Hi All,

I am a new member and this is my first post on this forum.

I have a number of DVDs with short, typically 2-3 minute clips of my daughter at dance competitions. Because these are spread over many DVDs, I want to assemble them into one (or just a few).

In doing the first few clips, I am able to rip, convert, author and burn successfully, BUT ....

I am not happy with the quality. It is not as good as the original in a couple ways.

(1) It is jerky.
It seems to be skipping a frame periodically. I notice it when I convert the VOB to AVI format, but not when I convert to MPEG2 format. Does this make sense to anyone?

(2) Fast movements.
In these videos, there is lots of fast movement. The picture seems to "smear" when this happens. "Smear" may not be the most descriptive word. For example, if I freeze the video while there is quick movement, the part of the image that is moving appears in the place where it should be in the previous frame, plus the current frame and I can see it twice. Is this an artifact of interlacing? I do not see this if I freeze it while playing off the original DVD. However, I do see it in the AVI or MPEG file on my computer.

I have converted the VOB files both Roxio 7 and a demo version of 123 DVD Converter with similar results.

Any insight is appreciated.

Converting to avi would make sense, yes. It's a other kind of video format than mpeg2, for example with higher compression, resolution etc...

It sounds like you are trying to convert a conversion of a conversion, as I am reading what you are saying. With digital if you copy a copy of a copy there is no loss of quality, but with conversions the same can not be said.

If your DVD player supports it you can just leave them as avis and this may help. What model do you have?

JayC30,

I don't think I'm converting a conversion.
I'm converting whatever is on the DVD (VOB?) to an AVI, then playing it on my computer and the quality is less than on the original DVD.
The software I'm using allows me to choose AVI or MPEG2 as the target format.
Either produces the same effect with the fast movements.

My computer drives are TDK DVDRW420N and TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-M1612.
My stand alone players are Samsung DVD-HD931 and Sony DVD NS315.

Not sure what you mean by leaving leaving it as an AVI.
I would like the DVDs I burn to play on any stand-alone player.

Thanks for your response.

not sure why you are converting. Can you DVDs be read using dvd shrink or dvd decrypter ? http://www.afterdawn.com/glossary/terms/vob.cfm

with shrink you might be able to re-author and cut the bits you want to make a new dvd ?

Harry,
I'll look into whether dvd shink will allow me to do what I want.
Somewhere I got the impression that I had to convert the video to re-author, but perhaps not.
I was using the authoring tool in Roxio 7 (called DVD Builder) and it wants the input video to be in the form of AVI, MPEG, and several others, so I thought I had to convert to one of them first.
Perhaps the limitations of my tool suite is causing me to make bad assumptions.

I sometimes burn tv shows/films from the tv on rw's, (with my stand alone dvd) and then edit them in nero express to get the adverts etc out of them. I then burn them on +r's and the quality stays the same.
Some newer,stand alone dvd players play avi files so you don't need to convert them to play on it.

How were the originals of your daughter captured? As vobs? If not they were converted to vobs, then you are ripping them then converting them again, thus a conversion of a conversion.

Roxio the all in one converter. Good to practice on but not something I would recommend for any period of time. You could try TMPGEnc, google it, the software has a 30 day free trial so you can see if it is worth spending the money on. They also have aDVD author, again free to try, which will deal with the out put of the conversion software.