Using RAWs instead of Ripping my DVDs

MadScientist · Post by **MadScientist** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 11:22 am

Ok, now I know this is probably a noob question, and on top of that controversial. But I would really like to know what some of you more experienced editors think.
So, onto my question... I am getting ready to start my next video and I have the DVDs in hand, all 6 of them. I was getting ready to rip the footage, encode it, etc. for use in premiere and AE, but I was thinking of saving myself the trouble and just grabbing the show in RAW format MKVs. I feel since I own the DVDs already, ethically it is ok. But, is there any technical drawbacks or reasons not to utilize the RAWs and do the ripping myself? I think the RAWs have also been up-scaled to 720p as well, as i downloaded one to check out, and it looks fantastic. So any drawbacks in that regard as well?

JaddziaDax · Post by **JaddziaDax** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 11:38 am

if you use your dvds you have more control over what filters and whatnot are applied to your video, where as raws its up to the group that decides to distribute them...

Keeper of Hellfire · Post by **Keeper of Hellfire** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 11:43 am

And to add: Since raws are usually hard compressed, you will have difficulties to compress your AMV.

MadScientist · Post by **MadScientist** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 12:11 pm

JaddziaDax wrote:if you use your dvds you have more control over what filters and whatnot are applied to your video, where as raws its up to the group that decides to distribute them...

I thought about that too. And depending on how good the RAW actually is, I suppose that would be something to consider. For example though, when I watch a RAW of the same show I ripped and encoded myself, I see a significant improvement in clarity, and smoothness, especially in heavy action scenes. I suppose by following some of the more advanced guides here on the org, I could potentially achieve similar results, but I figure these guys doing the RAWs have their system down. But the control thing is certainly a strike against using RAWs.

Keeper of Hellfire wrote:And to add: Since raws are usually hard compressed, you will have difficulties to compress your AMV.

Could you elaborate? Do you mean that the RAWs have already been compressed to certain format, thus making it harder to work with in Premiere and AE? I suppose it could also cause quality issues taking already compressed footage, using that, and then rendering from AE and Premiere in a lossless or uncompressed format. But like with a RAW that has been upscaled to 720p or better, would that still be an issue? I could also rip the video stream from the MKV or OGM file in AVI format in huffyUV in order to make it better to work with, but I have only done that with standard 640x480 MKVs. So i have no idea if that would preserve the quality of the 720p format.

JaddziaDax · Post by **JaddziaDax** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 12:55 pm

in other words you will have to recompress (or uncompress?) them, there will still be almost as much preprocessing either way as far as i know

MadScientist · Post by **MadScientist** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 1:16 pm

JaddziaDax wrote:in other words you will have to recompress (or uncompress?) them, there will still be almost as much preprocessing either way as far as i know

Well the way its shaping up, that may certainly be the case. I may try it with the one I downloaded to see how well it works and how much re-compression and preprocessing is involved in relation to the manual ripping/encoding...
I was hoping it would save me the tedium of having to do all the work myself, but I'm not so sure that would be the case now.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 3:41 pm

Unless the RAWs you're finding are several GB in size each, you're not getting the video quality you would be getting from ripping yourself. That said, if you screw up with the ripping and filtering you could end up with something worse, so the quality issue is less important than the "we're not supposed to support that here so you're not going to get a positive affirmation of your tactics no mater what the reasoning" thing.

MadScientist · Post by **MadScientist** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 4:22 pm

Yeah the RAWs are about 800mb apiece, so there is some compression going on. I realize using RAWs is not "kosher," and is probably not something that many people here would even support, but I was looking for some opinions and possible drawbacks, and I can certainly say that it sounds like sticking to ripping my own DVDs is the best option right now.