Help with DVD video conversion

[andy ide]

I wonder if someone could help me please, either by pointing me to a good technical forum where I could post the following or by sorting it out here and now. I've got a ton of other stuff to do at the moment and I just need to know whether this job is viable or not.

I've got some DVDs I need to rip for someone and create movies and clips from for AdultWork. I'm using Handbrake on a Mac and they convert into mp4's quickly.

Problem one is that I can't rip specific scenes. Handbrake presents me with either 4min chunks or the movie cut into three or the whole movie as one big chunk. So I need to bring the chunks into Final Cut Pro to edit the specific scenes together. No great bother but...

Problem two is that when I put the chunks on the timeline, even after FCP asks me if I want to convert them to same format as the chunks, the rendering time is incredibly long. Like 4 hours for 20 minutes and the image is a bit jerky. And that's before I even get to thinking about exporting again (likewise takes ages) or slicing the content into clips and exporting them as wmv's.

I'm using FCP 7.0.3. Handbrake is exporting in the H.264 video codec. Is my problem that my copy of FCP is too old for H.264?

Any help would be gratefully received. Thanks.

[BillysBabes]

Media impression 2 and freemake.com.
Both free programs, both very basic but will do what you want.

[videokim]

http://www.freemake.com is a one stop shop Andy as it converts anything including AVCHD.
Also download http://www.vlc.com as this player again plays anything & also provides codecs for playing HD.

Both progs are free & untouchable by miles when it comes to conversion.

[Bodi]

I dont think you can get feeemake for a MAC.

[sparky]

I've no idea about MAC's and software but if I was using a PC and had the issues you are to get the scenes I would simply make a new DVD file set for each scene on the hard drive, which since just file copying would be both very quick and no quality loss, then import that into your Handbrake program to convert to mp4.

[muswell]

mpegstreamclip is good on macs and visualhub is a great conversion compression programme if you can find it. Particularly useful for making wmv's.

[shorey]

The native format of DVD is MPEG2, so there is no benefit in using H.264, you are just decompressing and recompressing for no gain.

If the DVDs are commercial then the MPEG2 file will be encoded using CSS; however if they are your own DVDs, then they probably aren't encoded and you don't need to rip them...simply rename the .vob files as .mpg and import them into your favourite video editor.

[andy ide]

Thanks for posting, everybody. Very generous.

And I'm happy to report that -- I have a result! Downloaded MPEG Streamclip for Mac, trimmed a custom-made three-min clip straight from the DVD, creating an MPEG4 version of it, and it zipped out in no time. Then put the new file onto the timeline I've been using in FCP and it rendered in -- literally -- a couple of seconds. And the image is stable.

Now all I need to do is subdivide in FCP and export wmv's from there. Absolutely fantastic, all. Happy new year!

[andy ide]

Bill, AW prefer rental movies to be mp4 files (I think -- it's a long time since I checked now, but they always accept my mp4 movies). Clips they prefer as wmv files.