Don't convert anything to DV. Ever. For any reason.

To solve your problem, put all the vobs back together into one big one. Do that with mac the ripper. Convert the big vob into the best format your editor can handle. By best I mean best quality.

I recommend final cut studio but if that's too expensive you can look for an alternative.

Keep in mind that video codecs are designed with a specific use in mind. A codec optimized for a particular use will likely be a poor choice for different use. There's acquisition codecs. Editing codecs. Delivery codecs.
MPEG and all long GOP are defintely optimized for delivery.

first of all thx for your detailed answer ...

i'm pretty much a rookie concerning video codecs.

i wanted to use imovie (because that seemed to me the best cheap alternative to the big progs, please someone correct me if i'm wrong), so i need an advice from you imovie users ... which file format would be the best (regarding video quality) to import?

greetz,
scorp

The highest quality supported by iMovie is AIC (apple intermediate codec).

I'll have to check when I get home. I do believe all mac os have aic support included in the os, no need to buy anything.

thx again ... that would be great ... i'll check that

hmm it seems like i don't have any software that can convert vob to aic ...

i got visualhub, handbrake, ffmpegx, mpegstreamclip & imovie

am i doin' something wrong or won't these progs do the trick for me?

please be patient with me, as i said ... i'm a video codec / format rookie

oh okay ... i just got the point ... i need to export to quicktime movie using the aic codec ... right?

silly-me ;-)

so here goes the next problem ... using mpegstreamclip to do this it says it needs the mpeg2-component from apple to read / open / use the vob i imported ...

my question: do still need to buy the apple mpeg-2 component if i upgrade to quicktime pro or is it included or not needed there? it is only 20 bucks i think, however that is serious diaper-money. ;-)

i'm not sure how to get around that. i have quicktime pro so everything just works. years ago i spent the $20.

nevermind ... i got it work ...

exporting the vobs out of mpegstreamclip to .mov with aic to edit them in imovie, would you recommend i deinterlace them before while exporting from streamclip or after imovie?

no, i recommend that you make the least amount of format changes period. unless you have a program that knows how to reverse telecine, and your video needs it.

okay, but de-interlacing seems to be a must, the vobs i got are strugglin' all over the place. so my question WHEN to do it or does that not matter at all. i wouldn't importing (and exporting) them again after editing is done but i gotta use some software (i thought streamclip would be my best choice) to get vob to aic, which is a codec for quicktime movie (.mov), right? at least i could not find any other format using this codec. or am i blinded by the light again?

thx again for being so patient. ;-)

i really appreciate you video veterans being so helpful and sharing your knowledge on this board.

the problem i see with de-interlacing is that too many people are blindly de-interlacing videos without regard for what really needs to be done, which is a reverse telecine in most cases. (reverse telecine removes the 3:2 pulldown and recreates the 24fps progressive source frames).

remember, nearly ALL of these videos are created with progressive source material. the reason that you are seeing them interlaced is NOT because interlace was added specifically, but because the videos have had 3:2 pulldown added to the videos to change the frame rate for NTSC broadcast.

when you deinterlace this video you are irretrievably ruining the frames in this video, to the point where the original progressive frames can never be re-created, by any process. while the video might seem like it looks smoother, you're probably not noticing all the artifacts you've added from unnecessary de-interlacing.

this is why I always tell people, unless you know what you are doing then you should not be de-interlacing your videos. if you don't understand what I wrote above, then you probably should not be trying to decide whether or not to de-interlace.

unless you have very good software to detect all this stuff and fix it for you, it's a manual process to decide what needs to be done. de-interlace or reverse telecine.

also, i don't see what the fascination is with de-interlacing to begin with. people are watching their videos on a computer display (which can NOT handle interlaced material) and complaining that the mice teeth on fast moving edges are driving them crazy so they want to de-interlace.

the problem is not that your video is interlaced, the problem is you're watching it on a display that does not handle interlaced materials. luckily, your club, bar or whatever venue has TELEVISIONS, which do handle interlaced content correctly and the videos display correctly, in their native format, without the mice teeth.

this is why my first question to people complaining about jaggies, is, "did you look at this on a TV or a display device that handles interlaced footage?"

if you don't think i know what I'm talking about, or you think i'm just wrong. feel free to ignore the entire post and de-interlace away!

maybe today i'll make a post and try to explain to people in simple terms what 3:2 pulldown is, and why it's not a good idea to try and de-interlace pulled down footage.

sweet swift. thanks in advance for this new tutorial. I was trying some of my own vid edits and i was reconverting mp4 back to dv. even if i kept the mp4 in mp4 format, after i exported my edit the quality was half as good as what it used to be. what should i convert my mp4 to so i can edit it. (yes, i know it's not good to convert an already converted mp4 to edit. but it's all i have sometimes).

