Unable to save DVD's to computer or to open in Video Studio

[janemacmillan]

I am unable to open DVD's in video studio. I have tried saving them to the computer first however am unable to do that either in a format that can be opened.

Please advise. I am a first time user, so I am probably missing some basic knowledge.

Thanks.

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[BrianCee]

Are these DVDs that you or a friend has recorded or are they commercially produced and sold in a shop DVDs - if the latter then they almost certainly have some form of copyright protection system on them to prevent you from doing what you are trying to do !!

[janemacmillan]

Thanks Brian.

These DVD's are all produced privately of my own shows so there will be no copyright protection.

I can save them as files to my documents however when I try to open them in video studio the file contains the video file and also a source file and data file. At one point I think I did open the video file but there was no sound.

I am sure it is because I can only open the individual files and do not know how to correctly save the DVD's.

I only wish to save these DVD's to my computer to make it easier to access. Also at the moment I can only burn one DVD individually. It would be much more efficient if I could save the contents of two DVD's (as they are only twenty minute shows each) onto a single DVD.

[BrianCee]

Well - first you *should* be able to use the "Import DVD" option from within VideoStudio - this will read in the files straight from your DVD and put them in the timeline for editing.

To do that - put the DVD in your PC tray - and right click over the timeline in VideoStudio and fom the pop-up choose "Import DVD etc." and then follow the prompts.

If you have already copied the files to your PC and they are .vob files then simply change the extension of the filename from .vob to .mpg they *should* then open in VideoStudio - give it a try and let us know how you get on.

If it does not work perhaps you could let us know the name and extension of the files you have copied to your PC.

[Ken Berry]

Just a footnote to Brian's helpful reply. While you follow the prompts in the Import DVD/DVD-VR function, there is in fact no prompt for the perhaps most important point -- namely, that you have to put a check mark in the little box to the left of each chapter that is shown in the list that comes up in VS9 and that you wish to import. There is even a little preview screen in the import module which allows you to see which parts you want to import.

It is not totally clear to me, however, that you are wanting to import from the DVD for editing purposes -- or do you just want to store it on computer for playback purposes? If so, and if you made the DVDs in the first place, then you would be better first 'burning' your project to an ISO disc image or the actual Video_TS video file folders such as are found on your finished DVD, and then using the separate burning module that comes with VS, or a third party burning program such as Nero, to later burn these to disc. The ISO and Video_TS will certainly play in most computer software DVD players such as Power DVD, WinDVD etc. and you can later burn as many copies as you want to disc.

And speaking of Nero, it has a function (under Nero Recode) which can indeed join the contents of two (or more) DVDs together and burn them into a new single DVD. I use this feature occasionally and it seems to work very well. And even if the contents of the original discs go over the size limit of a single layer DVD (around 4.3 GB), Recode can also reduce the file size to fit on one DVD if the originals are not copy protected.

[harperv]

I am really new to this and having problems of my own and this is probably not any help.you didnt say what kind of camera these were from but if you use the sony small dvds did you finalise in the camera.
I couldnt import from the dvd the first time i tried but i had used the sony program to download the files to my pc. I was able to just drag the files from my videos (on the hard drive) right into the library on video studio.
I am doing this also when i add music just dragging the file across and then putting it in the timeline.
I did print off the pdf manual and read it from cover to cover to try and understand as much as possible about VS9 but still have a long way to go.
This forum has helped me so much in the past week just by reading old posts.