VOB files... continued.... :(
 

I'm really having a tough time with VOB files. When I try to change the extension to .MPG I get some of the file but it's still messed up. I also never get the entire footage. I've tried doing this on two computers now.

The VOB file looks great! I really need to find a way to import it into Premiere Pro 1.5 but I hate converting it with freeware because it never looks quite the same way. Is there anything that I can do?

Mike

When using a software converter (converting VOB to AVI) should I use the default bit rate of 1200? Or is more better? This may help...

Thanks,

Mike

Try first to use VOBrator or some other program to extract streams, maybe it will solve your problems without recompression.

I tried using this method. http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=261416

It seems to work!
The only issue I have is that the avi file created is much smaller in size.

2,645 KB AVI file when compared to the 1,048,544 KB VOB file.
It says that there is NO conversion, is this true? Would the sizes be that different because of their formats?

Mike

No, you should get 1 or more files extracted. A VOB file is an MPEG2 program
stream which contains elementary streams (video, audio, subtitles etc.).

Normally the audio is in AC3 (dolby digital) or dts, PPro will probably read neither.

So first extract the streams. Use some of the tools you can find on http://www.doom9.org/
under Downloads / VOB Tools. This should give you at least the video stream
(usually with extension .m2v). If you also need the AC3 audio you can use a
tool like HeadAC3he (also on that same page) to convert the AC3 into wav or
PCM formats for example.

p.s. a movie is divided into 1 GB chunks (if it is larger than 1 GB). So you will
need to do this on multiple VOB files. If you are getting stuff of a commercial
DVD it will be protected (encrypted) as well.

Well... I end up with an audio file (wav) and the avi file when using the method I posted above. They match up perfectly when put together in Premiere Pro.

The video quality looks almost identical to the original, I'm just concerned about the file size at this point. Is is as good as the VOB file? Hard to say, it looks close though. Much closer than any of the other times I've had to use a converter.

Anyone else try this method?

Ah, that tutorial frameserves the stuff. Frameserving is the method where a
(small) proxy file is created to serve content to an application that can not
handle the footage in the original format. It's a tricky system but if it works
you should not be loosing any information / quality at all.

Should work fine! (and saves you disk space)