ripping Raks dvds

[Khaleela]

Hi Everyone,

I noticed that a lot of people have their Rakkasah performances on their websites and youtube. What program/s did you use to rip it? I use Sony Vegas as my video editor.

The only program I could get to open the dvd was Easy DVD Ripper. The audio is perfect all the way through. The video is great in the beginning and end but somehow goes into Matrix style slow mo in the middle.

Any suggestions?

[bintbeled]

I'll ask my hubby. I know he converted the original DVD to a Windows media file before uploading, and the quality is crystal-clear, with no glitches. I can't believe this clip has over 1200 views!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9QOLjkQAd0

[Khaleela]

Oh please do. I've been dying to get a Raks performance up.

BTW very juicy routine. I loved it!

[*Shira*]

I use DVDx for my ripping. The user interface is a pain to figure out, but it gets the job done.

[Khaleela]

Holy cow was DVDx confusing. I did manage to rip it but not into a format that my movie editor could read. All this technology is going to give me an aneurysm.

Latifa, did you find out what your hubby used to rip your video?

[steffib]

I have used HandBrake on the recommendation of somebody on a belly dance board. Very easy to use and free.

[*Shira*]

Holy cow was DVDx confusing. I did manage to rip it but not into a format that my movie editor could read. All this technology is going to give me an aneurysm.

Yes, I have to agree that DVDx is pretty confusing. If a few months go by without my using it, I have to re-learn the stupid thing all over again. But it does get the job done for me.

On the "output" menu, there is a place for specifying what kind of file to create. Have you tried the choice for AVI?

[bintbeled]

I'll ask him again what program he used. He told me yesterday but apparently my brain archived the info; it's unavailable! ..l;,

[Khaleela]

I'll ask him again what program he used. He told me yesterday but apparently my brain archived the info; it's unavailable! ..l;,

I feel you Latifa..l;,

Shira, when you changed the output to AVI, what did you choose for encoding it? I think my video software may be a bit behind in codecs because it would only open the sound file for the avi in MPEG4 but not the video.

[bintbeled]

Here's the scoop from my better half:

"The method I use should work for most instances.

The programs I use are two interrelated Sony products - Vegas ($525.00) and Sound Forge9 ($300.00).
These are pretty expensive, but Sony Studio products and other editors such as Pinnacle and the Windows movie maker that comes with XP and Vista will also work. For Mac users, their supplied programs or Final Cut (full or lite editions) should do it for you.

step 1. bring the video into your movie-editing program (Vegas) either as a capture or direct import. (Vegas and Sony's Vegas Movie Studio($89.99) will accept almost everything.)

step 2. edit the video to your liking. If the sound is lame, I then export it to Sound Forge 9 and punch it up. The sound is imported back to Vegas and matched (automatically, in this case) to the movie track.
Sound Forge Audio Studio ($69.95) works the same way with the less expensive Movie Studio product.

step 3. Render the video and save it to one of the You Tube accepted formats. ["YouTube accepts video files from most digital cameras, camcorders, and cell phones in the .WMV, .AVI, .MOV, and .MPG file formats." (from the youtube faq page).]

I use the .wmv format which is also accepted by MyFamily [Latifa says: this is the website that hosts my special student page] and players such as Real. This results in a high quality video that shows your dances off rather than has people wondering about fuzzy/distorted images.

There is some anguish involved in doing this the first time but once you are comfortable it is fairly easy.

If you want to go a bit farther, you can add special effects and even export the sound track to a music editing/composition program such as Acid.

These price for these programs will vary and I'd suggest checking PCWorld.com or CNET for the current best prices.

One other note: I have used Pinnacle Studio versions 8-10, but when I switched to a dual core Pentium D machine, Pinnacle went haywire and their techs were zero help - seemed to not understand much beyond "please check to see if your computer is plugged in, sir". I spent a good deal of time and money trying to get Version 10 to work on either a PentiumD or AMD Athlon64 machine - most often, it crashed as it was coming up. My older Pinnacle 9 wouldnt work on the Dmachine and needed lots of patching and TLC to work at all on the AMD (still crashed more often then not). I have used my Sony products on either machine (both Vegas and Vegas studio) with no problems.

send me an email if you have questions or suggestions: dwilkinson93 (at)comcast.net

Mr. Latifa aka KayakCommando Dave"

OK, back to the much-less-technical Latifa. If all of the above is gobbledy-gook, and you would rather just have Mr. Latifa manipulate the video and either return it to you or upload it to youtube, just drop him a line. He provides tech support to dancers and his rates are very reasonable.

[Khaleela]

Thanks. I have both Sony Vegas and Soundforge. Hmmm that means I need to figure out how to capture the dvd. I tried before but maybe I was doing something wrong. I can capture anything off a camcorder perfectly but for some reason this is giving me trouble.

[*Shira*]

Shira, when you changed the output to AVI, what did you choose for encoding it? I think my video software may be a bit behind in codecs because it would only open the sound file for the avi in MPEG4 but not the video.

Hmmm, I'm not sure I know what you mean by your question. I do a multi-step process:

1. Use DVDx to copy the video files from the DVD to my hard disk, converting them to avi files in the process.
2. Use Adobe Premier to edit the video, then save it back out to MPEG format. I would recommend MPEG-1 for posting on the web, MPEG-2 for writing to DVD. I assume you would use Vegas for this step since that's what you said you have.

I checked in DVDx, and it appears that the place to specify that you're converting it to AVI is under the "output" menu, in the upper left-hand corner. I think it ships with the default of MPEG. MEPG might work fine; the reason I convert to AVI is because Adobe Premier is hostile to editing MPEGs.

[Rosey]

Look what I found

http://zamzar.com/

free, automatic file conversion on the web, dozens of formats. Only drawback is limit of 100 MB - still, that's plenty for a youtube video. It's pretty impressive for files of the right size. There's also a special youtube URL converter, really convenient.
It's important to read the FAQ - you find out that they hold converted files for only 24 hours so you can't wait too long to retrieve.

[Khaleela]

Yay! I finally got it! Thanks for all your help folks. After numerous programs and tons of googling I finally stumbled on AVS and it worked for me.

Check it out..g.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLU-xmEHBKM

[bintbeled]

What a fun number! I love the pauses -- very effective.

[Khaleela]

Thanks! We are usually Egyptian style but we recently took some tribal classes and decided to try something new.