Question for vid makers...

[cprav]

I have WMM and I have the DVD... is there a way to import the vids from the DVD, or do I have to find the 'other ways' of doing it?

Thanks!

[eris]

I'm having the same problem, C - it won't import directly from the DVD; you have to get a program to bridge the gap. It'll take the movie from the DVD and save it as a digital file WMM can read.

There's a legal one Best Buy sells here (I don't know about Canada) that's like $40, there are others you can get on-line but most of them are a bit more grey in the legal department.

You have to find software that allows you to make a "legal copy" for personal use.

[cprav]

cool thanks eris. I have all the eps, but some of them are subtitled which is definitely annoying. I'll surf the web later.

[Emerald]

I know you have to convert the DVD files to .wmv or .avi format....that seems to be easier said than done though and so far everything I've tried that has worked has also meant a huge loss in quality...to the point that the clips are unusable

I might need to have a chat to a friend who works in video editing and see what programs he can get for me

[Emerald]

Ok, trying something else....found a program called DVD Ripper (it's Freeware) which can convert .VOB files into AVI format...trouble is when I used this before WMV still wouldn't accept the converted file because of missing Codecs, so I've just installed a Codec analysis program and hopefully that can tell me what Codec I need and I can find it and download it...problem solved, YAY

I hope *fingers crossed*

[Emerald]

Hmm ok, that didn't work either.....grabbed the codec and installed it and WMM still didn't like it. I'm going to try converting to WMV9 format and see if that works without losing too much quality.

[Lilly]

Em -- I've made all of my videos using .wmv files and have been able to achieve DVD quality output. To the best of my knowledge (which isn't extensive because I'm self-taught) MM will only accept .wmv files as input.

[Emerald]

Em -- I've made all of my videos using .wmv files and have been able to achieve DVD quality output. To the best of my knowledge (which isn't extensive because I'm self-taught) MM will only accept .wmv files as input.

Theoretically it should accept .avi and some other limited formats as well. I know when I still had my episodes in downloaded AVI format WMM did accept them, unfortunately I didn't have the storage space at the time to keep them on my harddrive for later use. Hopefully converting to WMV9 files though won't have too much of a quality loss to it...last time I converted from .VOB (DVD format) to .WMV standard format, the picture came out very very pixelated and all blurry and screwed up.

How do you get your .WMV files? do you use a converter?

[Lilly]

How do you get your .WMV files? do you use a converter?

When I started out, I transfered all my iTunes episodes to digital tape. I ran the output of the iPod right into a digital tape recorder. Then I had to capture the DV to my computer. It was tedious and took forever. Then I bought all the episodes on Amazon UnBox and found a converter program, Tunebite, that was capable of converting those files to .wmv. The conversion is done in real time -- also slow, but the image quality I got was much better. The big problem with Tunebite is that the audio tends to get out of sync with the video. This isn't a problem if you're going to strip off the audio track in MM, but would be maddening if you actually tried to watch these episodes. The syncing problem is worse sometimes more than others, but for my purposes it produced good video files that I could work with.

[Emerald]

How do you get your .WMV files? do you use a converter?

When I started out, I transfered all my iTunes episodes to digital tape. I ran the output of the iPod right into a digital tape recorder. Then I had to capture the DV to my computer. It was tedious and took forever. Then I bought all the episodes on Amazon UnBox and found a converter program, Tunebite, that was capable of converting those files to .wmv. The conversion is done in real time -- also slow, but the image quality I got was much better. The big problem with Tunebite is that the audio tends to get out of sync with the video. This isn't a problem if you're going to strip off the audio track in MM, but would be maddening if you actually tried to watch these episodes. The syncing problem is worse sometimes more than others, but for my purposes it produced good video files that I could work with.

Unfortunately being in Australia, I don't have access to Amazon Unbox or Itunes episodes Moonlight was actually cancelled here after episode 6, so the only way I got to see the rest of Season 1 was through torrent downloads. I still have all those episodes burnt off in .VOB format...If this latest conversion program I'm trying doesn't work I might source out Tunebite and give that a go.

Thanks

[coco]

All my episodes are avi files and these imported fine for me to WMM. I haven't had a problem so far when making my vids.

[Emerald]

OMG....YAY IT WORKED

Ok....download this program

http://www.brothersoft.com/next-dvd-ripper-179254.html (it's freeware)

and then install it, open your .VOB (or whatever format they're in) files and convert them to WMV9 format. It takes ages but the quality is fairly decent

[SharonC]

I am using avi and VOB on mine and the quality seems okay, on both. Like everything else there are different ways to go about it and you get there eventually in the end. I think Emerald's idea sounds a good one for conversion, when I was getting the eps it could take days to get the data I needed and that might be for 2 eps, so time does come in to it for sure.

Patience is definitely a virtue on this

[cprav]

Sweet! I'll get that out tonight. I found a few programs that did work, but in the trial version you could only convert 10 minutes of video. *sigh*