VOB to MPEG

Bonefish wrote on 3/8/2002, 4:40 PM
By some stroke of blind luck I managed to burn my first two VV3 projects to DVD the day before my hard drive crashed and burned. But, one wasn't really finished, and I'd like to bring it back into VV3 for further work. Two questions:

1. I was able to get the VOB files back to the hard drive, but VV3 doesn't recognize these files. Presume I have to encode them back to MPEG2. Any suggestions on how to do this, if it's possible?

2. What is the best way to backup projects-in-process as a safeguard (I'd hate to lose one after hours and hours of work). Print to tape every now and then?

Thanks for your help.

Comments

slr wrote on 3/8/2002, 5:49 PM
I had a similar problem in that I lost my source material and wanted to extract the MPEG-2 stream off of the DVD I burned. There are many shareware "ripping" tools that almost did what I wanted, but the closest I got was to extracting video only or extracting seperate video and audio elementary streams that VV can't handle.

I finally came across a simple utility that did exactly what I wanted. It's called MPEG Utilities by VITEC Multimedia. You can find basic info on this at http://www.vitecmm.com/public/home/products/utilmod.html?sess=1015630025

The package is $39 and contains 2 utilities: VOBtoMPEG and MPEGRemix. MPEGRemix seemed to have problems on my XP machine where it hung around after quitting consuming resources. I don't really have a need for it anyway, so I tossed it.

VOBtoMPEG is a very basic utility. You specify a source file (the first VOB file on your DVD) select the elementary streams or elementary and program streams option (program is what you're looking for) and start it. It prompts for a destination, then processes all the VOB files and creates 3 output files (if you selected the program stream option).

Once the de-multiplexing is done, look for the *.m2p (or was that *.mp2 ?) file and rename it to *.mpg (this lets it show up in the VV explorer without having to turn on "show all files"). This file should now be usable in VV. You can delete the other two files (elementary audio and video stream files). Also note that this program does no re-encoding as many rippers do, so you won't degrade your video in the process.

Hope that helps.

Steve
Bonefish wrote on 3/8/2002, 11:06 PM
Thanks, Steve, that sounds like just what I need. I've downloaded the file and am working on it now. I'd already ripped the VOB files from the DVD back to the hard drive. But, do you know if MPEG Utilities can take it straight from the DVD, i.e. do the ripping and recoding to MPEG in one move?
slr wrote on 3/8/2002, 11:15 PM
As long as its not a copy protected disk, it works fine direct from DVD (that's how I did it). If its copy protected, I'm pretty sure it won't work direct from DVD. Haven't tried that though...

Steve
tomadonna wrote on 3/9/2002, 5:24 AM
This question was asked before - Click on this link to see my instructions:

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?Forum=4&MessageID=85838