The Only Way to Import from DVD is to Encode the VOBs First?

[Typhoon859]

It's like a 3 step fucking process - you select the VOBs from the list to rip, you index them to a single file, then you call that file in an avs script to filter/save (or clip if you want). And after you do it once and have the basic scripts all in a folder somewhere you can just copy and paste them for every damned DVD you're going to rip.

Clipping is the thing that takes time - this is the easy part.

It's the AVS Script part I don't get. That's besides the fact that the VOBs always look weird when I rip them and after I encode them, they still look weird. So every one of those 3 steps is like a fucking nightmare. Nothing works.

[Vivaldi]

It's like a 3 step fucking process - you select the VOBs from the list to rip, you index them to a single file, then you call that file in an avs script to filter/save (or clip if you want). And after you do it once and have the basic scripts all in a folder somewhere you can just copy and paste them for every damned DVD you're going to rip.

Clipping is the thing that takes time - this is the easy part.

It's the AVS Script part I don't get. That's besides the fact that the VOBs always look weird when I rip them and after I encode them, they still look weird. So every one of those 3 steps is like a fucking nightmare. Nothing works.

I know from experience that the first 2 or 3 times you go through the process it's an utter nightmare. After you get used to it, you can easily have a DVD ripped, indexed, and be clip searching in about 10 minutes. (depending on computer speed and difficulty of interlacing.)

Speaking of that, what exactly do you mean by wierd. Is it interlaced? (e.g. Odd looking horizontal lines that keep appearing?) Also, DVDs always look a little different on computer screens because of different sized pixels and stuff. If you can struggle your way through the guide, then it'll make some sense. If not... Well, it'll probably turn out basicly allright.

[Dr. Derpface, J.D.]

It will look weird, but the guide addresses that. Read through it a few times and it will all make sense, trust me.

And Vivaldi is right. The first time through it seems like a giant pain in the ass. But after the 2nd or 3rd time, the steps become second nature, and they begin to make sense as to WHY things are done the way that they are done.

You can't just pick in and out points and be done because that's the way DVD's are made. The MPAA doesn't WANT it to be easy to do what we do. Therefore you have encryption to deal with, as well as format differences. The AVISynth script is what allows VirtualDub or any other program to read the VOB files without having to convert them to something else first.

[Phantasmagoriat]

Why does this seem so unnecessary? Why is it not as simple as selecting your start and end point, exporting that, then putting it into Premiere or w/e. 20 hours to get like a minute of footage into a program, ridiculous. This is all just a little nuts..

I just made an entire AMV with no problems by demuxing the video from the MKV files I have using VirtualDubMod and I even got to select my start and end points. Now, right at the very end, I needed two punches from the DVD I have and I'm hit with all of this. So unnecessarily complicated, man...

[To add to what's already been said]
Considering that dvd's are interlaced... and aren't all standardized... it does add some intermediate steps to figure out how to deal with your specific DVD; which is why it's rare to have a single program do everything for you... and do a good job of it. The MKV files you speak of were likely from a fansub group that has already done the work, and deinterlaced, cleaned, and packaged into a single file. Unfortunately, most of the time, they have to degrade the quality for file-size considerations, so for a couple extra steps, using DVD's is well worth it; it's just a little cumbersome the first time. [actually, you could probably spend month's reading this guide... but once you do, it really isn't too bad...] I would suggest getting the AMVapp and refer to The Overview Page.
[or use that other guide that was suggested]

[Typhoon859]

Why does this seem so unnecessary? Why is it not as simple as selecting your start and end point, exporting that, then putting it into Premiere or w/e. 20 hours to get like a minute of footage into a program, ridiculous. This is all just a little nuts..

I just made an entire AMV with no problems by demuxing the video from the MKV files I have using VirtualDubMod and I even got to select my start and end points. Now, right at the very end, I needed two punches from the DVD I have and I'm hit with all of this. So unnecessarily complicated, man...

[To add to what's already been said]
Considering that dvd's are interlaced... and aren't all standardized... it does add some intermediate steps to figure out how to deal with your specific DVD; which is why it's rare to have a single program do everything for you... and do a good job of it. The MKV files you speak of were likely from a fansub group that has already done the work, and deinterlaced, cleaned, and packaged into a single file. Unfortunately, most of the time, they have to degrade the quality for file-size considerations, so for a couple extra steps, using DVD's is well worth it; it's just a little cumbersome the first time. [actually, you could probably spend month's reading this guide... but once you do, it really isn't too bad...] I would suggest getting the AMVapp and refer to The Overview Page.
[or use that other guide that was suggested]

Actually, those MKV encodes I have are the most amazing encodes I've ever seen. There's no way anything I do can come close to the quality of those. In many ways, they're better than the original DVDs which I've compared for hours. I'm pretty sure the DVD I have isn't interlaced. Here are the weirdnesses, if that's even a word XD, that I was talking about.

