Recently in Home Movies Category

Well in backing up a DVD, I tried DVD Decrypter but it failed with some structure errors and it is old having been updated March 2005, the other two rippers to try are DVD43 which runs in the background and Smart Ripper which is now hard to find.

I've had this problem just about forever, many times I will get a can't playback anything message and I have always thought it was something to do with the video codecs. I logged onto the Sony Vegas editing forums and found this issue from way back in 2003. It says that the problem isn't with playback, but with the sound driver settings. In looking through the properties, it wouldn't let me set any sound resolution or bit rate in the File/Properties menu, trolling through the Options/Preferences/Audio Device, I randomly changed a setting for "Audio Device Tape" from Microsoft Sound Mapper to Nvidia ASIO Driver and everything works.

Seems like there are bugs and issues with the nVidia sound on the motherboard of my DFI LanParty, so hope this might help someone else!

Part 1: When I click play on the transport toolbar i get an error...

An error has occurred while starting playback.
An invalid device was specified.

The details read:
The playback device does not support the current output format

Part 2:
When I save a project's properties, I get this message:

Warning: one or more audio playback devices does not support the current sample rate ard/or bit-depth.
An invalid device was specified.

The details read:

does not support 44,100 Hz at 16 bits.
Preview Port () does not support 44,100 Hz at 16 bits.</blockquote

Videohelp. The world of conversion is very confusing and there are many, many video and audio formats and many tools for converting them. Information is all over the web, but Videohelp really is the best for figuring out what to convert to what, so for instance, our Sony hard disk camcorder produces MPG files, so how do we get the various shows and songs we record into an MP3 format for our iPods, just as for MPG to MP3 and you'll know :-)

In this case, though there isn't a specific guide for doing an MPG soundtrack to MP3, so in my case, I'll describe how I do it. It works with either Sony Vegas Movie Studio (or the older Nova Video Explosion or SonicFoundry Vegas):

1. Suck the files into Vega Movie Studio from the Sony DCR-SR100. This is pretty easy since its a hard disk camcorder. It actually records directly into MPG format with a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Vegas actually only handles two track, but then that's all I need for my iPod. I need more research to figure out which tool can actually edit Dolby 5.1 soundtracks
2. Find the files you want, drag it to the video track area, then choose Tools/Render in New Track and in the dialog box choose Save Type As MP3 Audio or if you want to use LAME or some other high end encoder, choose Wave (Microsoft) and in the Template section choose, "44,100 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo, PCM"

Videohelp has an amazing tool that lets you put any type of format conversion to any other type and then shows you the guide that it has and the tool to use. For instance, to convert a VOB to MPG, see the search got me to this guide which tells you how to do it with a bunch of different tool with VOB2MPG listed as the easiest.

Well, I use TMPGEnc Creator to encode my MPEG2 streams. DVD-Labs really likes to have the audio and video streams split into M2V for the video and M2A for the audio (sometimes called MP2 if it is encoded in MPEG2 audio). But, iPod Videola really likes either the complex MPEG2 or VOB files, so I need to recombine them. I haven't found a utility that does this yet. TMPGEnc Plus does this, but not the cut down Creator, so instead I hack it by using DVD-Lab to create a DVD, this makes a VOB which I can use with Videola.

Videohelp has a list of authoring tools that support elemental streams and that can combine them. I tried DVDAUthorGUI but have to admit I was stymied by its user interface. IFOEdit also looks interesting as does its sister VOBEdit

Confused yet. I am, so hopefully this post will help me a month from now when I forget it :_)

Confused yet. I am, so hopefully this post will help me a month from now when I forget it :_)

OK, I need to get a bunch of my home movies from their DVD .VOB format back into a long .MPG file so that I can make H.264 files for iPod Video. As usual, there are a zillion formats and it is hard to figure out the easiest way to do it. Here is the hairbrained way that I found:

• Engadget has a tutorial on this. First you use DVDx whcih lets you convert a DVD's .VOB files. This does require you to understand various settings

An easy way that results in no loss when you go from DVD to MPEG2 is to:

• VOB Merge . It turns out that DVDs had for a long time a 1GB file limit, so .VOBs are limited to that. You use VOBMerge to do the equivalent of a binary concatenate. You literally copy all the VOB files together. In DOS, it would be like _copy /b file1.vob+file2.vob file"
• Videora. If you just have the raw .VOB that has the MPEG2 stream, then here's an easy way, this freeware utility takes a .MPEG2 file and converts into the very efficient .H264 format that iPod Video uses.

