Re-editing an Existing DVD Project [Long]

[Bill Hunt]

This is an abstract from an on-going thread in the Premiere Elements forum. I’m posting it here to generate some discussion and attempt to come up with a few more ideas. The original poster (OP) does not know photography, or video-production, so they are caught in the middle. Many subscribers on the PE forum have offered advice, but it became clear to me, that this was not a Premiere Elements question, especially as Premiere 6.5 (Mac) comes into play. As this is a video-production question, with strong post-production implications, I think it belongs here. I’ve tried to distill the Q & A’s into a concise form, but might have missed a few things. Should you have any questions on the Project, please do not hesitate to ask them. I will do my best to give, or get answers.

The Project:
This is a “family album slide show,” containing approximately 1400 still images. These are mostly scanned photographs, that were color/density corrected, edited with a “frame,” and inserted into Premiere 6.5 (Mac) as TIFF images. There are captions with the photographs. A music soundtrack was generated and the editing of the “slide show” was done to this music. AV files (unknown format - .MOV?) were Exported from Premiere 6.5 (Mac), which were brought into a DVD authoring program, and a set of three (3) DVD’s were produced. Obviously, the 3 DVD set has the Video_TS (and Audio_TS probably) folders with the VOB, etc. files, but these are MPEG-2 compressed for DVD-NTSC at an unknown bit-rate.

What is Needed:
Now, the end client wishes to make edits to the Project. Some photographs will need to be deleted entirely, a few new ones added and different music placed into the sound track, in lieu of some of the existing music.

What is Missing:
The edited photographs, with captions, corrections and the “frames,” were not saved as PSD, but only as flattened TIFFs. The original scans were saved as PSD’s, but without any of the corrections, captions of “frames.” The Exported AV files were not saved. The Premiere 6.5 (Mac) Project file was saved, but remember, this is Premiere 6.5 (Mac). The copy of Premiere 6.5 (Mac) is not available, and a replacement for it cannot be found - heck, this is 4 -5 versions ago and also for Mac, not PC. It “appears,” that the original Premiere 6.5 (Mac) Project file is intact. (Do not know what its suffix would be from back then. Now, it would be a .prproj file, or a .prel file if in PE. Also do not know the folder hierarchy, that was used, and if that could even be reconstructed from the existing files, if all of the Assets are even available, as they were Imported into the Project.)

What is Wanted:
A re-edited (changes/corrections noted above) version of the 3 DVD set, with the best possible quality, and a minimum loss, for play on an NTSC TV via set-top player.

Several regulars here, Steve G., E Mann, Paul_LS have weighed in on the PE forum, with questions, as have I. Most of the answers to those questions were used to compile the above descriptions. There were also the caveats on possible quality loss.

The resulting comments, along with the questions, indicated that there were four possible ways to approach the problem:

1.) Complete re-edit with the existing scans (~1400), re-edit them to correct, add captions and the “frames,” use some old music, but make substitutions, where necessary, then assemble in an NLE (current version) for Export to DVD-NTSC. Obviously, this method would mean starting almost from scratch, and is not a very viable solution.

2.) Find someone with Premiere 6.5 (Mac, unless P 6.5 for PC could work from the Project file), Open the Project in this, and re-do the edits, Exporting to a DVD-authoring program for Burning. It has already been pointed out that changing the music will likely cause some problems in the flow of the slide show, as it has been edited to the included music. Also, the deletion of images, and insertion of others will affect that flow too. Remember, this is all predicated on finding Premiere 6.5 (Mac, or PC[?]) to work from the Project file(s), and is also predicated on having all necessary Assets available, which is not known at this time.

3.) Rip the VOB’s to elemental streams (MPEG-2 Video and probably PCM/WAV Audio) and then convert to DV-AVI (or similar) for re-editing in a current NLE, per the specs. above, Exporting the finished product back to DVD-NTSC. This WILL result in a loss of quality, as there will be one additional re-compression and any artifacts, problems, that might be induced by the conversion process. A variation on this scenario would be to play the DVD’s to a miniDV tape camera, and then Capture to elemental streams. (Do not know if “scene detect” would help, or hurt here.) The re-compression issue remains, but there would be no loss in a conversion, or anything introduced by it. The possible problems with the flow of the slide show would still have to be addressed.

4.) Your idea, of something that all of us have overlooked, or have re-thought.

As the OP was not a photographer, or a videographer, they were unsure of exactly what questions to ask. I think we did a pretty good job of getting the answers needed, but may have overlooked something important. Because of the age and platform of the original NLE, it is doubtful, at least to me, that the original Project files would be of any use, but then I do not know Premiere 6.5 on either platform.

I know that this is long, but not as long as the OP and replies. Please take the time to reflect on this problem and share your thoughts and ideas. This is true for both those, who have already weighed in, as well as for others, who might be in this forum, but not the PE forum.

