For AVI, it depends on what the codec is and whether you have it installed or not. What type of AVI?

So far as VOB is concerned, you can change the ending of a single VOB to MPG and it should import. More than one VOB needs to be concatenated into a single file first with an MPG extension. If you are dealing with a DVD a better approach is to open the DVD with Windows explorer (not the Vegas explorer) and drag the relevant .IFO file to the timeline. Chapter markers will also show.

If you have a single VOB file, you can change the extension. If you have multiple VOB files, only the first one in the series will work in Vegas. This is because only the first VOB file has the necessary header information. Sometimes you can get away with it if they are all in sequence. With multiple VOBs I string them together and smart-render a single mpeg2 file with Womble Mpeg Wizard (but Video Redo will work just as well). I don't like to edit this with Vegas because it will be an extra generation of mpeg2 decoding and re-encoding if I do. That is why I use Mpeg Wizard. To save that generation. It also saves a heck of a lot of time.

Thanks for your quick replies. I've managed to open VOB by changing them to mpg. The AVI's are DIVX 4. I also can't open XVID files. In fact no AVI files will open. I've got both XVID and DIVX codecs installed on my PC. I'm using the latest VP 11 update.

>>only the first one in the series will work in Vegas<<

Not true. Instead of changing the extension to .mpg, open all info files and that will bring in all VOB files automatically. Do a search on this forum for detail instructions on how to do this.

See this thread
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=797177

which might also be of help.

Kent

Edited to correct link

Xvid and DivX are not supported by Vegas.

The solution is to not use Xvid or DivX so just convert the files with something like AviDemux to a format like Motion-JPEG video with PCM audio and the files should edit fine.

Slightly OT - if anyone suggests that you can edit Xvid or Divx by installing a CODEC pack - DONT!. Codec Packs can and often do overwrite the good codecs installed by Vegas with inferior ones.

"The solution is to not use Xvid or DivX so just convert the files with something like AviDemux to a format like Motion-JPEG video with PCM audio and the files should edit fine."

No conversion needed. Just open the .IFO file instead. This was covered in the link given above.

That thread is a mine of information. I've bookmarked it. My only concern is that if I have to recode AVI files what should I recode them to and won't the file reduce in quality if I recode it? I've just bought Cineform so perhaps I should recode using that.

I use quite a lot of AVI's in various projects so I'm not looking forward to recoding them all. Is there a way to change the file without recoding so that Vegas can see it?

Xvid and DivX are not supported by Vegas.Well, I guess you could also say that MOV isn't supported by Vegas (you have to install QuickTime) or that MJPEG didn't used to be supported by Vegas (in earlier versions you had to install the MJPEG codec).

However, you can edit both of those formats, and you can certainly edit Xvid and DivX: I do it all the time.

Yes, you do have to install the DivX codec. It used to be that you could just install DivX and then everything worked fine in Vegas. Perhaps they have added other stuff to their download, but in the past there was nothing installed except for the DivX codec. The file I downloaded and installed on December 13, 2007 was called DivXBundle.exe, and I chose to install only the DivX codec.

As for editing Xvid, sometimes the DivX decoder gets confused by the Xvid header and will only load the audio into Vegas. If so, you have to patch the header using the fourcc utility that comes with the codec. You can find several threads in this forum if you search on "fourcc" and my user name, or "Xvid" and my user name.