Well, I haven't been super serious about this, but Plastic Bugs has a good guide for Mac users. I use Videora to do the conversion. The worst part is figuring out how to transcode. The short story is that if you have home videos, the H.264 format is the best. It is very efficient. Just encode at less than 768 Kbps for the video and 160 Kbps for the audio. I normally do 640 Kbps video and 96 Kbps for the audio because the digital cameras we use for most of this stuff is 640×480 interlaced with audio at 88 Kbps.

There are lots of reviews on the web on DVD writers, but very little on the media itself. The right kind of media can make a big difference. I've used the Verbatim Data Life Plus line for CDs for a long time with great results, but with the plethora of DVDs out, what's the right choice. Here are some places to look:

• Dvd Media Reviews. They have a pretty large set of reviews and do a bunch of burning with different drives that covers most of the major labels.
• DVD-Recordable. These folks have a great set of media test for the "off brand stuff". In particular Ritek makes really cheap media as does Titanium, so you can se their tests.
• CDR-Zone Media Forum. Some of the best data are on these forums as various hobbiest try different media.
• DVDInfoPro. This is a utility program that lets you do your own testing. What you find quite a bit is that if you record at 16x, then quality is tough, so slowing down to 12x is sometimes smart and is only a little bit slower.

So here are some things that I learned mainly from the CDR-Zone Guide to high quality DVD media:

Premium Media

This is the best quality and it costs more but you get great DVD burns:

• Taiyo Yuden. They also OEM to Plextor and Miflop Extreme
• Verbatim . It depends who manufactured this for Verbatim. For 8x media look for made in Japan. DataLifePlus is another indicator of quality
• Sony. The most surprising recommendation, I personally haven't seen such great reviews.
• Ricoh. But only for DVD+R media
• Panasonic. Look for Made In Japan on the packaging

Much of this is hard to find, but Super Media Store has a huge selection of DVD media (and CD media for that matter) at good prices and they have a special Taiyo Yuden section with good prices. Or see the Taiyo prices at Pricegrabber.

Recommended Media

This is good stuff, but you have to make sure that your particular drive with your particular firmware does well with it. So caveat emptor here, you need to read the reviews carefully and see if they tested your drive. Or test it yourself. This stuff has the best price/performance:

• Traxdata. always uses Ritek A grade dyes - it's as good as Ritek media gets
• Ridata
• Ridisc Xtreme
• HP
• Ricoh. DVD-R versions only
• Infiniti
• Philips
• TDK
• BeAll
• BenQ
• Fujifilm
• Imation
• Samsung
• Optodisc
• Thats Write
• 3A Media
• 4M Media
• Piodata
• ToPrint
• Emtec
• Daxon
• Mitsui
• Maxell
• MAM-E
• MAM-A

They have lists for Budget and "landfill". To me, don't be penny-wise and pound foolish, stick with the best quality you can afford.

Individual media reviews

• Verbatim 8x DVD+R DL. This is both big and fast media made by Mitsubishi Kageku Media. (Along with Taiyo Yuden, one of the best). It had great quality and was particularly good with the Benq 1640.

• Philips DVD+R 16x. This burns particularly well on the Benq 1640 since Philips actually OEMs these drives. The media is made by Infomatics, which is a decent vendor.

If you buy a DVD camcorder, then you are going to need lots of:

• Verbatim Mini DVD-R 1.4GB 4X DigitalMov (Verbatim-95089) - PriceGrabber.com. This is a 5 pack and Verbatim has been reliable for me in the past. They are about $13, so about $3.50 each from buy.com
• Sony 3 Pack DVD-RW. These are the read writeable versions. So you can record and when you are done, you can delete and start all over. They are just slightly more expensive at $15 for a 3 pack or $5 each.
• Memorex 10 pack DVD-R. If you are feeling lucky, these are just $22 or about $2.20 each. No idea if they will work reliably though and it ain't a great time to find out right after the big piano recital you taped.

For my money, I'd say the DVD-RWs are the deal because if you use them even once again, you are saving money.

Mini DVD (DVD-R) Mini DVD (DVD-RW) Camcorder Video Media - PriceGrabber.com. If we are going to get a mini DVD Camcorder, you need special 8cm media to put in there. Here is Pricegrabbers list.

The choices are essentially

• DVD-R which is write once and stores 20 minutes worth of video. They are about $5 per disk from Sony
• Sony DVD-RW which lets you read and write and is great if you are going to copy off to a PC and edit. These are $11 a pop,
• JVC DVD-RW dual sided. You can actually flip these over to double recording times. They are really expensive at $15 a 1crack.

Seems like the best choice is actually the DVD-R for most common use. That way, you just produce a DVD. If you want to edit it, read it into a computer and go. This media is much more expensive than tape, but it just pops into a DVD player which is nice.