Macworld Forums

Hi, I've just bought a DVD recorder and I want to transfer some old videos to DVD and then edit them in FCP (or quicktime for that matter).

Any idea how I go about this? When I open a DVD all I see is strange .BUF .IFO etc. files which I have no idea what to do with. I thought DVDs used mpeg 2!

Thanks. Stuart

lynndaley,

You need to digitise the videos. If you have a DV Video camera this should be quite simple. You can either record the videos to DV and then capture them on your mac, or you may be able to capture them dorectly, using the DV camera as a bridge.

If you don't have DV camcorder, then you will need a board or USB or Firewire device to digitise.

Whichever way, once you have digitised it you can do what ever you want. Quicktime is really quite basic - and you would need the pro version - it would be a bit like trying to do stuff you normally do in Word in TextEdit.

iMovie is intermediate, Final Cut Express is Advanced and Final Cut Pro is scholarship.

lynndaley,

Unless I have read it wrong and you have recorded your VHS tapes to DVD already - in which case you need to do a bit of web research for DVD Ripping.

You will need a couple of programs to do it - there is no one-stop-shop solution for ripping DVDs on the Mac at the moment...

Yes I've already copied to DVD and want to get files into FCP.

I've moved to FCP from premiere so I'm comfortable with the basic principles and just need to get fully up to speed with the FCP way of doing things.

The ripping software I can see is all about breaking the copy protection, which I haven't got, not about converting DVD files to quicktime

lynndaley,
Look and ye shall find... check this article out from Ken stone's vast resevoir of FCP how to dos...

www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/dvd_x_dv.html

Hope this helps

Chris

lynndaley,
have a look at DVDxDV
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19483

Hey all. Getting back to DV will give you a big loss in quality as it's already been heavily compressed more than once.

Even if you extract to m2v and have the m2v playback component then editing in fcp will not be smooth and easy like with DV.

Here are some tool that may help though:
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/tools

Jake

lynndaley, you could use ffmpegX

http://homepage.mac.com/major4/

Gary

Thanks for the tips everyone.

I've actually discovered that I can copy tapes to hard drive or DVD and then capture them on the mac by playing them back through the firewire port.

Unfortunately, you can't play the signal straight through but it's still easier than capturing to DVD and then inserting DVD in the mac and gives better quality.

Hi

How long would DVDxDV take to convert about an hours worth of video?

Looking at ffmpegx how would this convert to .mov (looking on the site it only exports to .avi and .mpg)?

Is it possible to play a DVD out through the firewire port and simultaneously capture using FCE the same signal (not sure if this is whatlynndaley was suggesting)?

Thanks a lot for all the help,