://www.videoredo.com/ProductPlusSpecifications.htm which cost money and
I doubt there's anything free available to do this.

Darn!


Also don't forget the reduction of quality that happens when you
compress DV to MPEG2. And you can't control the quality of the
compression (much) on your recorder.

Regards,
Harry.


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