Authoring DVD from VOB files

[ScottAJJD]

I have a bunch of old home movies on VHS tapes that I want to transfer to DVD, with preservation of quality as my number one priority. As I see it, I have 3 options for doing this:

1. Play the tapes on a VCR with the signal going into my DV camcorder, with a IEEE1394 connection to my computer. Capture the video. Encode to mpeg, etc. I've done this before, but I found it to be very time intensive, and I was confused at times by all the various encoding settings in TMPGEnc Plus 2.5.

2. Play the tapes on a VCR with the signal going into my Panasonic DMR-HS2 stand alone DVD recorder (with 40GB hard drive). Do some very limited editing on the DMR-HS2, and burn a DVD. Never use the computer.

3. Play the tapes on a VCR with the signal going into my Panasonic DMR-HS2 DVD recorder (with 40GB hard drive). Burn a DVD. Get the *.VOB files off this DVD and onto my computer, where I can somehow (?) use this video (with no further compression/encoding or further loss of quality) and make my own menus with Ulead DVD MovieFactory, and then burn a DVD using my computer's DVD+RW drive.

I'd prefer option #3, because it allows me the flexibility of making some reasonably nice menus, whereas my stand-alone DVD recorder has extremely limited editing options and very ugly menus. I also prefer option #3, because it saves my the time of encoding the mpeg, and I presume it would be much simpler to me, a novice in the area of DVD authoring.

Thus, my question is -- I just want the video and audio files from the DVD that my stand-alone DVD recorder creates. From reading the forums here, I believe this information is contained in the *.VOB files. Is there a way to get this information out of the *.VOB files and into a format that Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2 will recognize? Keep in mind that my primary concern is that I don't want to re-encode/re-compress anything once I have burned the initial DVD on my stand-alone DVD recorder. (i.e., I want the video and audio quality of the DVD I burn with Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2 to be completely indistinguishable from the initial DVD I burned with my Panasonic DMR-HS2 stand alone DVD recorder.)

Once I have a video and an audio file that Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2 will recognize, I'm good to go. (i.e., I understand how to make the menus and burn the DVD.)

Does anyone have any advice or suggestions? Thanks in advance for your help.

Scott

[ZippyP.]

I know that Womble mpeg video wizard will convert a vob to mpeg without re-encoding.