VHS to DVD to iMovie?

[sailorman]

I'm a new Mac user and I have a collection of DVD's with files (vob) that were burned from my old VHS tapes. Will Toast convert these files so that I can use iMovie to edit them?

[uruiamme]

I like iMovie '08. I haven't heard about quality issues.

 

Looking at your long list of options I vote for your getting iLife '08 and use the new iMovie. Instead of chapters you can save multiple small movies and add them to Toast (there can be up to 99 titles on a DVD). Set Toast to continuously play from one title to the next so you won't see any break and set Toast's chapter breaks to none. aYou'll be able to access each title using the chapter skip or menu button on your DVD player's remote control.

Yeah, so iLife 08 sounds good. And yes, I almost got it instead of all of the other options. But my main beef was that it kept looking like I needed

iLife 08 AND MPEG-2 component AND QuickTime Pro AND the list might go on.

 

If it's just iLife, that seems fine if it works for what I need. I have Toast for those things I need to do besides the basic iDVD. I intend on using iDVD 06 or 08 (most people like both) and I wasn't going to Toast things unless there is a compelling reason to do that.

 

One thing I did discover is that Toast will take my VIDEO_TS folder and do a LOT of different things with it, so I like having it, especially for things besides making DVDs. One thing I saw was that it will de-interlace the video and make it progressive if I want. There was no difference in file size exporting to DV => it was 5.66GB either way for my 28 minute movie. I just really hated losing out on my chapter markings with the output from Toast.

 

The folks that talk down iMovie 08 act like it is a real deal breaker for them, and that they just use iMovie HD for their stuff. I'm sure you have seen all of that talk and understand it more than I do. And did I say thanks?!

 

As for the means to do this, I think maybe I would make "clips" in iMovie and export them for use in iDVD. I think iDVD expects that each "clip" be an entire "chapter" on the eventual DVD, the way I understand it.

[uruiamme]

Your decision to get a DVD camcorder instead of a DV camcorder presented certain limitations. If you want to use iMovie you need to convert the MPEG 2 video recorded by your camcorder to a format that iMovie can use. However, you don't need iMovie if all you want is to trim off bits of your videos. You can do that trimming with MPEG Streamclip (after you buy the Apple QuickTime MPEG 2 Component for $20). Or you can trim with Cinematize (which costs much more than $20). Or you can trim with some software sold at pixela-1.com that is specific for working with DVD camcorders (again, costing more than $20).

 

Even if you really want to use iMovie it's a good idea to first trim off parts of the videos you know you don't want. It saves you time and hard drive space.

 

Sounds reasonable. Yeah, for now I have around 8 hours of video to deal with that is on DVD. I guess the Streamclip + MPEG-2 component still sound good, but was trying to see if Toast could do some of this. Without doing it, I'm not sure how much easier or better it would be than Toast, like does it keep the chapters when it converts? I do seem to remember that Streamclip is the one that can fix time code, but I don't know if iMovie HD or iDVD needs to have its timecode fixed before burning an eventual DVD.

 

What is your opinion of QuickTime Pro? It is also in this price range. And would it help in this process? As for iLife 08, I have read plenty about it and it sounds like iLife '06 is just that much better for certain things. It almost seems like Apple supporting the Canon DC20 with iMovie allows me to bypass some stuff.

 

What I am really debating, and wish it to be known for others in this forum:

What is best to use to edit home DVDs and make them into better DVDs:

1. Buy Toast, MPEG-2 component, and QuickTime Pro, and use Streamclip, iMovie HD and iDVD 06
2. Buy iLife 08 plus ?? more of the same? Because it accepts some DVDs from my camera?
3. Buy Final Cut Express
4. Buy Cinematize (never heard of it till now)

I was sort of heading down road #1. But only got Toast so far.

I see those as reasonable alternatives. Buying it all is ridiculous.

 

And most importantly, THANKS for your help

Here is a mostly unhelpful article on the same thing, supposedly. (The hijacker talked more about HDV than MPEG-2 from a DVD)

Apple forum question on Canon DC20

[uruiamme]

This movie seems to indicate that iMovie 08 might be a single-step import for my Camcorder: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/movies/#oneplace-camcorder That looks pretty slick compared to all of the Streamclipping and importing and exporting a half dozen times. I wish there was an Apple Store near me to try that. But of course with all of the issues with iMovie 08, I wonder if I can still use that imported stuff with iDVD and it is good quality. (Many people say the quality of iMovie 08 is low.)