I’m going to post a scaled down variation of this onto the Premiere 6.5 forum, just to try and get some feedback on that version of the program. I do not expect much, as those older forums are pretty much dead nowadays.

Thank you for your time, your thoughts and your ideas.

Hunt

[Note to MODs] if this is not the best sub-forum to post this to, please move it appropriately.

[Bob]

A few thoughts.

The exported files from Premiere Pro for use in the DVD authoring program are not relevant. They don't have them, and, if the project could be reconstructed from the project file and the other files they do have, they aren't needed. You would have to figure out what to export to build the dvds in the authoring program anyway.

The Premiere 6.5 project could probably be opened in Premiere Pro (but not in Premiere Elements). It's most likely only the tiffs were used and that's fine. You didn't mention whether the music files were saved. The music can be recovered from the DVD audio but that has its own issues. Also, it's not known whether all needed files were saved.

If all else fails, you can edit the vobs from the DVDs. Premiere Elements isn't the program to do this. IF you use a nle designed to work with mpeg and which uses smart rendering, you'll only get recompression where you made changes so the quality hit should be minor.

You will need to rebuild the dvd structure in the authoring program in all scenarios.

This sounds like a lot of work any way you look at it.

[Bill Hunt]

This is a followup to my original post. Along the way, I have learned some things about Premiere and Pro, as well as Mac’s, when going to PC.

First, all of the original Premiere 6.5 (Mac) Project files Imported into P-Pro2 perfectly. No glitches at all. All of the Assets were catabolized into new folders, so navigation was much easier, than having them spread all over an external hard drive. P-Pro2 linked up everything perfectly.

As the original Project had been done on Mac software, some conversions had to be done. The end-product DVD’s will be done in Encore2, and more of the assembly of the Project will be done in P-Pro2, rather than additional audio programs. Why it was assembled in a half-dozen separate programs remains a mystery. Luckily, with the exception of the un-Flattened PSD files, everything else was available. I have converted all of the audio to PCM/WAV 48KHz 16-bit (from Mac AAIF files at 44.1KHz 8-bit), and will add these to the Timelines in P-Pro2, where I’ll do much of the lightweight Audio editing, relying on Audition2 for the major work. There are a lot of transients that were not removed earlier. I think that these were direct rips and were never processed. Strangely, the Fade-ins and Fade-outs were done as separate files. Same for any Audio effects - separate file! Gotta’ be something on the Mac. Also, it appears that the original Audio edits were done, then the files were Exported to MOV. I will skip this unnecessary step, along with the separate Fades and Effects. Between P-Pro2 and Audition2, there is no need for this sort of workflow.

Same thing for the DVD-authoring. For some reason, the Menus were done as MOV files, and the Buttons were added later. There was not animation, so this must have been a Mac workflow. Encore2 handles everything internally and can do so much more than whatever Mac program that was used initially.

Since the soundtrack was ancillary to the visuals (the slides were NOT edited to the music), replacing the music, where necessary, and substituting slides, will not be the issue that I had assumed.

Since the un-Flattened PSD’s were never saved, changing captions will be a bit of work in Photoshop, but most of the images, though processed, need more work anyway. For anyone doing slideshows, I have a tip: when you do scans, image processing, etc., always Save your working files as PSD’s, with every Layer and Adjustment Layer, intact. Then, and only then, Flatten the images for use in the NLE. Always keep all PSD’s, just in case! I cannot stress this enough. My workflow is to scan to TIFF, work on the image in Photoshop, Save as PSD with all Layers, re-size for video, setting Image Size and PAR for the Project Presets, then output to a separate folder in a proper format for the NLE. I use Flattened PSD’s, but a low compression JPG will work. In this case, uncompressed JPG’s were used. I do not know why, as a Flattened PSD would have worked just fine.

Luckily for me, the Adobe Production Studio CS2 suite, contains all of the programs that are needed to reproduce this Project. Even though it was originally created in Premiere 6.5 (Mac) and various other Mac programs, everything can be done in CS2 on the PC, with minor conversions. All of these are easily handled by the Adobe programs. Also, everything can be done within these same programs, without having to go outside of the suite. So nice to have that power!

If you are ever faced with a similar problem, say thanks to Adobe for building in a great amount of backward compatibility in their programs.

@Bob, luckily, P-Pro2 took care of everything (along with Audition2, and soon Encore2, with a bit of work in PS), so there will be no ripping of the VOB's. Though others could not find the PPJ files, I tracked them all down in the Assets. I just had to add the proper suffix (they were Mac files, remember), and P-Pro2 digested them without a hiccup. When this hit my desk, I worried that it would be a nightmare. It was not, thanks to Adobe. Yeah, starting to sound like a advertisement for Adobe Production Studio, so maybe they'll give me a full copy of CS4 - or maybe not.

Thanks for your thoughts and comments, it turned out to be much easier than either of us could have imagined,

Hunt

[Bob]

Thanks for the follow up, Bill. That's good to know.