How to fix long VOB seek times

[aliasx51]

Hi guys,

I am digitising my home movie DVD collection to my hard disk using DVD Decrypter with no beak in the main VOB file. Consequently, I get one large (4-6GB) file with the main movie from each DVD, and a bunch of IFOs, menu titles etc, that I then discard. This is fine for me as I have enough space for the small project and do not want to edit further.

However, I encounter the odd intermittent problem. On most rips, everything works fine and the VOBs play back and forth very quickly. On certain DVDs, however, the large VOB file plays in Media Player Classic but seek forward or backwards takes an unearthly amount of time (20 or 30 secs vs. instant in other cases). Nothing changes in the settings, and the VOB file sizes all vary so memory is clearly not the cause. What is happening here?

Are there certain VOBs that I will simply need to remux (what's the quickest way of doing this)? What else could be causing this?

Thanks,
A.

You are in breach of the forum rules and are being issued with a formal warning. You've exceed the tolerance for crossposting.
/ Moderator redwudz

[Midzuki]

Please do not crosspost.
This is not Usenet.

[aliasx51]

Hi Midzuki, thanks. Good to see you are in the habit of helping others. Anybody have some constructive thoughts?

[MJA]

noob with bad attitude .reported

5 threads for 1 question

[usually_quiet]

According to the DVD standard, VOB's should be split at about one GB, creating a set of VOB's instead of one large file. That is likely the source of your problem. You could try to convert the large VOB files to an mpg using VOB2MPG. mpg files play just fine in all the software players I've tried, although they won't in most set-top players. Of couse, the huge VOB files you have now probably wouldn't play in those either.

It's nice to have a new member. However if you re-read the General section of the complete forum rules, found at https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=124514 you will see cross posting is indeed prohibited.

[Noahtuck]

Hi Midzuki, thanks. Good to see you are in the habit of helping others. Anybody have some constructive thoughts?

Yeah.. a banning for multiple post's on the same subject in diff. forums

[aliasx51]

Thanks usually_quiet. This doesn't explain why some of the 6gb VOBs have no problem, whilst others do (some of the ones that work fine are larger, up to 7GB)?

[aedipuss]

seek times can be affected by the encoding of the mpeg-2. closed gops are better faster and preferred as the cpu won't have to decode multiple gops simultaneously. but there's nothing you can do about it once it's encoded.

[Midzuki]

Not all MPEG-2 encodes are "well-treated" by the internal
MPEG-2 decoder of MPC or by the chosen external decoder
it can be using. Have you already tried with other media players?

[usually_quiet]

The more technical explanations others gave you seem as good as any. I lack the expertise to improve on them.

In general, if one decides to break the rules, one had better know what one is doing, and even then one should expect to get into trouble sometimes as a result. As a group, software DVD players just happen to be more flexible about what they will play than stand-alone DVD players, and that is the only reason you can play these large .VOB files at all, especially since you have discarded the IFO files that should be used with them.

I was confused by your original post. I took "home movie DVD collection" to mean recordings of birthday parties, family outings etc. which had been authored to double layered DVD's by you or someone else. Now it seems more likely that you are ripping commercially produced DVD's instead, which would contain chapters and subtitles. I would have given you somewhat different advice had I realized that.

Development on DVD Decrypter was forcibly stopped some time ago, and it is out of date. You need something better for ripping commercial DVD's. Try the latest DVDFab HD Decrypter. ...and don't try to join the .VOB's into one big file.

If you want to keep chapters and subtitles, you might use DVD Shrink (or similar program) to eliminate unwanted menus and features from the ripped DVD. (There are guides for that on this site.) "Shrinking" your ripped DVD will still leave some "extra" files but it should play better with those than without them.

If you don't need chapters and subtitles, you can still try VOB2MPG. Though I can't guarantee that will solve your problem, joining VOB's being somewhat problematic, but the resulting file will at least be smaller.