 

But being on the supported list for iMovie makes me happy if only iMovie had better reviews by the people using it! Canon DC20 on Apple's support list for iMovie 08 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1014

[tsantee]

Yes. Insert your DVD. Open Toast and choose DVD video as the format in the Video window. In the Media Browser (it's the separate window on the right) choose DVD with the top button. In a couple seconds your DVD will appear in the browser window. You can use the second button (below the one that says DVD) to access the titles or chapter level of the videos. Select either the titles or chapters you want and drag them to the Video window or click the + key.

 

Toast then extracts the MPEG files from the DVD. When that is done select the title(s) you want to export to an iMovie-readable format. The Export button becomes active and you can choose which format you want. iMovie will accept the DV and MPEG 4 formats. I prefer DV but it takes up a lot of hard drive space (about 1 GB for each 5 minutes of video). The problem is that when iMovie imports the video it makes another copy of it so that really begins eating up hard drive space.

 

Popcorn 3 does this without the step of having to first extract the MPEGs from the DVDs, but it doesn't offer DV export so you have to go with MPEG 4. By the way, I'm experiencing problems with iMovie 7 (part of iLife '08) importing MPEG 4 video that has been exported from Popcorn or Toast.

 

If you want to export selected clips from the DVD for import to iMovie I suggest using Cinematize 2 or MPEG Streamclip instead of Toast or Popcorn.

 

The easiest way to import to iMovie is with a DV camcorder. Most of these let you connect the camcorder to a standalone DVD player via S-Video and RCA audio. The camcorder then can convert the video to DV as it passes through the video directly into iMovie. There also are analog-to-digital converters such as the Canopus ADVC-55 but they can cost as much or more than a camcorder.

 

 

[tsantee]

I forgot to mention that you don't need QuickTime Pro at all. As for the QuickTime MPEG2 Playback Component you only need it if you want to work with the MPEG files themselves in MPEG Streamclip rather than having to convert to a different format. When you import to iMovie 08 the video is converted and doesn't remain MPEG 2. iDVD encodes it back to MPEG 2 (as does Toast) when it creates a video DVD from iMovie files.

 

As for chapters, I think you'll find that those chapter markers will be in time intervals with iDVD when using video exported from iMovie 08. You can check this Apple's discussion iMovie and iDVD discussion groups. As I noted, the workaround for chapters is to make them separate titles and to turn on the option to continuously play titles without returning to the menu.

 

There is very little difference between the iDVD that is part of iLife 06 and the one with iLife 08. I think the biggest improvement was with DVD slide shows, but I'm not sure of that.

 

[tsantee]

This movie seems to indicate that iMovie 08 might be a single-step import for my Camcorder: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/movies/#oneplace-camcorder That looks pretty slick compared to all of the Streamclipping and importing and exporting a half dozen times. I wish there was an Apple Store near me to try that. But of course with all of the issues with iMovie 08, I wonder if I can still use that imported stuff with iDVD and it is good quality. (Many people say the quality of iMovie 08 is low.)

 

But being on the supported list for iMovie makes me happy if only iMovie had better reviews by the people using it! Canon DC20 on Apple's support list for iMovie 08 <a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1014" target="_blank">http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1014</a>

I like iMovie '08. I haven't heard about quality issues. What people complained about when it was introduced is that it was called iMovie. They wanted it to be an expansion of the prior version rather than a completely new approach that lacks many of the prior versions capabilities while featuring some incredible new capabilities. It's much easier and faster to use plus it allows the importing from your DVD camcorder. I've used it with my DV camcorder movies and loved it.

 

To use a video created in the new iMovie with Toast you need to go to an extra step of choosing Share>Media Browser. This writes the video in a format readable by Toast, iDVD and other applications. Toast could read the older iMovie's project file and respects its chapter markers, but that's not the case with the new iMovie. I don't see any option to create chapter markers in the new iMovie so that means you'll end up with chapters in time increments (you set this in Toast).

 

Looking at your long list of options I vote for your getting iLife '08 and use the new iMovie. Instead of chapters you can save multiple small movies and add them to Toast (there can be up to 99 titles on a DVD). Set Toast to continuously play from one title to the next so you won't see any break and set Toast's chapter breaks to none. aYou'll be able to access each title using the chapter skip or menu button on your DVD player's remote control.

[uruiamme]

I am going to partially hijack this thread because I came here for the same reason. I just bought to Toast 8 Ti to do this, so here I go: I see that exporting to DV format is about 5GB for a 30 minute video when using the standard options. I guess this is the best way? I was looking through the many other options for getting movies into iMovie 06, and I just deleted three files in the 5 to 6GB range and flushed my trash. This is on a laptop with just 160GB space and Windows is installed, so I was hoping to convert a 1 GB VIDEO_TS folder into an importable file that was a lot closer to 1GB... But I guess the original DVD's MPEG-2 compression must be pretty efficient compared to raw DV.

