GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 584984
[Capture] Support DVD cameras and cut/capture of chapters
Last modified: 2014-01-05 20:07:57 UTC
I used a Sony DVD Handycam to record video on my 7-month OE. It takes mini-DVDs. This was great in most respects, as it meant that I could: * make backup copies to full-sized DVDs at internet cafes without installing software; * play the videos back in hostel DVD players; * toggle the subtitles on and off in a DVD player to have the time and date of recording on screen; * etc. The big difficulty is that, now that I am home, I have a stack of DVDs and it is very hard to import them into a video editing program to edit them. I have spent a lot of time ripping them perfectly to .iso images on my HTPC, so it would be great if any import "wizard" could handle .iso files as well as DVD discs. I understand that each clip (from when you hit record until you hit stop) is a separate chapter and each time that you take the disc out and put it back in is a separate title (I also think that, if you have too many chapters, it will start a new title even if you don't take the disc out). This makes working with the .VOB files a very unsatisfactory way to edit the movies. Ideally such an import would keep the video in its native MPEG format, so that there was no quality loss through transcoding. The best example of such a wizard that I can find is that of Roxio Easy Media Creator, described here: http://www.jakeludington.com/roxio/20071029_editing_dvd_camcorder_movies_with_easy_media_creator.html All of my DVDs are too big to post (1.4GB), so I will try to record something short so that you have something to work with. The camera is my mother's, however, so I'll do it when I am next there. I am more than happy to help with any work in this direction.
http://60.234.40.20/~whiteho1/DVD_ROOT.tar.gz (29MB) This is an example DVD that I recorded today (not the most thrilling video, sorry) that has about 8 clips/chapters. I ejected the disc after recording most of them, so it should give an example of multiple titles as well. I was going to upload an iso file, but it seems that these are always 1.4GB, even if barely anything has been recorded. Putting the attached files onto a DVD and putting it in a player seems to act like the DVD, so I would have thought that it would be a good enough test case.
Created attachment 154814 [details] A torrent for a 1.3GB test DVD I have created a test DVD that tests all the features of the Sony Handycam DVD camcorder DCR-DVD605. I have put the whole iso online, but I have very limited bandwidth, so I've made a Torrent. Hopefully, some people with a bit more bandwidth can seed it as well.
I use a program called dvd-vr to extract the individual clips from the DVD. It works for camcorders that record to DVD-RW in DVD-VR format. I have used it with both a Canon DC230 and a Panasonic VDR-D310 camcorder. The program is released under GPL v2. It is available at from http://www.pixelbeat.org/programs/dvd-vr/ The program takes two files as parameters (the .IFO file and the .VOB file) and writes a set of .VOB files, one for each take. The file names are based on the date and time of the start of the clip. The program itself is a single C source file, and I don't know how much work it would take to make it a stand-alone library, then to add hooks to python. It would probably be easier (at least initially) to call dvd-vr as a separate process. So the areas affected would be: * menu entry * UI to select DVD drive or camcorder (which appears as a USB DVD drive), and where to put the clips. * UI to select which clips to import (all, date-time range, specific selected clips, etc) * UI to start process and update progress on UI * UI to cancel process * import clips into project Where to put the clips? The default place to put clips implicitly recommends a filing system structure e for your clips. I am sure the other questions (preselecting DVD drives, getting a list of available clips, importing a date range)
The torrent file is to a full iso file on my home machine. Make sure that your torrent client supports web seeds, or it will not be able to use my broadband version. It would be great if somebody with decent bandwidth could seed a copy for me, as it will be painful for anyone trying to download it. If everyone who wants it could all pull it down this Saturday (29 May), everyone could get it from each other as well. I'm wondering if the best approach to this is for projects to work together on this. Given that OpenShot and PiTiVi are both Python programs and an importer would be a sort of mini-app to get the files from the disc/iso to the library. A request for OpenShot is here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/openshot/+bug/585746
I agree, maybe we should work together on this feature, what do you think ?
There's a Google SoC student working on improving chapter/track support in GStreamer (and Totem). I'd prefer if we were to leverage that (since GStreamer is already a dependency) rather than create yet-another-library (which would have to depend on even more 3rd party libraries).
I have uploaded this test DVD iso file to Mega: sony-dcr-dvd605.iso (1.32 GB) https://mega.co.nz/#!fIcz2JQT!Y__32gBAibtwfUeDzAYbZ1uDRU9fm7B4TaR9_NdxbCk As a workaround, I have uploaded my script to extract titles or chapters from an .iso file. For the example DVD, this means that I can run: ./vob-from-iso.sh sony-dcr-dvd605.iso chapters and it will extract all of the clips. It requires mplayer. It certainly isn't polished, but it works for me.
Created attachment 241828 [details] A script to extract titles or chapters from an iso of a DVD
Alright, sorry, but I think I'll close this now, like Firewire in bug #566069: - DVD camcorders and optical media is mostly dead technology. - It would complexify Pitivi's UI and codebase - This would be better done as a minimalist, specialized standalone app. Arguably, a bunch of such apps already exist. As we are a small team with very limited resources, we sadly cannot implement every request. Since no patch/implementation was provided and there has not been a huge amount of interest in this particular feature, we will consider this to be out of scope. Sorry! (FWIW, it didn't seem to be a priority for Openshot or any other, either ;)