Thanks Mike! Unfortunately, after copying the VOB files to my hard drive I gave the DVD back to my friend ASSuming I was all set. No biggie, I'll get the DVD in a few days and try again.

--Ethan

Note that the Import Camcorder DVD may have some issues where chapter points are. It splits up the clips at chapter points and you may find some audio and video missing instead of a clean playback from one to the next.

Thanks. As long as I don't lose 90 percent of the video as I have now I'll be happy.

:->)

After you copy the VOBs onto your HDD use DVD Shrink to make the VOBs into one large VOB. This way you don't loose anything. If you setup DVD Shrink correctly there'll be no recompression either.

Vegas is still unable to join mpeg-2 streams split on anything other than I frames as far as I can see.

Bob.

Change the file extension VOB to MPG and you're set to go!
Always works for me.

After you copy the VOBs onto your HDD use DVD Shrink to make the VOBs into one large VOB.

Don't think you can do that Bob.... One of the rules of a VOB is that it can not be bigger than 1048MB

"Don't think you can do that Bob.... One of the rules of a VOB is that it can not be bigger than 1048MB "

As far as I know on a DVD yes.
However DVDShrink can most certainly create one of 5GB. I've been using this method for over 5 years to join the VOBs off a DVD into a single file and then dropping that into Vegas. Doing that avoids the lost frames when you try to join the VOBs from a DVD with Vegas.

Bob.

Where were you when I needed you Bob? I have a thread going (four .VOBs to V8) and no one has addressed the missing frames issues I'm having. From your post it is apparently not a mystery. So maybe I will have to check out DVD Shrink and take the time to learn it.
Thanks very much Bob,
Randy

> Change the file extension VOB to MPG and you're set to go!

Thanks, but I did that and it didn't work. That's the whole problem. I have three 1 GB files plus a smaller remainder file, and all but one of the files loads as if it were only 15 seconds long. I'm seeing my friend later and will grab back the original DVD, and try to import it through the File menu as described above.

--Ethan

There are some VOB files that will only show about one minute on the Vegas timeline regardless of their length. I cannot give you hard and fast rules as to what causes this, but it obviously has to do with the fact that the VOB has navigation, subtitles, and multiple audio channels embedded, and Vegas is not designed to deal with all of that.

As a result, you will have to use my

Using DGIndex and VFAPI to edit MPEG-2

trick to edit these files, or you will have to demux the video and convert the audio to a WAV format prior to putting them on the timeline. Neither approach takes very long, and the results generally work really well. I particularly like the DGIndex/VFAPI approach because it makes MPEG-2 files as easy to edit as DV: really fast and responsive.

Just a little note to add here:
IMHO, if you intend to edit these MPEG2 files, Vegas may not be a good idea. There's gonna be a color space conversion (from YUV to RGB 32) - Read more at Wikipedia.

All videos are YUV and Vegas works at RGB 32 (as most pc applications, if not all of them) as far as I know. That means, since MPEG2 is a corrupted file (compressed), re-editing and re-rendering the video file again and again, will probably generate something called video banding. It's BAD and anyone can notice it on the screen. Unless... unless... you use a technique named as video dithering for covering up the banding (adding some kind of noise on the video file).

On the other hand, AviSynth would be the correct choice since that application works in every known color space such as RGB24, RGB32, YUV, YUV12, YUY... In this case, you should also use an MPEG2 encoder called HC Encoder, available for free at bitburnersdotcom. You will edit and serve the video clips thru AviSynth using a script and the same script will be used by HC Encoder to render a beautiful MPEG2 for ya. Some people say HC has almost the same quality as Cinema Craf Encoder. Who knows... Anyway, both applications are freeware. AviSynth can be downloaded at... (Google it) and its forum is located at Doom9. You can also try to edit blocks of scripts on the same script editing the original material (clips) and your MPEG2 files. All of them edited using AviSynth. Good luck!
Cheers,
Mark

It never failed me Ethan. VOB are basically MPG files. I do it all the time, maybe on a weekly basis, so I am puzzled why it doesn't work on your system. I assumevyou have the MPG codec.

Hi,

well, a lot of guessing around on VOBs here as it seems ;)

Actually changing the suffix from VOB to MPG can work but often it doesn't in cases where the complete movie is divided into several VOBs.

A VOB is a Video Object and quite different from "normal" MPGs. Johnmeyer mentioned some of the additional streams which can be found in VOBs. Furthermore it can be that the second VOB (VTS_01_2.VOB for example) does not begin with an IFrame but with a BFrame, a NAV pack, Audio or whatsoever making it sometimes impossible to play back such a file on its own. Well, most software players might just skip the first parts but others do behave strange. This is obviously what Ethan's observing.

Okay, there are several reliable methods to extract Video and Audio from the VOBs. DVDShrink might work but I haven't used it for a long time and can't remember.

Anyhow, here are a few more tools which you may find helpful:
Freeware:
VOB2MPG, produces MPGs out of VOBs: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/VOB2MPG
PgcDemux, which demuxes VOBs into their elementary streams: http://download.videohelp.com/jsoto/dvdtools.htm

Shareware:
TMPGEnc XPress: http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/te4xp.html
Womble MPEG Video Wizard: http://www.womble.com/products/mvw.html

Cheers

darkframe

Guys, thanks so much! This explains everything. I'm not opposed to buying John's program and the price is certainly reasonable. But since this is a one-time non-commercial project, I'll try VOB2MPG first.

Thanks again to all.

--Ethan

I'm not opposed to buying John's program and the price is certainly reasonable. But since this is a one-time non-commercial project, I'll try VOB2MPG first.The programs proposed (except for Womble) are free. However, I completely agree that you should try VOB2MPG first. I tried it and found it a little quirky. If it doesn't run the first time, immediately run it again on the same file. It will probably solve all your problems. Since it takes a little while to run compared to some of the other alternatives, I would suggest, if you can, that you use a target location that is on a different physical drive from the drive which holds your VOB files. This will cut several minutes off the operation.

> The programs proposed (except for Womble) are free.

Sorry, I guess I misread which program is most suited for extracting DVDs. I see now that E.M. Free DVD Copy is the one you must have meant. So I grabbed that now too. The only thing that's not clear is the statement, "some outformats only can be tried for 15 days." Which formats are those?

Thanks John.

--Ethan

Anyhow, here are a few more tools which you may find helpful:
I don't doubt I've seen easier cheaper solutions but I can't remember one off hand.
Thanks very much darkframe! I no longer have the glitch where the two join!
Now forgive my ignorance but I don't know the best way to go from here.
I have all of the mpgs on the timeline and get some jaggies when playing but if I simply pre-render to avi they look great.
My questions are: should I pre-render to avi all before rendering to mpeg AND what setting should I render to.
I ask this maybe dumb question because when I pre-render to widescreen it looks like it squeezes the clip to 4:3.
If I didn't mention this before they are widescreen and will be played on a widescreen at the convention.
Thanks for your patience,
Randy