Thanks OldJack. Simply import DVD camcorder does the trick.

The problem has always been the short gap in the audio and video at the VOB break points.
There are a variety of ways to work around this but now, thanks to Gary James on here, there's a MUCH better and easier way.
I'll quote his post verbatim.

Vegas allows you to open up a DVD .IFO file. This imports the entire .VOB chain for both video and audio tracks.

Click File / Open, then navigate to your VIDEO_TS sub directory and enter *.IFO in the File name input field. For a regular DVD you will see a VIDEO_TS.IFO, and a VTS_01_0.IFO. Select the VTS_01_0.IFO file and click on Open. Don't try this on a DVD disk because Vegas will try to build an .sfk file containing audio peaks in the VIDEO_TS directory.

Mike

Just to clear up Mike's "Don't try this on a DVD disk" a little ... what he means is you should copy the contents of the DVD over to your hard drive first, then open up the .IFO file from the hard drive copy.

Also, the advantage of using the .IFO file open method over the DVD Import method is that it's faster, and when you are all done, chapter marks in the original DVD are included in the video stream as media markers.

A set of VOB files is an MPEG file cut into 1GB or smaller chunks for technical reasons. They need to be concatenated into a single file again or you will get lost data at the joins.

Of course if there is only one VOB file in a set then the original MPEG file was not cut and no data will be lost in just renaming it.

More accurately, a VOB file is a container that contains one or more video streams of the main and optional alternate viewing angles. It can also contain additional audio streams of various languages or encoding formats. And don't forget the subtitle data streams. All of these individual data streams are muxed together into the .VOB files.

Simply renaming a VOB file to .MPG may work for the simplest of VOB files. But what you get from that is not guaranteed. This is why it is advisable in Sony Vegas to use the .IFO method of importing DVD .VOB files. By opening the .IFO file, Vegas does exactly what a DVD player does. It interprets the .IFO's to discover information about all of the audio and video streams, chapter marks, and location of the data on the disk. It then reads in the entire A/V chain into the Vegas timeline as a single seamless Event containing the entire video title with media markers at all of the chapter locations. There is no need to concatenate anything. You can think of this as behaving like a frame-server for the .VOB files.

However, in keeping with the whole Ying-Yang balance in nature thing, this may not work for all DVDs. If a DVD has more than one title on it, opening the .IFO will read in the content of the first physical title on the DVD disk. So, if you have a DVD with a main title, and additional titles showing the "making off" the main title, you may not get the main title into Vegas if the DVD was not authored properly. The good news is, I've never run across this on a commercial DVD. But I did run across this on one of my early DVDs.

Quote from Wikipedia:

"VOB files are a very strict subset of the MPEG program stream standard. While all VOB files are MPEG program streams, not all MPEG program streams comply with the definition for a VOB file."

I don't know what context this paragraph was taken out of, but if you're making the argument that .VOB files are nothing more than ordinary .MPG files, that is simply wrong.

If you look at this article closer I'm sure that what you'll find is an explanation that not every .MPG file can be used in a .VOB file. DVD standards are very strict when it comes to the video encoding, dimensions, and aspect ratio of the video streams they contain. Likewise, there are similar requirements for Audio streams. What they are saying is that .VOB files contain .MPG streams, but not every .MPG stream can be used in a .VOB file.

One other thing. As I said earlier, .VOB files contain all the Video, Audio and subtitle data streams multiplexed together. Because of the multiplexing, the highest bitrate that can be used in any one video stream has to be calculated by dividing the max DVD video bitrate (~9,8 mpbs) by the number of video streams in the file. Remember, muxed data means that everything is read from the file, even though only one video stream is de-muxed and in use.

If you want to review the technical specifications of the DVD file structure and A/V stream specifications you should take a look at this web site:

http://www.videohelp.com/dvd

"I don't know what context this paragraph was taken out of"

Sorry, I should have given the URL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VOB

If you disagree with it, feel free to change it.

Just as I suspected. If you read the entire section labeled "File format", it concurs with everything I've said. .VOB files contain not only multiplexed compliant .MPG video, but Audio and subtitle data streams. Nothing needs to be changed in the article.

But all of this is off the original topic of how to read .VOB files into Vegas. Anyone who has tried to concatenate multiple .VOB files can tell you that you don't end up with a seamless video. At each .VOB connection point there are usually several frames of video missing; typically the size of an MPEG GOP.

The point of opening the .IFO file is that it completely eliminates the need for conversion or concatenation of anything. All I can say is, try it, you'll like it. Copy your DVD VIDEO_TS subdirectory to your hard drive. Then open the .IFO file as described earlier in this thread. It's that simple. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with the results.

"Just as I suspected. If you read the entire section labeled "File format", it concurs with everything I've said"

And with everything I have said.

"Anyone who has tried to concatenate multiple .VOB files can tell you that you don't end up with a seamless video."

Yes you do. I use the command Copy /B vob1.VOB+vob2.VOB+vob3.VOB outfile.MPG, and it has always worked perfectly.

There are several programs that do the same thing.

The main thing you should not do is drag the separate VOB files to the Vegas timeline. You will get glitches at the joins if you do.

I concur with Peter. The file concatenation method has always worked perfectly with every DVD i've imported.

Perhaps it's because i tend to work only with DVDs that have a single program stream? Maybe, i dunno. But i suspect that condition applies to the vast majority of DVD import into Vegas situations.

Gary,

I have used your method and agree it is the easiest and most seamless I have found. I have not tried the concantenate method.

Dave T2

If you've found a method of importing DVD VOB files that works for you, then by all means use what you're comfortable with. My concern is that I've read too many posts in the Vegas forums where people have tried what you suggest, and have not been happy with the results. Maybe they aren't doing something right, maybe they are. But the bottom line was they abandoned that technique and were looking for another approach.

I happened on the IFO file technique by accident. And when I suggested it here in the Sony Vegas forum, it started a flurry of interest as to how long this "feature" had been supported in Vegas. It appears to go back to very early versions. So this isn't a fluke. It was an undocumented feature. You don't even have to copy the VOB files to your hard disk. But if you don't, you'll be editing directly from a DVD, so performance will suffer.

The biggest advantage of using this technique is that it is built-in to Sony Vegas. And because it was designed into the program, it gives you an additional advantage in that it automatically reads and adds the DVD Title Chapter points to the imported media stream as media markers. To do that using any other import method, could take a lot of additional work finding each chapter point in the original Title, then add them as markers to the Vegas Timeline.

I'm not trying to tell you that if something works for you, you must stop doing it. What I've been trying to do is let you know of another way to do what you want, that is simpler, and offers an additional feature that saves a lot of work.

"Vegas allows you to open up a DVD .IFO file."
yeh i remember my assistant showing me that a few years back; i did a double-take when she dragged everything onto the Vegas timeline using the IFO. :)


"I happened on the IFO file technique by accident."
that's what she said.