PopRoxxx, a zero loss format is what you want for an intermediate format. Uncompressed is what you want. Uncompressed files are easy to work with. Yes they take up a lot of space but just use them as you need them and immediately delete them. If you need them back, re-export the VOB to Uncompressed again.

Most of that generational loss you are seeing is due to successive color subsampling round trips, not necessarily encoding artifacts and quality loss.

Ever notice that when you convert ANYTHING to DV, the colors in the DV file immediately look washed out, your blacks look grey and so on? That's color subsampling ruining your video for you. DV is a 4:2:0 format (by memory, sorry if that isn't right), Uncompressed is a 4:4:4 format. The first 4 represents the luma information in the signal and the next two numbers represent color. DV has 25% of the color information of uncompressed, it's also an 8 bits per color codec, compared to a 10 bits per color code like Uncompressed or ProRes HQ (which is a 4:2:2 10bit codec @ 220Mbs). 8 bits per color will can represent 256 gradations of color per channel while 10 bits can represent 1024 gradations.

Add all of this up and you can see why DV looks like crap. Add to that, I see a lot of people are using DV video without knowing what black level is, setting it wrong and further squashing the overall contrast and muddying up the video.

So anyway, sorry for the long post. Use an uncompressed format as your intermediate format. Don't use high loss, weakly subsampled formats through iterations, because your final video will look like crap.

What's a good uncompressed format? If you don't mind me asking. ;-)

On Mac, it's called Uncompressed 10 Bit 4:2:2. However, if you have FCP Studio installed you can export to ProRes-4:4:4:4 which is better not only for the lack of color subsampling but also takes up less space and supports an alpha channel (good for video that has an alpha channel).

thx for breaking down the part about de-interlacing ... i got your point, at least 85% of it. ;-)

what about converting the mp4 beforehand so I can edit it. some mp4's seem to not work if you load them up in FCP or iMovie in the mp4 format. so what would be good for this instance. (If i don't have the DVD/VOB for the video i want to edit)

The H.264 format has a bewildering array of options for encoding. Seriously, an unlimited amount of options that can be used when encoding the file. The format also has the concept of these profiles and some encoders allow you to select arbitrary options for encoding, regardless of profile specifics.

In other words, there is no such thing as an H.264 decoder that can say it supports all combinations of encoding options, even invalid ones. Some decoders will do the best to decode non-standard encodings, some are strict and fail right away. You see this posted frequently here with questions like "this file works fine in vegas but final cut won't load it, final cut sucks".

That's not exactly true though.

That was a long answer for what could have been summed up with: Open the mp4 in mpegstreamclip and export it to uncompressed and edit that.

hey a-swift,

thx again for the time you invest in this forum to spread your knowledge ... i really appreciate that.

for my particular situation / problem, i decided to re-do the mixing of my dvd. i will lose a couple of hours of work by doing this but the results were not good looking, even with the aic codec and all your other thoughts.

so i won't use the harddisk-/dvd-recorder for this one, because it can only save to dvd. (which is not ideal at all if you want to do some post-production edits, as i realized by now).

i bought screenflow and will record the mix now directly to my mbp. by going that way, i can save to .mov (uncompressed, without any loss) and afterwards decide which format to save to.

nevertheless thx again for your inside thoughts.

Thanks very much Swift! Your knowledge is an amazing tool for us that are new to the video "editing" side of things. Thanks a bunch for all of your input & help.

AIC is a very good codec. Better than most codecs available but it's just not good enough. I just got back from Kansas City for a gig a went to with Kris P. last night and I was exporting some still frames from my video camera. The default codec that was being used was AIC.

I actually had to redo the frame grabs because I could notice the difference between the original and AIC. Don't get me wrong, AIC is good, but if I can tell the AIC version from the original, it's not good enough.

ProRes, you can not tell the difference.