Question: VOB to MPEG (I bought the Pinnacle Dazzle from Woot)

Hello. I have a question about converting VOB fiels to MPGs. I really just wanted to rip my Sony Hi8s I have laying around from my camcorder. I recently bought the Pinnacle Dazzle from Woot because that seemed like the easiest way to do it. I can go straight to a DVD no problem, however I want to edit the video first. Each tape contains a hodgepodge of subjects and I'd like to regroup them and then burn them onto separate DVDs with chapters and fancy menus and such for the family.

The Dazzle rips to my hard drive as a VOB, BUP,and IFO files. I find these to difficutl to edit with my simple Roxio DVD maker software so I wanted to convert them to MPEG. How can I do that?

I've seen some nonsense where a guy claims you just change the file extension but that didn't work. I also couldnt' get some programs like StreamClip to work properly. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Try a program called Vob2Mpeg. It is free to use and it won't degrade the quality of the video. It just merges the vob files into one mpeg2 file.

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/VOB2MPG

Thanks but that doesn't seem to work. I just get an mpeg that is frozen on the first image. I'll try a few more times.

I've never had a dvd do that with Vob2Mpeg. There might be something off kilter with your dvd output from Pinnacle Dazzle.

Do a couple of things to test this theory. First download DVDShrink. Just click on it there in that line and it will take you to the downloads here at cdfreaks. I don't want you to use it, just see if DVDShrink will successfully open and analyze the dvd. DVDShrink is a stickler for correct dvd structure, and if it cannot open the dvd something is wrong.

If you have problems there, download FixVTS. http://www.videohelp.com/tools/FixVTS Run the dvd through it, then try DVDShrink or Vob2Mpeg again and see if that corrected any errors in the video.

DVD Shrink had no problems reading any of the VOB files. I tried several programs to open the MPG and still nothing. Only Windows Media player will open the file but it will not play, only show one frame at a time. I'll keep fiddling and see it's a setting or something.

It's interesting that VOB2MPG only wants to see the IFO file. I would have thought it would actually look for the VOB.

I always use the Video_TS folder as the input for Vob2MPeg, not individual vob or ifo files.