Video Capture

[EvilKiwi]

I have footage on a DVD that was transferred from analog footage.

I want to know how I can capture this into my hard drive for video editing.

I have video editing software, firewire and capture card. How do I do this?

Thanks

[Platypus]

Not something I've needed to do myself, but almost anything you need to know about DVD can be found somewhere on dvdrhelp:

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdripping

[confus-ed]

I'm (as per) confus-ed by this one ...

The info is "on a DVD that was transferred from analog footage" & we have "video editing software" ... so don't we just 'get' the bits we want with the editing s/w, 'slice & dice' as appropriate and job done ?

Or do we need to know how to capture from the DVD ? In which case what 'video editing s/w' ?

[NooNoo]

you need a dvdrom in your pc first of all. A dvd cannot be read by a cdrom. Then you can rip the dvd. If you have no dvd rom in your pc, you can hookup your dvd player to a card like the ATI all in wonder - or any card that has video in and capture it that way.

Tell us what you have on your computer now, and we can point you to the best places to look on dvdrhelp for tutorials for what you have.

[EvilKiwi]

Thanks for all your replies.

I will try to explain clearer.

We had footage on VHS which we had converted onto DVD.

We have Ulead Videostudio with a firewire cable and capture card. (Digital)

We are unsure as to how to "capture" the footage off the DVD to get it into the editing software as you would normally have this footage on a DV tape played through a DV camera using the firewire cable and card but we have this stuff on a DVD so therefore we have to bypass the normal capture process using the firewire cable and card? Is that correct?

We have a DVD rom in the PC.

[confus-ed]

Right I don't use this particular s/w ... so this is a case of the partially sighted leading the blind !

Effectively the 'capture' is done, it already being on a DVD, you ought to just be able to open a file on 'D' or whatever drive letter your DVD is, then use some slicing fuction to cut up that into whatever size bits you like, then save those 'captured' bits in a new project, maybe adding new bits from your DV cam & any transition effects or titling or whatever this s/w does to it ... to answer specifically I'll need the s/w version, then lets see if we can find you an exact tutorial, or better yet a member who actually has this s/w might take you through it step by step ?

Just one other question ... what are you gonna put the end result on ? This is a DVD rom ? not writer, do you have a CDR? or are you happy just getting it on your computer !?!

[NooNoo]

Dvds have to be "ripped" in order to get them on to a pc.... but you want to edit that so you need it in an editable format such as AVI (I hope you have loads of diskspace!) This is a completely freeware system for doing this You can use it to rip to mpeg2 or to AVI depending on what your editing software can handle. (Ijust checked ulead will handle mpeg2 and avi - the problem is that not all avi's are equal)

You are about to embark on an interesting learning curve about codecs, bitrates, screen size and many other things. However, this will do the job if you just click the go button and then you can learn how to change the quality of the output later.

It really does depend on what kind of quality you want to end up with At least this ripper is free and gives you the ability to change the settings at every level as you learn more about the subject. Many other dvd ripping programs cannot be adjusted and would possibly not allow you to output the rip in the quality you desire.

[CeeBee]

I'm ready to bet that VideoStudio (at least versions 6 and 7) supports native MPEG2 editing, which means that you can achieve a loss-less production. If it doesn't support MPEG2 editing then Media Studio v6 and later supports it. The only places where there will be some quality loss are the transitions, but that shouldn't be a problem. When rendering the final footage, MediaStudio is smart enough to re-encode only the frames that have changed, reducing the time and preserving the quality. Then a program like Ulead DVD Workshop is quite powerful and easy to use to create a DVD, and again, unlike other tools, it will not re-encode the files that are already in a compatible format unless you want to. My tools of choice for DVD production are MediaStudio for capture and editing in DV AVI, TMPG Enc for converting DV AVI to MPEG2 and DVD Workshop to author the DVD.