Topic: Converting VOBs?

[Quemaqua]

So I have this old, crappy, beat up DVD.  I extracted it, got the VOBs on my hard drive, and then wanted to just directly convert one of them so I could pull off a music video and upload it to YouTube.  Problem is, when I use AGK to convert the VOBs to XviD AVIs, the sound gets desynced halfway through.  It's really aggravating.  AGK also gives me a message about the file being linked or part of a series or something, I think because of the other VOBs, but again, the sound starts *out* fine, then just gets desynced as it goes on (even though the audio sounds fine).

Any ideas what I should be doing?  I'm such a newb at this.  But I want to upload a really obscure video of a long-defunct band since I tried to find it for years and never could.  It still doesn't exist out there, and I'm sure there are a few people that would be happy to have it go up.

[scottws]

Try MeGUI instead.  Though I've had luck with AutoGk before, the desyncing problem is a symptom of the AVI container.  MeGUI supports both the MKV and MP4 containers, so you won't have that trouble.  Plus you'll be able to do AAC audio if you want, plus get the H.264 video encoder.  Or you can use XviD still if you want.

[Quemaqua]

Sidenote - are there any good free video editing tools?  All I really need is something that can crop a video.  I usually just use the stupid Windows Movie Maker thing, which sucks, but it sort of mostly gets the job done as long as you don't need quality.

[Cobra951]

It sounds like the conversion is not doing an accurate frame rate conversion.  (The problem is the video, not the audio.)  If the original source was film, then it should do an inverse telecine to 24 fps.  I know this is doable with AVIs, because I see perfect DVD rips of movies to XviD AVIs all the time.  It's all in what tools are used and how.  I wish I could be more specific, but too seldom have I wanted to convert DVD material into AVIs.

But before this step, you probably want to do a proper rip of the DVD, not simply copy VOBs.  You can rip and reauthor with DVD Shrink 3.2.  It's out there, and it's still the best tool of its kind, I think.

[Quemaqua]

I used to know more about this when I did it regularly.  I use DVD Decrypter to get all the stuff out, and then I used to convert from there.  It always worked before, but I can't remember how I used to do it.  I also had DVD Shrink at one point which I used for a number of things, but my memory is like a sieve.  I just don't retain this stuff.

[scottws]

Sidenote - are there any good free video editing tools?  All I really need is something that can crop a video.  I usually just use the stupid Windows Movie Maker thing, which sucks, but it sort of mostly gets the job done as long as you don't need quality.

No, as far as I can tell there aren't really any good free video editing tools.  Well there's VirtualDubMod, but it's format support is limited and it's not really very easy to do anything in it.

But yeah, I still use DVD Decrypter for this stuff.  There aren't any new versions, but it doesn't matter since the most recent one still works just fine.

[Quemaqua]

Well, I tried MeGUI and wasn't having much luck figuring it out, so I ended up just FRAPSing the fucking thing with VLC, heh.  Surprisingly, it worked just fine.  Now I have all the video I need right in one spot, all done, no extra steps.  I tried that before with another program and it wasn't reliable... skipped a lot, etc.  VLC did the job, though.

Thanks for the advice in any case!

[Cools!]

DVD movies are spread out across a bunch of VOBs, so when you get that multiple file message, it's normal and you are supposed to load them all as one, but I'm not familiar with the application you are using.

If you've got someone with a Mac, you can use MPEG Streamclip (link) to convert from VOBs, or Handbrake (link) to convert directly from a DVD.

[Cobra951]

You can even rip the whole movie in a DVD to a single VOB.  DVD Shrink does it, and I imagine other rippers will too.  The only thing to be wary of is that you can't use a FAT drive to hold files over 4 GB in size.  NTFS for Windows (and I punt for Macs).  I imagine some older apps will also have trouble dealing with anything over 4 GB, or maybe even 2 GB (if signed 32-bit ints are used in the code).

The best thing to do is deal with the DVD as a DVD, not a collection of video objects.  Ideally, the editor should be able to deal directly with the IFO file structure.