Mpeg editing and DVD's

[mjwarman]

Hi everyone.

I recently got our wedding video back from the person who filmed it, but where he used two video cameras throughout the day, the resulting DVD is in a very confused order! The evening do is before the speeches and the speeches are in the wrong order etc..

I am trying to rectify this, but am having incredible trouble. So far I have managed to rip the contents into four seperate mpeg files, which are now sat on my computer, ranging from 1.3 to 3.5gb. What I really want to do it to be able to edit the mpegs and then burn them onto a DVD so that it plays in the correct order.

Unfortunately, I have no software (or knowledge) to be able to do this and also the 4 mpegs total about 8.5gb so would not fit onto a single DVD. (which I can't understand, because they all came off of a normal DVD, so why are they so much bigger now?)

Does anyone have any experience with this sort of operation and is able to give any advice? I have spent about 2 days altogether using Sonic DVD editor, to no avail.

Please help me, I have numerous relatives banging down my door for a copy of the finished disk!!!

Thanks in advance

[johnmartin]

Well first of all. Your wedding but possibly his copyright. You may want to check that out.

The software you are looking for is readily available from companies such as Pinnacle, Nero and Adobe.

Nero is good and relatively cheap. Adobe Premiere is the best but very expensive, though you may be able to download a 30 day trial version just to let you get this job done.

8.5Gb should easily fit on a dual layer DVD which come in at about 9Gbs but you would need a dual layer capable burner and associated media.

[mjwarman]

Well first of all. Your wedding but possibly his copyright. You may want to check that out..

It was my wifes uncle who did the recording, so there are no copyright issues!!!

Thank you for the advice, i'll have a look into adobe premier!!! I hate nero with a passion!

What could be the reason that after ripping the footage from a normal DVD, it now wouldn't fit back onto a normal DVD, this is one of the things that is confusing me the most!

[johnmartin]

What could be the reason that after ripping the footage from a normal DVD, it now wouldn't fit back onto a normal DVD, this is one of the things that is confusing me the most!It sounds like you have ripped the mpeg stream direct from DVD with no further encoding. As I said above, most commercial DVD's are 9Gb dual layer. On the other hand most shop bought DVD writable media is 4.5Gb single layer. You can buy dual layer stuff but you will also need a burner that can burn dual layer too. Alternatively when burning a DVD you can increase the compression ratio to make it fit single layer but this can lead to a loss in quality of the video image.

[MarkGillatt]

When I ripped some video to post on You Tube, I used a program called VLC media player to compress the files and change to .avi format, then you can use the Windows Movie Maker which should already be installed on your PC, you can split and arrange the movie any way you wish after that, and best of all, it is all free.