another newbie who needs help ^^

little_haibane · Post by **little_haibane** » Mon Aug 29, 2005 9:13 pm

I'm a newbie trying to make an AMV, and I'm running into trouble. Any help would be much appreciated.

I am following the DVD footage how-to guide on this site and using DVD Decrypter (set on "auto" for file splitting) to rip footage from my DVDs. The trouble is, even though the tutorial says that I should be able to get only one large VOB file to work with, I am getting four VOB files per DVD - one per episode. Even if I were to figure out how to get one VOB file for the whole DVD (I've tried and can't seem to) I would still end up with three VOB files - one per DVD.

My questions: how do I get the footage that I want into one large file, and/or how do I put together footage from separate files? I've read through the whole guide and haven't seen anything on how to link footage from separate files into one video.

I'm working with Lunar Legend: Tsukihime DVDs, in case that offers any clues.

Thanks much to anyone who can help!

aoi_neko · Post by **aoi_neko** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 8:32 am

Umm, I guess, I'd first wonder "why on EARTH do you want to try and put the whole series into one file? " That file would end up being, I dunno, maybe 12 gig and that would be a real pain to work with.

Considering that eventually, what you're going to want to work with are a bunch of clips that are only a few seconds in length, what I'd suggest is to rip each episode into a separate VOB, dgindex the VOB, and then use virtual dub mod to grab each clip you might want to use and save it off to a work directory as an .avi using some lossless (Huffy or Lagrith) codec. Then work with these smaller clips. If you're unsure as to what clips you might want later, no harm in keeping the VOBs around so you can go back and extract more if you want; presuming you have the 13GB to spare.

But, not to dodge the question -- I really think DVD decrypter should be able to get one .vob per disk, but that doesn't solve your problem, since, as you point out, you'd just end up with one VOB per disk. You could dginex all the separate VOBS into one project, but that doesn't really join them. Maybe you could append them intoi one using virtual dub mod, but I've never tried it.

If you're really determined to make one huge VOB try a program called VobEdit, a freeware download from http://www.ifoedit.com/.

little_haibane · Post by **little_haibane** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 9:00 am

Thanks for your advice. The only reason I wanted to get one VOB file is that, from reading the guide, it looks as if I'll have to do a lot of programming, compression, etc. for each separate file, so I wanted as few files as possible. But if that file is going to be a huge pain, I guess I'm just stuck between one huge pain and another.

Just so I understand exactly what you're saying - how do I dgindex? I can't remember the term from my reading. I'm somewhat computer-illiterate at this point, in case that's not blindingly obvious ^^

aoi_neko · Post by **aoi_neko** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 9:47 am

People who know what they're doing doubtless have some better name for the step I'm calling "dgindexing."

I just mean the step where you index your VOB files with DGIndex. See the guide page at http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... getb2.html

You don't HAVE to do this -- you could just start clipping directly from the VOBs -- but it makes access via vdub mod faster, more accurate as to the exact frames, and creates the skeleton AVS file for you.