Vidding Question Which Makes Me Seem Dumb

[hollywoodgrrl]

What is everyone's process on vidding with source ripped from DVDs? More specifically, once you have the VOB files sitting there, what next?

Obviously I have my own methods, but this is for Vividcon so I don't want to mess around with possible fail. (I've heard that once it's on the projector you can really tell and this makes me go MEEP!) So I'm

Comments

[rhoboat]

I think VOBs fail because basically, it's compressed footage and stuff, and it's something to do with I-frames. :?

Uncompressed takes up lots of space, but an editing codec I've used after going through Vdub is Huffy. That seems to work pretty well for me... when I have the space. I *think* there's also frameserving into VDub and using that technique to "clean up" the footage, but I've never tried that exactly. :?

[hollywoodgrrl]

Ack! What language are you speaking to me??? Lol.

Ok well space is absolutely not an issue. I have a whole drive specifically for VVC stuff.

but an editing codec I've used after going through Vdub is Huffy.
Ok but what did you do in VDub first? You compressed it with something first and then you compressed it again with Huffy? (Which I'm assuming is Huffyuv?)

Or would you suggest just installing Huffy and running them through VDub with that?

[rhoboat]

I use Vdub to convert VOBs/MPGs into Huffy (yes, that's Huffyuv), and that seems to do the trick for wonky VOBs. :)

[hollywoodgrrl]

Woot! I'm gonna give it a shot. Hopefully it complies with my puter.

[ltgarrix]

Well, I make short VOB clips and rename them as MPGs since a VOB is essentially an MPG. When I say short, I try to limit it to the part of the scene I would use, so it's generally less than a minute. This keeps the size reasonable for your computer's RAM to deal with. When shown at the Farscape cons I have found that it looks good - and they looked good shown on my 50" plasma at home.

[hollywoodgrrl]

So you do just edit with the straight up VOB files them? Except with the renamed extension?

I tried that and it seemed to work, but then when I opened up Vegas again it freaked out A LOT and I figured it was the weird .mpegs I made. :/

[ltgarrix]

That's weird. I'm using version 6 but pretty much every vid that I have ever done has been with the renamed VOBs. I don't ever work with the whole episode or even on chapter from the DVD since I found that Vegas gives me fits when I use a lot of long (meaning large MB) clips. I think rhoboat had a tutorial on some sort of way to work with a large video file by clipping out the parts you wanted by essentially tricking Vegas, but I can't recall the term for that. I just haven't had time to vid with computer issues and the move.

[hollywoodgrrl]

It could be a Vista thing (ugh) or the fact that my clips were kinda long. Also maybe cuz I changed the extension to .mpeg not .mpg? IDK.

[dreamrequiem]

Personally, I rip entire seasons or series with the complete episodes as uncompressed VOBs. Then I run those through AGK, set to width 624 at roughly 350mb per 40 minutes of footage. The resulting xvid files come out generally good quality though occasional scenes look a little gross depending on the lighting and coloring of that scene. Overall I've liked the results for laptop and internet viewing but I don't know about its appearance on a projector.

[hollywoodgrrl]

Yeah I'll probably do that as backup if I can't figure anything else out. The only problem is you edit in Premiere, right? I don't know how it behaves with Xvid, but Vegas hates it. I tried messing with an output of Divx, but AGK crashed on me. But it could be the settings I gave it.

Thanks for the advice, tho! (And yay Awards! Lol.)

[dreamrequiem]

Nope, I edit my hobby vids in Vegas! It handles xvid just fine for me...ironically, it was Premiere that couldn't deal with xvid and kept crashing. Vegas has never given me problems unless I completely overload the timeline (which I routinely do). But overall it's fine. Probably depends on the computer and operating system too though. I don't know what the best quality for projection onto a screen would be though, unfortunately.

And yes, awards! Congrats! lol

[hollywoodgrrl]

Wow that's insane! Well I'll give it a go just as well.

Thanks again!

[chasarumba]

I actually think the big screen at VVC is pretty forgiving...in downloaded form, I notice if a vid's frame rate is wonky and if the footage is problematic, but not so much up there (unless it was really REALLY bad, and there weren't many of those). The stuff I stressed about didn't matter, and whoa, my color fine-tuning was truly pointless (because the projector messes with color). Your vids are going to look great, I'm sure!

I do a bunch with my VOBs and I will not bore you with the whole DGIndex/Avisynth shebang, but I do ultimately re-encode as avis via VDub (using Huffyuv, which is not as huge as uncompressed, but still pretty big).

[hollywoodgrrl]

Wow thanks for the inside knowledge! Especially about the color and the projector and all that. The only thing that I remember reading about VVC (and what stuck with me for years) is that someone said DVD footage looked hella better than dl-ed footage. It's kinda a no brainer, but still. I'M NERVOUS! Eeeps.

Thanks for the tech info! I think I'm gonna try and get this Huffyuv thingo to work.

But if I fail at everything, I at least know that my lame way isn't all that lame after all. :)

[hollywoodgrrl]

Just out of curiosity, am I supposed to see Huffyuv in VDub once it's installed? I don't seem to have any presence of it anywhere.

In VDub when I hit the compression tab it looks like this. Is that where I'm supposed to be seeing Huffy? (Or is it just "File → Save as AVI?")

[chasarumba]

someone said DVD footage looked hella better than dl-ed footage

That was probably before the age of HD downloads -- sometimes you can DL better quality than standard-definition DVDs nowadays! You'll be good...I've never seen you use anything poor-quality.

Is that where I'm supposed to be seeing Huffy? (Or is it just "File → Save as AVI?")

Yeah, you should see it there in the codec list once installed, so something must be up. I installed my Huffy codec with the AMVapp, which you can get at that link anoel posted (that guide is basically my vidding tech bible and it is indeed kinda scary and best digested when cut into small pieces and chewed carefully :-)).

[anoel]

I use Avisynth with my VOB files. So I put the VOBs into DGIndex which makes avisynth files and then deinterlace them with scripts. There's a guide of the process here starting at Ripping DVDs section.

[hollywoodgrrl]

Ack! That sounds really intense, lol. I think Avisynth doesn't work on my puter tho, but thanks for the link to the guide. It's good to have these things stored either way. :)

Yeah you are King for linking to that insane guide. Got Huffy installed with it. :) THANKS!

[obsessive24]

This is what I do also. Noted that you (HWG) are ruling out this option, but just thought I'd volunteer the info since you asked generally. :)

I also agree with Chasa's comment about the big screen being pretty forgiving. Last year I had a couple of vids that were made wholly/mostly out of downloaded episodes (standard 350MB rip) and they looked fine. Not as shiny as some of the others when you view on DVD, but otherwise pretty indistinguishable on the big screen.

[hollywoodgrrl]

I did ask generally and I love to know all your technical tricks. So thanks for filling me in. :)

I found the inside knowledge on VVC the most useful, thank you! I'm like SUPER nervous lol. I fear vidding fail quite a bit because I've never seen the crap I've submitted before. Now I'll be staring at it there so I'm all focused on every minute detail so there is no fail! Eeee!