DVD authoring with vob's.....what prog. to use????

[jnk76]

Hello,

I am backing up sopranos on dvd and I stuck on trying to author the dvd's.

I want to put 3 episodes on one disk and I have the vob's for each ep. which were compressed slightly by dvd2one.

I just want a simple menu to pop up to choose the episode to watch and when the episode is done to loop back to menu.

Spruce up is tool I would like to use but it does not accepts vob files.

Any suggestions?

btw I want to keep the chapters as they are....I don't want to get rid of them or recreate them. I know with spruce up I would have to recreate but would like to avoid.

Thanks

[David K]

You just need to demultiplex ("demux") the VOB files into one separate video file (file extension .m2v) and one separate audio file (ac3) and then you can load them into Spruce up. Make sure the files have exactly the same file name except for the extension and that they are in the same folder, then load the video file first and Spruce up should automatically load the audio one too. (Kinda weird but it works.)

Tmpenc has a demuxer tool that works with vobs I think if you choose display all files, and there is this new freeware Xmuxer (see this site's tool section) that can demux a vob.

[Bob W]

NeoDVD Plus works well with VOB files and you of course may construct your own menu and chapter points.

[jnk76]

Well,

Another road block. Ea. episode has 2 vobs and when I try and demux the 2nd one it does not recognize the audio. I have tried joing the vobs with vobedit but same results. I will try Neodvd next.

There must be an easy way to convert the vobs to m2v and ac3 files?

[David K]

Try playing the vob files in WinDVD or another software player that plays vobs to make sure the second one has sound.

Did you or someone else at one point split the original Episode Vob into two. I had similar problems when I split vob files. It can screw up the file header so other programs cannot figure it out and find the right streams.

[jnk76]

the vobs play fine. The reason there are two is because the first is just over 1 GB. All the files I have seen as vobs are always like this.

I am hitting roadblock after roadblock. I tried using MF2 and even though the files I imported in show to be 4.35 GB......in MF2 when imported it comes out to well over 5GB.....I think it was close to 6 GB actually.
No idea why it did that. I did use DVD2one and did a disk copy but was not happy with results.....I guess I will try IC7.

[jnk76]

Sorry to bump but IC7 sucked as well. There were blocks all over the place. I guess 4 ep. is too hard for these programs. I was glad to do less but still have no way of importing the vobs into a program. MF2 increased the size for some reason and I couldn't get NeoDVD to work for me.

Anyone else?

[wingnut]

Hi there,

Im in the process of backing up my Star Trek Next Gen box set, (partially because I'm beta testing DVD LAB but also because at £60 a pop I dont want to het a scratch and loose 4 episodes )

This is the process I use on each disk:

Rip all files using smartripper with deregion and remove macrovision set

Start DVD Shrink and use re-author to pick each one episode

Select reencode and remove uneccessary languages/subs and set level 1, (and no higher than 2 maximum) and create new VOB sets in separate folders for each episode

Repeat for the other episodes

Now run DVD2AVI on each VOBSET for each episode to get the AC3 audio

Then run VOBEDIT on each episode to end up with joinable VOBS, (otherwise you can get blocking at the joins)

Use WOMBLES MPEG2VCR to combine the VOBS for each individual episode into one and save as an m2v (womble doesnt re-encode so is perfect for this and is not as crash happy as the join tools in TMPGENC)

Now we have an m2v (video) and AC3 (DD audio for each episode)

At this point they can be loaded into your authoring package.

I also rip and then reauthor the menus in Premier so that the motion menu in DVD LAB shows the correct (3 instead of 4) number of episodes per disk.

All in all it takes a couple of hours per disk not including burning.

Cheers

Edz

[David K]

Wingnut,

Do you know a setting to ensure that Womble Mpeg-VCR will just merge and not re-encode, because it does have a built in encoder. It certainly re-encodes at least at the joints if you use any transitional effects. I've noticed that it takes much longer to join clips than TMPGenc's join tool, and this leads me to believe that it is actually re-encoding rather than just merging. I've also run some post-merge clips thru bitrate viewer and the streams look different.

[jnk76]

I also am doing the next gen series and I am going to using CCE for that series. I have done some testing and I can put 5 episodes per disk without noticing much loss. Not sure if I can get away with that later as the video gets better in the later seasons.
The way I am trying currently with the sopranos is:

Using ifoedit strip episode one of disk with soundtrack.
Using DVD2one compress to certain size. I started with 4 ep. per disc but DVD2one and IC7 did a bad job so I will try 3 ep. and this should be fine.
Then open ifoedit again and change option of output size from 1GB to no split. It will just join the vobs to one since I had problems demuxing when they were separate.
I used vobedit to demux after that.
I will then author using probably spruce up and hopefully no more problems.

[wingnut]

Wingnut,

Do you know a setting to ensure that Womble Mpeg-VCR will just merge and not re-encode, because it does have a built in encoder. It certainly re-encodes at least at the joints if you use any transitional effects. I've noticed that it takes much longer to join clips than TMPGenc's join tool, and this leads me to believe that it is actually re-encoding rather than just merging. I've also run some post-merge clips thru bitrate viewer and the streams look different.

Hmmm, hadnt noticed that myself, you do have to be carefull with MPEG2VCR or it can go into reencode mode, just FYI my method is as follows, after running DVD shrink on my episode I'll have files like

D:\TNG\angelone\VTS_01_001.VOB
D:\TNG\angelone\VTS_01_002.VOB

which I run through VOBEDIT / join clips to a filename of angelone, giving me

D:\TNG\angelone\angelo_1.VOB
D:\TNG\angelone\angelo_2.VOB

Open up mpeg2vcr and open mpeg move angelo_1.VOB
Hit the copy to clipboard button and then close the movie

Open mpeg move angelo_2.VOB
ensure you are at the first frame of the second VOB then drag the first clip from the clipboard onto the second movie

Select the whole movie as the range and hit the record buton, I then select video only and save, after around 40 seconds I have a new video stream ready to go with my AC3 ripped earlier in DVD2AVI.

Cheers

Edz