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Help! My files are either in Spanish or in poor quality. How do I convert better?

J

jay

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Hi, I'm a newbie fan editor just trying to figure things out. I've been enjoying your site for years and am hoping the time to give back is near. I've made an ambitious fan edit of The Hobbit (using discs I own), but the quality is poor. That's because I used Prism to convert the files prior to loading them into Movie Studio Platinum and it shrunk the files. I'd like to recut my edit using better quality files, but I'm not sure how to do this. When I use Vob2Mpg to convert the ripped DVD files into one big mpg, the quality is terrific, but somehow it's also in Spanish. No matter how many different ways I try to do it, it always ends up in Spanish.


What do I do?


Thanks,
Jay
 
You must be selecting the wrong/second audio stream somewhere along the line. Of course it's possible that the English stream I'm guessing youare after is not the first/default audio track.
 
no hay esperanza. estamos todos condenados.
 
At first I didn't select any particular audio track, just let it do its default thing, which strangely was in Spanish (even though it plays in English as a default when I pop it in the DVD player -- weird). But when I converted it to an mpg the default was Spanish. So I've tried converting using every available audio track, and I get either French or Spanish, never English. Clearly I'm doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what.

Of course, I'm tempted to say to heck with it, because when I load the mpg into Movie Studio Platinum for some reason the audio and video is out of sync, so maybe mpg's just aren't the thing to use.

So how DO I convert the VOBs into a useable format without losing quality?
 
Thank you, blueyoda! I'm a fan of your work. I've read Boon's guide before, which is how I got started. I wasn't able to make his instructions work for me though. Take the first step -- he says DVD Fab is free, but it doesn't seem to be. They wanted to charge me quite a bit of money. But that's okay -- I have DVD Decrypter, and it works great for that purpose. I did take his advice and got what I thought was Sony Vegas but turned out to be Movie Studio Platinum (I thought they were the same thing, but now I think not). Anyway, so I have a decrypter and I've got the editing software. I used the trial version of Prism to convert the VOBs to mpeg4's, and that's what I used to make my rough edit of the Hobbit Trilogy, which turned out really well, except that the picture quality is so low. So how can I get those VOBs into high quality mpeg4's? (or is there another, better way?)

When I used pgcdemux, the picture quality was high, but A) the editing program didn't like the .m2v file it created and B) the sound was separated from the video.

Sorry if I sound like an idiot. I'm not a tech-savvy person, but I am a sci-fi/fantasy writer with a film degree--someone who loves movies and understands (or at least I like to think so) storytelling. So I'd love to make some fan edits.
 
DVDfab still looks free from their website.

Movie Studio Platinum is Sony Vegas, it's just an inexpensive (and fairly full-featured) version of Vegas Pro. It's highly recommended.

The guide suggests taking the m2v file and converting it to lossless lagarith avi before importing into Vegas. The sound can be edited separate from the video (I find it much more flexible to do it that way anyway).
 
can't help myself:

My files are either in Spanish or in poor quality.
Click to expand...

200_s.gif
 
jay said:
Thank you, blueyoda! I'm a fan of your work.
Click to expand...

Do you mean editing-wise? Because I also do mighty fine plumbing work.

iwnbeb.jpg


I only work with quality lossless lagarith pipes. CALL NOW!
 
Is there a way to preserve quality and keep the audio and video together?

And I'm not seeing a free version of DVDfab. I just tried downloading it again, and it's still the trial version, which is only good for a few days and leaves watermarks on the picture -- unless I'm doing it wrong, which is entirely possible.
 
Okay, there's been a new development, and its solves pretty much everything. In a different forum, I've learned that if I switch the suffix on my VOB files to mpg I can open them in Movie Studio Platinum and edit movies with high quality and attached sound (I'll saved the detached sound for when I get more experienced).

Is there a way to reduce rendering times with MSP without paying for a fancy graphics card?
 
Actually, no, that doesn't seem to work. When I switch the suffix to mpg, then open it in MSP the audio and video get out of sync. I'm back to square one. Aargh!
 
jay said:
Actually, no, that doesn't seem to work. When I switch the suffix to mpg, then open it in MSP the audio and video get out of sync. I'm back to square one. Aargh!
Click to expand...
Good thing you've gotten a lot of good advice already that should actually work if followed. ;-)
 
>>>Good thing you've gotten a lot of good advice already that should actually work if followed.

Go on . . . what should I be doing? I need something, anything, that keeps video and sound together in a high quality format that Movie Studio Platinum can read.
 
blueyoda said:
Here's one way to do it: http://www.fanedit.org/forums/showthread.php?2493-Boon-s-guide-to-fanediting-with-Sony-Vegas
Click to expand...
TV's Frink said:
The guide suggests taking the m2v file and converting it to lossless lagarith avi before importing into Vegas. The sound can be edited separate from the video (I find it much more flexible to do it that way anyway).
Click to expand...

Separating your video and audio is definitely the better option. Not sure why you're averse to the idea, but it's how the editors here tend to work. If you try it and follow the guide you should have some success. I'm no editing expert, but even I can see you've been skipping some steps.
 
The reason I'm averse to splitting the audio and the video is because I've tried it and I couldn't get the audio and video to sync back up. Since I'm very much a novice at all this, I'd rather do it in a way that's as dummy-proof as possible. Of course, if there's simply no way to keep the audio and video together, then so be it, but if it's simply a preference, then that seems to indicate that there might be another way . . . ?

Anyway, sorry if I'm sounding ungrateful or jerk-y, but I've been obsessed with this issue for the last few weeks and just. can't. get it right. It's kind of driving me batty.
 
Well, good luck. I hope you find a way that works to your preference.
 
Thank you. So does anyone know a way to keep audio and video together in a high quality format? I'm playing with Womble right now, which seems to do just that, except that it's not as easy to work with and doesn't seem able to do as much, editing-wise. But I've been hearing on a different forum that it can save the files in a lossless way, whereas Movie Studio Platinum can't help but lose quality upon saving.

Thoughts?
 
Not sure about Womble, but if you import lossless into Vegas Studio, you can export lossless out. This is the lagarith avi method I pointed you to in Boon's guide. In fact, I think the guide even talks about working with audio and video together like you are wanting to do.

On the other hand, if you've demuxed your audio and video separately like the guide shows you how to do, you can easily keep them in sync by lining them up together in your timeline.
 
Thank you, TV's Frink! I'm having trouble installing lagarith -- it keeps saying it installed but it doesn't show up and I can't find it. I'll keep working on it. Meanwhile I'm trying to work around the shortcomings of Womble.

I'll definitely try the other methods you mention. It may be time for me to separate audio and video, if that's what needs to be done.
 
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