Using DVD Decrypter, there were these weird jumps in playback and certain parts just looped.

Using DVDFab, it was fine but then the problem was in virtual dub... When encoding the VOBs in any way using VirtualDub, the result of the video was with very jittery lines. Instead, I used Video Cleaner Pro which didn't have that problem. But all these problems doesn't make me confident in my working result as being the best. That's besides the fact that an uncompressed AVI turns out larger than the VOBs which is just stupid...

[Vivaldi]

Actually, those MKV encodes I have are the most amazing encodes I've ever seen. There's no way anything I do can come close to the quality of those. In many ways, they're better than the original DVDs which I've compared for hours. I'm pretty sure the DVD I have isn't interlaced. Here are the weirdnesses, if that's even a word XD, that I was talking about.

Using DVD Decrypter, there were these weird jumps in playback and certain parts just looped.

Using DVDFab, it was fine but then the problem was in virtual dub... When encoding the VOBs in any way using VirtualDub, the result of the video was with very jittery lines. Instead, I used Video Cleaner Pro which didn't have that problem. But all these problems doesn't make me confident in my working result as being the best. That's besides the fact that an uncompressed AVI turns out larger than the VOBs which is just stupid...

I don't really have time to think about the DVD "wierdness"you're encountering, but let me just say...

You need to stop fighting this every step of the way, and realize that it's just the nature of the beast. It's like complaining that the sky's blue. You may not like it, but that's just how it is. You should also note that hundreds of other editors use this exact method because it's tried and true to be one of the best.

About clip sizes, are you selecting small sections instead of whole episodes in Virtual dub? Also, you should use the lagirith codec, it's lossless, and is about 2/5 the size of uncompressed.

As for repeating clips, remember that if you ripped the entire disc there will be some misc. vobs like menus and transitions and stuff. Could that be it?

[Phantasmagoriat]

The weirdness you described sounds like the result of not indexing the VOB files. As for not having interlacing, you've mentioned having jittery lines; if they look like this, then yeah, that's interlacing. It sounds like Video Cleaner Pro does some deinterlacing for you, which you might be able to do a better job with avisynth.

Not sure if I should even be discussing those MKVs, since using downloaded footage is not supported by this site, but anyways, a lot of fansub groups take pride in their ability to clean/improve video quality using Avisynth scripts. So yeah, it's possible to get better-looking fansubs than the DVD's if you know the right places-- Although you don't have as much control; fansubers have to clean ~10 hours of footage, whereas you only have a ~4minute amv, so again, you might be able to do a better job [with experience of course]

I like your last statement it does seem ridiculous at first, but that's just the nature ofvideo compression. To retain the original quality, converting to big lossless files is almost the only way. The other way is to frameserve the VOB's into your editor, which doesn't take up any extra space, but that's a bit more advanced, and you would have to know how to do the whole "lossless thing" first before even attempting that method.

You need to stop fighting this every step of the way, and realize that it's just the nature of the beast. It's like complaining that the sky's blue. You may not like it, but that's just how it is. You should also note that hundreds of other editors use this exact method because it's tried and true to be one of the best.

x2. yup. pretty much

[Typhoon859]

The weirdness you described sounds like the result of not indexing the VOB files. As for not having interlacing, you've mentioned having jittery lines; if they look like this, then yeah, that's interlacing. It sounds like Video Cleaner Pro does some deinterlacing for you, which you might be able to do a better job with avisynth.

Not sure if I should even be discussing those MKVs, since using downloaded footage is not supported by this site, but anyways, a lot of fansub groups take pride in their ability to clean/improve video quality using Avisynth scripts. So yeah, it's possible to get better-looking fansubs than the DVD's if you know the right places-- Although you don't have as much control; fansubers have to clean ~10 hours of footage, whereas you only have a ~4minute amv, so again, you might be able to do a better job [with experience of course]

I like your last statement it does seem ridiculous at first, but that's just the nature ofvideo compression. To retain the original quality, converting to big lossless files is almost the only way. The other way is to frameserve the VOB's into your editor, which doesn't take up any extra space, but that's a bit more advanced, and you would have to know how to do the whole "lossless thing" first before even attempting that method.

You need to stop fighting this every step of the way, and realize that it's just the nature of the beast. It's like complaining that the sky's blue. You may not like it, but that's just how it is. You should also note that hundreds of other editors use this exact method because it's tried and true to be one of the best.

x2. yup. pretty much

The jittery line thing is more like; the picture is solid, but the lines are like zig-zaggy. It's not like a ghost image sort-of thing with lines going across. I do have another problem though which I think was mentioned in that link you gave me which can't be solved? When I export my AMV, it's not horrible but still, frames blend into each other and actually do make ghosting a little bit. In some places, the video is sometimes laggy as well.