 

And going through the MPEG-4 compression is insane, so I tried the AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) in a QuickTime .MOV, and it was 6GB!! Talk about bloating.... it's either 1:6 (AIC), 1:5 (DV), or when I choose a typical QuickTiime movie, I have seen it make a file that is 1:0.2 that looks terrible.

 

So that's it, huh? Well, barring that, I will plug in my 500GB scratch disk I guess and just do what I have to do. This is insane!

1. Insert my mini-DVD into my Canon DC20 camcorder that records direct to DVD

2. Run Windows XP.

3. Plug in DC20.

4. Run ancient version of Roxio MyDVD that was sent with camera (no Mac software)

5. Import DVD (takes around 5 minutes)

5a (Optional: find the chapter breaks... create TOC/Menu/nice transitions... takes 20 minutes)

6. Export to a VIDEO_TS folder (takes 20 minutes) [1GB]

7. Run Mac OS/X.

8. Buy Toast Titanium 8.

9. Download and Upgrade to 8.03

10. Run Toast and import the VIDEO_TS folder (takes 3 minutes)

11. Export video to a file... DV [5 GB] (takes 20 minutes)

12. Import this .DV file into iMovie [5 GB] (takes 5 minutes)

13. Begin editing, but by now the markers are gone.

14. Bring clips into iDVD [5GB???] (takes another 20 minutes????)

I haven't done all of this yet, so I am guessing past #12.

 

I think this is the fastest I can do it, but I will try and see if Toast can read my raw mini-DVD in my tray-loading external DVD burner.

All times are nowhere near accurate, I don't sit and count the seconds.

But I have tried to avoid MGEG-4 compression, hopefully for obvious reasons.

...select the title(s) you want to export to an iMovie-readable format. The Export button becomes active and you can choose which format you want. iMovie will accept the DV and MPEG 4 formats. I prefer DV but it takes up a lot of hard drive space (about 1 GB for each 5 minutes of video). The problem is that when iMovie imports the video it makes another copy of it so that really begins eating up hard drive space.

Can you explain this? Why "selected clips"? I am importing everything from my home movies and editing later.

If you want to export selected clips from the DVD for import to iMovie I suggest using Cinematize 2 or MPEG Streamclip instead of Toast or Popcorn.

I have the free Streamclip, but should I get the Apple decoder for $20 or whatever it is? I keep debating all of this software... here is what I fought with:

• Buy iLife 08 (Have 06, and iLife 08 supports my camera, I think)
• Buy Roxio's latest Windows software (blah. They send me to upgrade offers when I click stuff in myDVD for Canon)
• Buy Toast Titanium, Popcorn, etc (Bought Titanium 8)
• Buy the MPEG-2 decoder from Apple (seems like a waste)
• Buy QuickTime Pro (I know little abut it or what it would do)
• Try tons of freeware junk (I already did and most of it is, uh, junk)
• Buy expensive things like Final Cut Express (smart, but not convinced)

I was able to use Handbrake a little, but it didn't solve anything, really. All it did was make a bunch of dumb test MP4 or M4V files that take forever to either encode or decode on its way to imovie or idvd.

 

So this whole "DVD from a DVD" fiasco is ridiculous. I used to help a guy do some video editing back when S-VHS was used for mastering a lot, and this seems way harder than the good old days. Those guys who own the patents for MPEG-2 or whatever it is... that's just crazy.

[tsantee]

Your decision to get a DVD camcorder instead of a DV camcorder presented certain limitations. If you want to use iMovie you need to convert the MPEG 2 video recorded by your camcorder to a format that iMovie can use. However, you don't need iMovie if all you want is to trim off bits of your videos. You can do that trimming with MPEG Streamclip (after you buy the Apple QuickTime MPEG 2 Component for $20). Or you can trim with Cinematize (which costs much more than $20). Or you can trim with some software sold at pixela-1.com that is specific for working with DVD camcorders (again, costing more than $20).

 

Even if you really want to use iMovie it's a good idea to first trim off parts of the videos you know you don't want. It saves you time and hard drive space.

 

My comment about selecting clips is simply that you must click on the videos you've extracted into the Toast Video window in order for them to be highlighted (or selected). At that point the Export button becomes active.

 

If you want to use iMovie and plan to do this very often then I recommend selling your camcorder and getting a mini DV camcorder. You won't need anything more to buy and the time and headaches will be much reduced.