How to edit your videos after we’ve converted your old tapes to disc
The links and general information regarding video editing software may also be useful to you if you are looking to edit your own home videos.
Modern digital camcorders and mobile devices record digital files that can be edited easily if you have the right software.
DVD Video was designed as a playback format to replace pre-recorded VHS movies. It was never intended to be either a recordable or editable format. When General Use DVD-R video discs first became available it just wasn’t possible to edit directly from the discs themselves. The good news is that most commercial video editing software can now edit your home videos from a DVD-R Video disc.
Video editing software requires a certain degree of patience to learn how it works. Fortunately you don’t necessarily have to learn all of the features in order to get started.
Home users
The first thing you need to know is that most free video editing software will not support importing and editing files directly from a DVD so usually you will need to use software to extract the video from the disc and possibly convert it into an edit friendly format.
There are caveats to this but in simple terms if your intention is to put your DVD footage back onto a DVD after it’s been edited then you should try to use editing software that fully supports importing from a disc and writing back to disc – this can be done with various free, open source software in stages but commercial software is more likely to offer this functionality built-in. If you are NOT putting the footage back on DVD then conversion to a more edit friendly format such as MP4 makes sense.
Note – when updating this article in 2018 we’re seeing less options for DVD friendly video editing software.
Good quality commercial video editing software is widely available but there are also lots of free tools if you are prepared to browse around the various help sites and read a few tutorials. Scroll down this page for useful links.
Professional & semi-pro editors
Modern editing software will usually import VOB sets (the files found on a DVD Video disc) but not necessarily do it properly. DVDVOB2MPEG (Windows) or Handbrake (Mac) will “demultiplex” VOB files and convert them into standard MPEG video files. Most editing software will import the MPEG files and in some cases allow you to edit from those directly.
Commercial video editing software
Commercial Video Editing software lets you:-
- Edit out or fix poor audio or video
- Add titles and music
- Make DVDs & Blu-ray discs in some but not all cases
- Prepare web video – some can upload your video directly to YouTube and Facebook etc
Useful tools to extract and convert or edit video
You’ll need to a do a little further reading to use some of the features of these applications. They are incredibly useful.
Handbrake works on any computer will convert DVD footage to MP4.
DVD VOB2MPG extracts video from DVDs and DVD-RAM discs without changing the footage. It’s from the developer of the excellent ISOBuster. We use the inexpensive Pro version 3.0 with Windows 10 – it’s small fuss free and efficient application. There’s a free option that may suit be we haven’t tested that.
MPEG Streamclip converts footage from DVDs to various other formats.
More help and advice
Video Help is a great resource with links, reviews and free guides to just about any video editing question. Most of the content is safe but do be careful when downloading software from any website.
Our plain English guide to video frame rates and sizes.
And finally
We’ve tried to keep this guide concise and hope that you find it informative. Do feel free to reply, ask questions or provide feedback. For more information about our video to DVD transfer service please click here.
I transferred VHS tapes to DVD using Sony RDR-VX525 in 2007. I now want to edit these 100 DVD’s. I bought a 2015 MacPro and took lessons. Apple has no suggestions; Mac just sees the DVD as an EXEC file. I’ve tried Handbrake, but when I edit I get poor quality. Is there any solution with either Mac or PC?
The Sony site had no suggestions and live technical support just wanted me to look at their site.
I really want to edit these DVD’s for my children.
Thank you!
Standard definition files, especially old VHS>DVD footage can look quite poor on a computer screen – this is mainly because we are used to seeing HD video. If you pause the footage it can look even worse with all sorts of nasty dots and noise visible. Take a step back from the screen and look at the video as it’s playing. You may find it’s actually OK.
Your Sony DVD recorder is actually a Pioneer made unit and capable of good quality recordings. However, if you originally recorded more than 2 hours onto a DVD then the quality will be compromised. Put simply the more video you record onto a disc the lower the quality will be. DVD players and TVs do a good job of hiding the mush but in general if you’ve set the recorder to anything other than XP or SP mode (1hr or 2hrs) then you will struggle in terms of picture quality.
You should use MPEGStreamclip to convert the files to Apple ProRes422.
https://youtu.be/mYOHt-hctn8
Note – in the video they use MJPEG which is fine but ProRes422 is our preference and recommended. Just select that in the dropdown menu.
If the files are going back to DVDs then don’t de-interlace them. If the videos are staying digital then you can de-interlace them.