Need help with capture quality

[myers368]

Ok, I'm sort of a newbie at this. Here's the deal.

My parents had a wedding ceremony recorded on a digital camera. The company just gave them all the raw footage in DVD format. I am now trying to take that DVD and edit it to make it a little nicer.

Anyway, here's the problem. When I rip the movie from the DVD and then convert it to an mpeg or avi, I lose considerable picture quality. I'm not worried about size (so I don't need to compress to fit it on a cd-r).

So how do I go about getting the movie off the cd and converting it into a format so that I can edit it using software. (I have several kinds. Vegas Video, Windows movie maker, ulead video studio, premiere.)

Also, I tried using premiere (I think) to rip the dvd. It kept the quality, but did not de-interlace, so every line was shifted. Is there anyway to get around this?

Thanks and sorry for the long post.

[Marc Peters]

First off, you'll want to maximise the quality of the footage, so when you RIP from the DVD, rip to DV. This will minimise any degredation in quality as it's not very compressed (and hence creates HUGE files). Riping to DV will also ensure you'll be able to edit properly in Premiere (editing with compressed footage is a nightmare).

If you don't have a DV codec, you can download the Panasonic one here: http://users.tpg.com.au/mtam/install_panvfwdv.htm (I think this is an encoder too, I know some DV codecs are decoders only (which strictly speaking means they're not codec ))

[myers368]

Thanks Marc,

Here's a dumb question though. I've got the codec. How do I rip it to DV now? Is there a certain program I should use?

[Marc Peters]

I use DVDx to RIP DVD VOBS to my hard drive - check out my guide here: http://www.marcpeters.co.uk/DVD-back-up.html

[myers368]

Ok, so you rip the vobs to your hd with dvdx. Then do you use dvd x to encode the vobs to avi using the dv codec?

Also, what resolution setting do you use.

[Marc Peters]

Well, to be 100% correct, I use DVDx to rip and convert to DivX "on the fly". However, I'm sure it will give the option of converting to DV as you RIP. Which probably means I'm completely wrong