PLEASE HELP! VOB-AFI or MPEG trouble

[sleephappened]

I have been trying, for some time now, to archive my DVD's as either AVI or MPEG files, whichever looks nice but takes up little space, so that I can put several of them on one DVD-R that can be read in a consumer's television DVD player. I have a Mac, and am operating in OSX (10.2.8, possibly upgrading soon to Panther).

A friend of mine reccomended this software (ffmpegX), and said it's the only reputable video file conversions for DVD software out there for Macs, but there are so many options, I don't know what I need, or HOW to do it. Each option can be paired with another option, and every time I try, it's either too big of a file size, or has a MAJOR audio time lapse... as in, the video will be about 30-60 seconds ahead of the audio... which makes for a pretty annoying view, as I'm sure anyone would agree.

I was hoping someone could walk me through this: I use a program called 0SEx 0.0101b to actually extract the information from the DVD to my hard drive, and it is saved as a VOB file.

To be short, I guess I'm looking for the fastest, easiest, less-steps method possible to convert between 4 and 7 Gig VOB files to less than 1 Gig AFI or MPEG files (I don't know which will burn onto a DVD-R and be readable on a standard DVD player, tho I'm willing to buy a DVD player that will play them...)

If anyone would help me, it would be GREATLY appreciated!

Thanks a lot in advance,
Cherie[/i]

[major]

1. Drop the VOB file onto ffmpegX icon,
2. Select the "DivX mencoder" Quick Preset at the bottom,
3. Hit the encode button.

This will encode at same size, same quality as the source movie. If you want to change size or bitrate, you can enter it before encoding.

[sleephappened]

thank you so much! and that will make the audio correct? i'll try it right now.

[sleephappened]

i don't have a divx mencoder preset - there are XviD, DivX (libavc), and fast DivX. when i choose DivX (libavc), and hit encode, the ffmpegX progress window pops up, and 2 seconds later, the bell dings, and it says finished, but nothing shows up where saved the distination file, and I know 2 seconds would NEVER even encode 5 megs of a movie!

any suggestions?

[major]

The "DivX libavc" preset is the good one if you're using the old version of ffmpegX. About the immediate finish, click the "i" blue icon to get the process log, and post it or email it to me at major4@mac.com

[sleephappened]

hey, major, here is the log i got from clicking the blue "i" icon:

printf "Encoding started on " && date && [...]

[major]

This is not the log but the command line. Did you get an error message?

[sleephappened]

no, there was no error message, it was just "finished" without having encoded anything. i tried also downloading the newer version of ffmpegX, but it was trying to get me to download a bunch of things, and gave me URL's where to find them, but i couldn't download them once i got there, cause the link to download was just a bunch of gibberish code. needless to say, i'm somewhat frustrated!

[Case]

just a bunch of gibberish code.

Option-click a link to download to file, when a webbrowser incorrectly tries to show a binary in a new window.

[sleephappened]

thanks case!