VOB2MPEG video duration only 3 seconds yet file is complete?

[Rudyard]

A mates father recently passed away and they took video of his last weeks on one of those record to mini dvd camcorders.

They have 8 little discs and he asked me to put it together on 1 or 2 dvds (they are not all full).

Anyway I thought I would use vob2mpg and then ulead video studio 9 so that I can use the smart render funtion to basically make a DVD without recompressing the files.

However VOB2MPG 2.5 takes hourse with the files and then reports a strange error.

So I used the ealier version of VOB2MPG and it works in seconds and I get a correct sized MPEG from it however when you play it it says the duration is only 3 seconds.

In sony vegas it imports after a while and plays the correct length (20 odd minutes) but it doesnt import the audio.

In video studio it imports but only plays and renders 3 seconds.

Any thoughts on the problem?

Worst comes to worst I can reencode but was hoping to avoid it if possible.

Thanks for any help

[guns1inger]

First question would be are the discs finalised ?

If they are then you might try VideoRedo to see if it can open them and create a new mpg file. It will do this without re-encoding.

Which version of Vegas are you using. Both 6 and 7 should be able to work with the contents of a camera, and read the AC3 audio in the VOBs. Make sure you have the latest version of either of these.

[Rudyard]

Sorry for the late reply, im having internet problems atm.

I assume they are finalised, I only have the discs not the camera and they seem to have your normal DVD structure.....they play in a dvd player so I guess they have to be?

I will try videoredo and see what happens.

I was running Vegas 5 but I just yesterday upgraded to vegas 7....havent had a chance to try it out yet but ill see what it will do.

[guns1inger]

Vegas should read the file, however Vegas in not a native mpeg editor, so it will decompress the video on the timeline, and everything will have to be re-encoded. Depending on what you need to do, this may not be an issue. However it will be slower and risk lowering quality.

Using a dedicated mpeg editor such as Womble or VideoRedo is the faster and better quality option is your editing needs are modest.