How to compress Handycam DVD ?

Lilystock

Hi,

Maybe I should ask a Sony salesman, but they do seem to be clueless everytime I do, so maybe there is someone more competant in here.

I'll try to explain the best way I can and understand it from my man explanation.

We have bought a Handycam when my baby was due - nothing unusual yet. This handycam does film directly in a DVD format. We thought that it would be easier for us at first. But now, it seems that it is quite difficult to cut some part of the video.

So it seems now, that if we want to divide the video into sequences to cut some out, we need to compress it first !

Is there someone who knows how am I suppose to do that ? Is there any software that does it ? Free would be best of course Wink

Thanks !

ck88

I don't know, if this is going to help. But it might contain some useful information.
We own the Sony DVD 403 (5.1 surr. sound). To quickly produce movies I use the software that came with it. But cutting is problematic. I think it is easier to do in the camera.
However, for any kind of advanced DVD movie creation I use click to DVD that came with my Sony laptop. It loads the movies, displays chapters and lets you cut how and wherever you want.

Why only these two programs (and the other more costly Sony video editing software)
Sony DVD Cams produce non standard mpeg/DVD files. In our case the sound is a very big problem. Only if we record in SP mode I can work with the files without any recoding.
If you want to spend some time on the whole video converting the file into AVI will do the trick. But that is not an easy task to do. If you own one of the 5.1 Cameras you even have to split the sound from the video and then do the cutting. There is lots of freeware to do this however. Check out this great Video Help site

nikolic

Ironically, I am a Sony trainer... Incompetent, huh? Wink

The files are encrypted with the same encryption as any dvd that you would purchase in a store. This is to provide to dvd players what they expect to play. That said, the files themselves can be copied in the same fashion as any dvd by ripping and reencoding.

If you need to compress the files further for web use, for instance, then go ahead. Otherwise, note that the Mbps rate is already lower than that of MiniDV. For instance, a MiniDV tape is sending 25 Mbps (Megebytes Per Second), while the highest rate of a DVD that you would purchase in a store, or record in the camcorder, is 9. Average users record at the medium quality, which is 6.

The reason that this is important is that you will see a very notable drop in quality when compressing from what is already a lower bitrate than on other media.

If you plan on sending out to web, incidentally, record the footage in the lowest setting (3 Mbps) which will allow a full hour of recording, and save you time in reencoding for the encoding is closer to the target rate.

Here is a ripping-utility that you may find useful. It is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS):

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gordianknot

Hope that it helps.

Lilystock

Hi !

I didn't mean to offend, so I hope you don't mind.

It's just that we already have asked several salesmen and none had the answer Confused

Thanks for your reply. I have shown it to my man and now he is taking it up from here Wink

Cheers,