problem inserting DVD to VS8

[paskey01]

Hi guys,

I'm a complete and total newb trying to edit my wedding DVD. I go to the various insert media file options under the file menu, and when I hit each one they bring up a browse menu for me to find my file under.

This unfortunatly doesn't happen when I click the insert DVD/DVD-VR option... nothing happens at all. Can anyone help me out here? I've tried this with my wedding DVD in the drive and various purchased movie DVDs and nothing comes up. Before you ask yes my PC has a DVD-decoder, it plays any DVD you put in it fine. Any help would be greatly appreciated, but keep in mind that I'm a quite computer inept, so the simpler the solution the better. Thanks!

[Ron P.]

Hi Paskey01, welcome to the forums..

When you select insert DVD/DVD-VR it should open a browse dialogue. You then navigate to your DVD drive, select it. Then another dialogue opens that will have window on the left side showing the titles and chapters (Title0, Chapter0, Title1 etc..), each having a box beside it. Check the boxes for the titles and chapters you want to import. Then VS will start importing them. It may take a moment or two for this to occur.

Or you can open your DVD with windows explorer, and copy the DVD folders to your hard drive and follow the same procedure above, to get them into VS.

Just married? If so congratulations...

Ron P.

[MarkTwo]

Hello P01

Welcome to the great importing DVD Vob files treadmill. I've recently discovered that VS8 will import directly from DVDs, but unless you live in an NTSC country, with LCPM sound, VS8 doesn't copy the AC3 sound files into your clips.
So I got VS9, and the importing part doesn't work at all, and forces you to reset your computer to get back control. And now the accepted wisdom is to wait for VS10 to get it working properly.
It would be faster if you got a digital camera with analog inputs, and just plugged it into your DVD player, and played your wedding video....

Welcome to the wonderful world of software upgrades, where you have to keep forking out money until you get software that actually works...., and then pray that the new upgrade doesn't screw up something else...

Mark

[DVDDoug]

It wouldn't hurt to download the Video Studio 9 free-trial. When it works, VS9 (and Movie Factory 4) has the best DVD to MPEG converter I've seen. The trial doesn't have AC3 sound, so that could be a problem, depending on your source DVD.

I read somewhere that Nero does a good job of converting DVDs to movie files.

I had some luck using a free program called SUPER to convert a "problem" VOB to MPG. It re-coded the MPEG (bad), and I had to use a different program (or two) to extract the audio... But, it was the best solution I found for that particular VOB.

...various purchased movie DVDs...

Commercial DVDs have CSS copy protection. (And, Macrovision analog copy protection). You can play a commercial DVD on your computer, but you cannot open it with a video editor. If you copy it onto your hard drive on onto a DVD, the copy wont' play.

At one time, you could find free programs to crack CSS on the Net. But, such software is illegal here in the USA and maybe harder to find now. It is legal to make personal-use copies... just illegal to possess or distribute the software. Just like it's OK to pick the lock in your own home, but it's illegal to possess a lock-pick set...

You should also be aware that MPEGs are not meant to be edited (DVDs use MPEG encoding). Some people get away with it. I bought a special-purpose MPEG editor, because I was getting "lip-sync" problems and occasional crashes. Even with a special-purpose MPEG editor, some kinds of editing require an extra decode / re-code cycle, which degrades the video quality to some extent.