BTW, all lossless codecs turn out bigger than the VOBs? Lol, cause that's just dumb... I was always like, "Man, these damn VOB files are huge!" and now this? XD And uhh, everyone seems to completely HATE MKV format. What's wrong with it? I think it's the most awesome format ever. Inside is just the h264 avi file along with 3 audio streams & subs.

Anyway, I only rip the "main movie". VirtualDub was just processing the VOBs wrong for some reason. In any case, come to think of it, when I went to Export "Movie" in Adobe Premiere CS3 and tried to export my AMV as a lossless AVI, the same exact thing happened with every setting I put (including different codecs). The lines were all jittery... Lossless my ass, lol. Like, I don;t get it... And it's not how I installed them because it worked fine in Video Cleaner Pro and I'm sure it's nothing the program itself did.

[Dr. Derpface, J.D.]

BTW, all lossless codecs turn out bigger than the VOBs? Lol, cause that's just dumb... I was always like, "Man, these damn VOB files are huge!" and now this? XD And uhh, everyone seems to completely HATE MKV format. What's wrong with it? I think it's the most awesome format ever. Inside is just the h264 avi file along with 3 audio streams & subs.

Yes, lossless will ALWAYS be larger than the VOB, because the video inside the VOB files uses a lossy compression format (MPEG2). While it's at a high bitrate, it is still losing information compared to the original prints. That is why you make lossless clips from the VOB files, to retain as much quality as possible. The ONLY time you should do ANY other lossy compression is when you make the FINAL encode, as in the one you are going to release.

And H.264 IS a great format, but it isn't lossless. There is still data being dropped in order to get the filesize down. It looks good because it is much more efficient at what it does, but that's also why it takes more CPU power to decode it properly. However, it doesn't matter how high the bitrate is, it will NEVER look better than the original DVD. They can filter it and clean it up, but there will still be SOME loss. MKV is not a format, but merely a container. The reason people don't use it very much for AMV's is because it is simply not needed. If you encode to an h.264 AVI file, it will contain the audio you want, so having support for extra tracks is completely unnecessary and just increases the filesize

And finally, I'll echo what has already been said. Stop fighting the way things are, because it won't change. Just accept that what you are fighting against is the way it has to be done for optimum quality. Do it a few times and it's NOT that bad. I can have a DVD ready to start pulling clips from in under an hour, and that includes the time ripping the VOB's on a slow-as-hell DVD drive. It becomes procedural memory and you don't even think about it anymore.

[Phantasmagoriat]

Fire_Starter1982 got to most of the answers, but since I already typed something up... I might as well post it... although, you could probably just skip it, because the main message is "Just read the guides" [lol, but really]

The jittery line thing is more like; the picture is solid, but the lines are like zig-zaggy. It's not like a ghost image sort-of thing with lines going across. I do have another problem though which I think was mentioned in that link you gave me which can't be solved? When I export my AMV, it's not horrible but still, frames blend into each other and actually do make ghosting a little bit. In some places, the video is sometimes laggy as well.

Are you really following the step-by-step guide linked above? Are you opening the dg index in vdub via Avisynth? The steps are there to avoid problems like the one you might be having. Blended frames are mentioned in the guide. If you are just opening the VOB directly with vdub, and it seems laggy, that will probably go away when you try opening it through the index. If you've followed everything said in the guide, and still encounter something weird, take a snapshot with vdub, so you can show us.

BTW, all lossless codecs turn out bigger than the VOBs? Lol, cause that's just dumb... I was always like, "Man, these damn VOB files are huge!" and now this? XD And uhh, everyone seems to completely HATE MKV format. What's wrong with it? I think it's the most awesome format ever. Inside is just the h264 avi file along with 3 audio streams & subs.

If you read the last link I gave you, you would realize that there are formats made for distribution, and those made for editing. h264 is made for maximizing quality while maintaining a small filesize. But it's only made for watching. Sure you might be able to edit with it, but by virtue of the way it was compressed, expect problems.

Anyway, I only rip the "main movie". VirtualDub was just processing the VOBs wrong for some reason. In any case, come to think of it, when I went to Export "Movie" in Adobe Premiere CS3 and tried to export my AMV as a lossless AVI, the same exact thing happened with every setting I put (including different codecs). The lines were all jittery... Lossless my ass, lol. Like, I don;t get it... And it's not how I installed them because it worked fine in Video Cleaner Pro and I'm sure it's nothing the program itself did.

assuming you're not importing "jittery-line" footage into premiere [which you would obviously get "jittery-line" footage out the other end], maybe you aren't exporting as progressive.

Either way, I would suggest going through from the start of that Overview Page above, instead of trying to jump in from all angles, and when you come across a part in the guide that doesn't make sense, ask us for clarification, because as much as I want to help, the way things are unfolding makes it hard to narrow down where things are going wrong. It's a bit lengthy, but reading it step by step could take less time than trying to figure out how to fix problems you don't know you've made.