Where's the VOB Support?

[Jason Dunn]

I ran into a situation the other day that doesn't happen very often: I needed to extract a video file from a non-commercial DVD (a non-profit video) and include it on a master DVD with a few other videos. Ideally, I should be able to drag the VOB file off the DVD and open it in one of my video editing programs, correct? I had a hunch it wouldn't be that easy, and I was right, it wasn't. I have Adobe Premiere Elements 1.0, Pinnacle Studio 9, and Roxio VideoWave installed on my video editing laptop - and none are able to do anything with a VOB file. Premiere Elements didn't even have the word "VOB" in it's help file. :roll: I can understand that working directly with encrypted VOB files would be a legal nightmare, but surely home-brewed DVDs are common enough now that modern programs should be able to work with extracting non-encrypted video files from a DVD?

I snooped around Doom 9 (http://www.doom9.org) for a while looking at something that would go from VOB to MPEG2 in a single step, and came up short. I know there are tools out there that would do what I want, but I really loathe most of the freeware out there - it's so badly designed from a usability perspective, I got a headache just thinking about it. I find that the older I get, the less I feel like hacking my way through some obscure 20 step process requiring four different programs to rip, demux, blend, slice and dice my video. Just for my own sanity, what would be the best tool to use in this case?

I ended up just re-capturing from VHS because it was quicker and easier, and the results were solid. Now the DVD menu creation, oh boy, that's another story for another post. ;-)

[g0099]

On the mac you can use Final Cut Pro to natively read the vob video file but you are out of luck with audio without doing some sort of coversion. I totally agree with you about vob support.

I have people who I made DVDs for over a year ago coming back to me asking me to add things to the DVD. It is such a pain to have to rip a DVD that I created and find some way to covert the file.

I am just adding to your complaint more that giving a solution but I needed to let that out!

[Bob_Barker]

Cinematize on the Mac does a really good job converting content in unencrypted DVDs and VOB files. I'm not sure of any PC equivalent

The problem is that on DVDs, the audio and the video are stored in separate files and played concurrently. Any tool that extracts video has to merge these two streams into one file for you to work with them. That's why most video editing software doesn't support DVDs out of the box.

It does seem sort of strange though that there is such a difficulty, considering whenever you bring in a clip, you usually can work with the video and the audio indepedently of one another.

[Felix Torres]

MAGIX MOvies to CD and DVD is supposed to import unprotected VOB files.
http://site.magix.net/english-us/home/video/movies-on-cd-dvd-40/movies-40/functions/?no_cache=1&version=#one

Video:
Imports/exports AVI, DV AVI (Type 1&2), MPEG 1&2, WMV 9, MOV, MXV, MPEG 4 and DivXTM (both with installed codec only) and more / imports DVB und VOB Streams, MJPEG / exports Real HelixTM (RealVideo & RealAudio)

Photo:
Imports JPG, BMP, GIF, TIF and more. (for instance, your own motifs for individual menus)

Audio:
Supports Dolby Digital 5.1 multi-channel sound (with installed AC3 codec) / Imports Audio CDs, MP3, OGG, WAV, WMA

Not sure how well it may work since I haven't used the latest versions and I'm way more familiar with their Audio Cleaner Lab application (which I use to convert LPs to CD and WMA).

Still it might be worth looking into if you need to do this sort of thing regularly...

[Damion Chaplin]

I know you are specifically referring to unencrypted DVDs, but I have to say after trying countless freeware programs, DVD Decrypter and AutoGK are about the easiest ripping programs I've ever used. I would say use AutoGK by itself, but for some reason it won't convert any VOB files unless they were ripped by DVD Decrypter. So even if your DVD is not encrypted you still have to use DVD Decrypter.

Anyway, with DVD Decrypter and AutoGK, it boils it down to basically a 2-step process (and a lot of processing time). Not as convenient as working with the VOB files directly, but still quite easy and produces excellent results.

Jason, I know at times you read Maximum PC. In their Digital How-To issue earlier this year, they list out the simple process of ripping a DVD to your HD for TV, PocketPC etc. using DVD Decrypter and AutoGK. If you didn't get that issue, PM me and I'll forward you a copy of the article...

[Jason Dunn]

Jason, I know at times you read Maximum PC. In their Digital How-To issue earlier this year, they list out the simple process of ripping a DVD to your HD for TV, PocketPC etc. using DVD Decrypter and AutoGK. If you didn't get that issue, PM me and I'll forward you a copy of the article...

Yeah, I read that issue, but in a previous issue they reccomended #1 DVD Ripper, and I bought it without hesitation - and it completely sucked. It crashed constantly, didn't rip most things that I tried, and spit out corrupt files. So I'm rather leery of the programs they suggest. I'll give that app a try.

[mobile]

Jason,

Funny you should post this article. I was struggling with the same problem over the past weekend. I did download and test an app called "Max DVD to AVI". I tried it but was very disappointed with the quality of the conversion.

Have you been able to find anything that works decently?

/// mobile

[Jason Dunn]

Have you been able to find anything that works decently?

Nothing yet. This one looks promising:

http://site.magix.net/english-us/home/video/movies-on-cd-dvd-40/movies-40/functions/?no_cache=1&version=#one

[Damion Chaplin]

Yeah, I read that issue, but in a previous issue they reccomended #1 DVD Ripper, and I bought it without hesitation - and it completely sucked. It crashed constantly, didn't rip most things that I tried, and spit out corrupt files. So I'm rather leery of the programs they suggest. I'll give that app a try.

Take my word for it that these two programs are great. Never crashed once. Never met a DVD it couldn't read. And they're free so you've got nothing to lose...