[jamesg1979]

Hi, I made the mistake of buying a DVD cam, and whilst the quality is great and watching on my player is great, I now want to edit about 4 DVD's from my holiday into one movie which is proving a nightmare.

I've used a trial version of Sony Vegas but it just crashes whilst bringing in the vob files.
Have converted DVD to AVI but loss of quality even at best is terrible and the file sizes end up being about 30gb a DVD!
Is there any software out there which would be minimum loss of quality, cope with 4 DVD's worth and stlil give me the functionality of editing clips, adding music, text etc.

[senu]

Its a shame Sony Vegas crashes . it is one of the better programs. Ver 7, and now 8 are good at editing Mpeg and don't lack for the ability to add title text music ect.

Converting to DV AVI is questionable as you are going from a compressed format to a less compressed one, only to go back to a compressed one. However for extensive editing it may be an option provided you have the HDD space, and you do your project in bite sized chunks. (ie One dvd at a time ), then join them together at the end.
4 DVDs worth of video seems to be a fairly ambitious project .Pruning unwanted footage from each one should make life easier for you
Im a bit : There is no reason why you should end up with 30Gb per DVD. Even with DV AVI from tape the most you use up per hr of tape is 13Gb
Some software are native "mpeg editors" in that they are able to avoid unnecessary re rendering of mpeg clips which don't need it.
As you know, compared to DV AVI, mpeg files have worse "generational" PQ loss with re rendering
Some of the mpeg editors use "smart rendering" to get round this.
Ulead Video Studio is said to be able to "smart render". It is (perhaps justifiably) very popular but some on these forums have been underwhelmed by its output. and GUI
Womble, Video Redo and DVD Santa are other titles which are said to be good at DVD/ mpeg editing
I have in the past used Womble for simple cut, join type edits of video from DVDs but not for titles, transitions music ect.
I think I have an older version but it isnt in the league of the Full blown mainstream NLEs for features
Ulead movie Factory 6 ( and 6 plus) is mainly a DVD authoring title with some editing abilities.. It is worth exploring if its trial version does not also crash on you
Other than that, all the currently available software titles for editing can edit footage from DVD largely because its recorded format ( mpeg2) is the same as that from HDD camcorders which are much more commonplace now
HTH

[jamesg1979]

Thanks friend

It is kind of ambitious, but with each DVD only holding 30 mins and several times me hitting the record button and then casually putting the lense cap back on and putting in my bag accidentally I have taken up rather a lot of blank space!!

The software I used was called AVS which made the 30gb avi's! I guess this isn't the best

I'll take your advice though and make 4 seperate movies and then bring them together at the end - I'll do this through vegas as it is excellent for everything else.

I'm not a specialist, but if I make 4 seperate videos with a view to then bringing them all togeher what's the best format to render each one in to save on loss of quality?

[senu]

You can output them as mpeg2 and then use software like Ulead Movie factory to author the DVD each of the 4 will then be a different "chapter".
Certainly the mpegs need not be re rendered for DVD
Sony Vegas also has DVD Architect in its full or +DVD Platinum Movie Studio versions which can in fact be considered a standalone DVD authoring software in its own right.
I often create DVDs whose footage has been obtained from different sources or same source but edited at different times in more than one software title. the final DVD is then a "montage " of mpeg2 files..

[redsox_mark]

Originally Posted by jamesg1979

I've used a trial version of Sony Vegas but it just crashes whilst bringing in the vob files.

Vegas shouldn't have crashed... but the better way to do this with Vegas is use the function "open DVD camcorder disc" which was designed for this, rather than opening the .VOB files directly.

[jamesg1979]

Ahem, I didn't even know the "open DVD camcorder disc" function existed
This doesn't crash!
Have now made my 5 trimmed movies, ready to roll into one

Thanks for your help you two