Ripped DVD To DV-AVI Using Streamclip

By Alan O (aka Hitthebongo)

www.hitthebongo.co.uk

A popular request on the movie maker forums is how to extract sections of a Home Movie DVD or other MPEG2 source for use in a MM2 (Movie Maker 2) project. While commercial solutions exist in abundance, there are also some free solutions that are worthy of consideration.This guide concerns itself with using the free and excellent Streamclip video editing application to achieve the goal of extracting and saving movie segments from a ripped DVD, and converting them to a useful MM2 friendly format. The settings I recommend are based on my own experimentation and should by no means be considered definitive or authoritative. They are simply settings that work for me and MIGHT work for you.

For those who don't mind a challenge and are prepared to work with an mpeg2 file directly on the timeline of Movie Maker 2, you might find my MPEG2's in Movie Maker 2 guide useful. Only for the adventurous !

A prerequisite for this guide is that the required DVD content be ripped to a users hard drive. Please ensure that the rip has not been compressed as this may lead to problems further down the line. My DVD to MPEG2 guide has some info that may prove useful.

 

First A Little Background

While it is possible to import and work with mpeg2 content and vob files (if re-named with a .mpg extension) there are many potential pitfalls. My MPEG2's In Movie Maker 2 guide highlights the problems and suggests some solutions for those adventurous enough to try.

For those wishing a more stress free solution, the usual recommended course of action is to convert the unfriendly format in to something that is MM2 friendly. In the case of MM2 that usually means either wmv movies encoded with one of Microsofts series 9 codecs for example, or the ubiquitous DV-AVI format. Movies encoded to DV-AVI share the same file format as minidv camcorders. For standard definition video like that found on a DVD it makes a perfect candidate to encode video clips to. DV-AVI clips are characterized for their very high quality and super slick editing properties within MM2. The only downside is that because the format is only lightly compressed the files are BIG - about 1GB for 5 minutes of video. While it makes a lousy format to archive to, it none the less makes a perfect candidate to encode small clips to.

Streamclip is able to convert mpeg2/vob files to a DV encoded type 2 avi which MM2 should happily munch on. That is the purpose of this guide.

Please note I have only detailed those settings which I consider to be the most important. Certain functions like zoom and crop for example may offer further refinements when making the conversion.

Prerequisite

• Streamclip

Please note - Streamclip requires either: Apples Quicktime Player 7 to be installed, or KL's free Quicktime Alternative (1.81) (Not both !) Apples Quicktime Player 7 will require an mpeg2 plugin which costs $19.99. The Quicktime Alternative installation on the other hand provides a plugin for free. Full details to be found under "Requirements" on the main Streamclip page.

 

Getting Started

Open up stream clip to get the main page:

 

1. Click File - Open Files and locate the source MPEG2 or VOB file you wish to edit and convert.
2. Depending on the source movie the window below may appear if a vob was selected that formed part of a series. You may either Open All Files which will load the entire movie/ vob sequence on the timeline, or just the individual file. If you are only wishing to edit and save a small clip I would recommend that you Open 1 File This will be quicker and slicker once imported in to Streamclip (note : this may be essential as Streamclip often has trouble displaying an entire movie making the editing of clips impossible)

5. If the source clip has time code errors you may get the screen below. you should click Fix Now. That will in turn display a related box in which Do not skip any frame should be ticked. click proceed when done. If the warning doesn't appear, proceed to step 6

6. It's now time to select the portion of the clip you required to be saved. By clicking on the Edit tab it is possible to access the Select In , Select Out and Trim functions. Keyboard shortcuts also exist for these functions. Simply drag the timeline slider to the start of a desired clip and Select in . Next drag the slider to where you wish the clip to finish and then Select Out. Finally , once you are happy with the selection hit Trim. This newly edited clip will be the one we next save to.
7. Click File then Export to AVI

8. Make selections as shown above making sure that Apple DV-PAL and Uncompressed audio is selected. Leave the frame rate blank as the output avi will assume the same frame rate as the source video. Selecting different Frame size options appear to have no influence on the screen size of the created AVI when Apple DV-PAL compression is selected so I would just ignore those. I would suggest that the above settings are suitable for both PAL and NTSC source videos - see box below for further explanation.

Unfortunately there is not an Apple DV-NTSC option for the compression setting. NTSC users may be disconcerted by this but I really don't think this should be an issue as the intention is just to create a clip for further editing within MM2. MM2 won't care what resolution the created avi is, as it will simply stretch/squash it to fit as it would any other video input source. As PAL resolution is HIGHER than NTSC I would very much doubt if there are any quality issues either. NTSC users can rest assured that if a 29.97 FPS DVD VOB is fed in to Streamclip then the FPS of the output avi, will also be 29.97 (as opposed to PAL's 25FPS) so long as the Frame Rate box has been left clear.

9. Hit the Options button to bring up the DV settings panel

10. Select the aspect ratio that corresponds to the movie source. Select 16:9 for widescreen movies and 4:3 for all others.
11. Once the settings have been made click Make AVI ....Thats it !

Hopefully at the end of encoding a highly editable avi file will be created. I would suggest keeping the clips below 5 minutes because file size limits can be exceeded on hard drives formatted as a FAT file system. NTFS formats have no such problems.

The created files work very nicely for me using Microsofts own internal codecs. Hopefully they will work OK for a user running the latest versions of Windows Media Player and service pack updates. As always though I make no guarantee !

Good Luck

Return To Parent Blog Post

Related Guides

 

 

Originally posted 24 April 2007...Last updated 19 May 2007