VOB Video & Audio Work Flow

VideJoe wrote on 8/18/2005, 9:01 AM
Hi, some of you may find some tips here how to include VOB files in Vegas & DVDA projects.
In any case, this is how I do it and it works well for me.
Naturally it took a fair amount of trial and error before reaching satisfactory results. But I am sure there are (better?) alternatives. Anyway, this is the one I know and use.

I use dvddecrypter to create an non-splitted VOB file from any given DVD.
Dvddecrypter is a free tool which does the job nicely. You may want to have AnyDVD or DVDIdle (Pro) running in the event of ripping copy and region protected DVD’s.

Once you have your VOB file you face some options.
You may change the file name to one with a *.mpg extension and load it directly into Vegas. In my experience Vegas (both 5 & 6) is likely to crash from time to time while trying to edit these mpg files.
Converting the VOB file into a AVI file, utilizing virtualdub, is probably a better option but will create a very large AVI file.

As far as the audio part of VOB files is concerned. I use Ufony to extract audio from a VOB file. Ufony is a nice and cheap tool that will do the trick quite well. You can also use free tools like BeSweet (with a GUI interface like BeLight).
As Ufony does not let you extract VOB audio into Dolby Digital AC3 files, you may want to use BeSweet instead.
In case you do not want to edit the VOB file, you can directly insert the VOB file (with mpg extension that is) into a DVDA project and add the WAV, MP3, etc. audio track you extracted with Ufony, BeSweet or the like.
In Sound Forge or a similar application you can further tweaken the WAV, MP3 etc. file if required, like normalizing the volume. Do not temper with the length of the track though!
In case you want to preserve the Dolby Digital audio track, just add the AC3 file you extracted with BeSweet to the DVDA project. Again, this only works if the original VOB (mpg) file is not edited in Vegas, otherwise the video and the AC3 audio are out of sync.
Until now I haven’t found a proper tool to edit AC3 files.

I also use the above approach to rip audio from (music) DVD’s (and sync it with my iPod).
After ripping the audio from a DVD into WAV or MP3, you can remove the unwanted songs, extensive intro’s and applause in Sound Forge to keep only the selections you want.

Hope this helps somewhat. Alternative approaches are most welcom of course.

~Dries.

All of the above mentioned tools you can find in these locations:

www.softe.net (Ufony)
www.dvddycrypter.com (DVDDycrypter)
www.doom9.org (BeSweet, BeLight etc.)
www.dvdidle.com (DVDIdle)
www.slysoft.com (AnyDVD)
www.virtualdub.org (VirtualDub)
http://fcchandler.home.comcast.net/stable/ (VirtualDub for MPEG)

Comments

B_JM wrote on 8/18/2005, 9:15 AM
not required ... you can import VOBs with ac3 audio directly into Vegas 6 now ..

the easy way for this to work is to install the Sony Movie Studio demo ..


and mpeg2vcr will edit ac3 files when they are part of a program stream .. so will the pro version of vitec .....

VideJoe wrote on 8/18/2005, 9:28 AM
Because VOB files do not show up in the Explorer of Vegas 6 you have to select All Files from the File/Import/Media menu. That is correct.
But the AC audio stream is converted to a single audio track. I haven't checked it yet, but I wonder if rendering again to AC3 will give you the original Dolby Digital sound track.

~Dries.
jkraus wrote on 8/19/2005, 1:29 PM
What do you mean?

If I install this demo, then I can then drop VOB files onto the Vegas 6 timeline???

Thanks
B_JM wrote on 8/19/2005, 3:08 PM
yes
jkraus wrote on 8/19/2005, 3:20 PM
Thank you, Thank you, thank you!

It worked!

I have been trying to solve this problem in an easy and quality manner avoiding audio sync problmes for many weeks now.

This is great.

Thx!
blk_diesel wrote on 8/19/2005, 3:31 PM
Will it work with movie studio 4? I have the full version of that, I used it before stepping up to V6.
jkraus wrote on 8/19/2005, 3:37 PM
I am not sure, but the demo of version Movie Studio 6 worked so that I could then use Vegas 6 for me without even registering MS.
blk_diesel wrote on 8/19/2005, 4:33 PM
This is what I've been looking for. No more demuxing, joining vobs and converting them to mpeg, nothing. I'm excited.
jkraus wrote on 8/19/2005, 5:27 PM
Oops, may have spoken too soon.

It does work, but am having Audio sync problems both when rendering to Avi and Mpeg2.

Any thoughts?

Joe
B_JM wrote on 8/19/2005, 9:59 PM
you may -- IF the VOB has more than one stream, has delay or a couple other things

if so -- and if you can .. render the audio out to a wav file first and use THAT file instead of the ac3 in the vob (mute or delete it off time line)

farss wrote on 8/20/2005, 3:38 AM
Wow,
this is indeed good news, not that I'm into ripping DVDs but having just got the email about the Platinum version of Vegas Movie Studio I was about to have a winge about how come we pay more and miss out on some useful bits and pieces.
Thank you B_JM.

Bob.
jkraus wrote on 8/20/2005, 10:45 AM
The convert to .wav and replace the audio track seemed to work OK.

Thanks for the tip.

Joe