I put my old home camcorder movies on dvds. the files are VOB. Like all home video, only about 20% is good.

all I want to do is cut 15 or so 2 minute clips from 2 or 3 dvds and put them on another dvd without loosing any quality.

The ability to add titles to the video and transition effects from 1 clip to the next would be nice but not required.

You would think any dvd editor can do this, but the couple I tried could not do it.

What free program can I get to do this?

I also have a high powered lap top coming to me with Vista home loaded on it. Does vista come with a video editor that will do this?

Free, you can use DVD Shrink in re-author mode. That assumes the video resides somewhere on your hard drive, and you don't need a menu. Womble makes a couple of different MPEG2 editors that I've read good things about, they cost. uLead has 21 day full function demos of their stuff if this is a one time thing.

Maybe this is my problem. I don't know how to get the dvd's on my hard drive. I assumed the video editor software would do it.

I use a ulead slide show maker that I like. The ulead product for video is movie factory or video studio?

Dude, create a directory on your hard drive and copy the VOBs into it from the DVD. DVDs that are not copyrighted act just like data DVDs. They're just big discs full of files. There's all kinds of programs that will allow you to slice, dice and splice VOB files just the way you want them: Pinnacle, ulead, Sonic Solutions to name a few $$$ versions. There are also a few freeware deals that will probably accomplish what you want.

I still have no idea what to do. I tried windows movie maker as well as 2 others and none will recognize my files as video files.

my files look like this;

VTS_01_4.VOB
VTS_01_0
VIDOE_TS

What do I need to do to edit these files?

You should give DVD Shrink a try. Just put the disk in the drive and open Shrink.

Click the Re-author button on the top, now you should see the browser thing open up on the right. Double click on the drive and the disk info will display.

With a cam disk you probably just have one title under "Main Movie". Double click that, (or click and drag it into the top left window.

Now you have to set the start and end frames for the first clip you want to save. See the icon with the two arrows right next to the x? Click it. Or right click on the title and choose set start/end frames. Choose the beginning and end of the clip.

To choose your next clip double click the main movie on the right again, and repeat the start/end setting process.

Now just continue double clicking the main movie on the right every time you want to edit a clip until you are done.

Once you have edited the entire disk click the Backup button on the top, and everything will be saved ready to burn a disk.

If you would like to save each clip separately back-up after every edit.

If you want to edit a few disks just change the disk before you hit backup and keep editing.

Thanks for the help it seems to be working.

The video is upside down in the preview window.
can I change this?

The video is the correct way when I pick start /end .

I also cant watch the disk in the lower left window to remind me what I want to keep. Is there a way to do this?

Install correct mpeg2 codecs!

thanks I am looking for the correct codex right now.


and

I am unclear how I would be able to grab 10 minutes from 10 different disks and put them on 1 disk. When I transfer 1 clip from a disk and it saves on my HD, when I try to put another clip from another disk, it will not let there be two clips in the same file from different disks.

http://www.dvdshrink.info/compilation.php
http://www.dvdshrink.info/re-author-advanced.php
Good luck and happy compiling.......

Thanks, t0nee1, I had all but forgotten how powerful DVD Shrink can be. The compilation & edit version will come in very handy tonight. I'm cutting the opening menu and title sequence from Brokeback Mountain onto Facing the Giants. I was planning on spending far more time than I need converting stuff to avi's first for editing down the VOBs. Thanks for the reminder, this ought to be a good joke when I put the resulting DVD in the player this weekend on our Men's Retreat!

After re-reading the OP: I would suspect that there should be something on a Vista PC that would do you. My pre-loaded XP Home PC came with a fully serviceable program, ArcSoft Showbiz, that would accomplish the titles and video transitions you would like to add. Unfortunately, it wouldn't import VOBs so everything needed to be transcoded to AVIs first. Your original video camera VOBs are probably not all that high quality. You could use MediaCoder to convert them to .AVI files.

Most of the videos I transferred to dvd were 20 years old and of low quality. I guess I need to see if my dvdr will record in a different format then VOB before I do the rest of them.

I renamed my vob files to MPG and all edit programs seem to work. There must be a downside to just renaming then, the answer cant be that easy.



If I convert to AVI's I will lose quality correct?

I'm bringing in video from a Sony digital video camera over firewire and from a VCR through a cheap USB converter. IIRCC, I end up with .MPG from the firewire and .AVI from the USB. I can't believe just renaming .VOB to .MPG worked. What program are you using to edit? Sonic MyDVD chokes on .VOB no matter what they are named. As for losing quality when transcoding to .AVI, it really depends on how good the original was. I don't notice any difference between playing my old HI-FI VCR tapes vs. capturing them through USB to .AVI and then converting them to .VOB and burning to DVD. However, my transcode settings are such that I'm getting about 4GB per hour at import from VCR.

If you want the files compatible with most editing programs you could use VirtualDub MPEG or VirtualDub Mod to open them, chop out the pieces you don't want, and output the keepers as DV files. DV requires about 13 GB per hour storage so you'll probably want to be selective about what you keep. You'll probably have to find a DV Codec to do that, I use a Panasonic one. Check over at Videohelp.com for a list of tools.