How do I convert VOB to MPG or get them into Pinnacle?

[fwbaumann]

I made a family video and burned it to a dvd. Now I would like to re-edit, but the original tape is gone. I ripped the dvd to a vob on the hard drive and this file plays ok with Power DVD. Pinnacle studio 9 will not accept a vob file so I changed the ext to mpg and mp2. (tried both) They both load into Pinnacle 9, however and show on the clip menu. When the clips are inserted to the timeline they look ok, however, they will not play. Only the Pinnacle logo is shown on the edit play back. The clip editor shows the first frame and last frame but will not play or trim the clip. I suspect that the menu on the original DVD is hosing up the works. I was able to load the mpg file into ULEAD 8. The video played without sound. (I prefer Pinnacle 9 and my editing platform.)

Is there any way to correct this or any freeware to convert a VOB directly to a mpg. (and exclude any menu) Also, I would like to get short clips from several DVD's and edit/reassemble them to another DVD, but am stumped on how to do this without converting to analog first. For quality reasons I do not want to do this.

Thanks,
Fred

[svcdmaker]

Your problem may relate to the audio format. I do not think that pinnacle studio can handle the DVD audio formats. This would mean that you would have to demux the video and convert the audio. You should be able to pull the seperate streams into Pinnacle studio.

[fwbaumann]

Is there any other way of doing this? Separating the audio and video causes me great gas pains in the gut when trying to re-sync the two. Every time I've tried this I get a lip sinked hongkong special.
It isn't only pinnacle that has problems Ulead and Primiere also choke on the VOB when the ext is changed to mpg. A simple conversion to mpg would be much better, but I do not know how to do this. Removal of the menu when demuxing would probably do the trick, but I don't know how to do that either.
Fred

[qpskfec]

If Pinnacle 9 is like version 8, it will not work with ac3 audio.

If you want to edit vobs/mpgs, you'll need an mpeg editor, like womble mper2vcr. Load your edited file into Ulead DVD movie factory. There are free trials for both.

[gshelley61]

Womble MPEG Video Wizard or MPEG-VCR. Frame accurate cut and join editing with no re-encoding (no loss of quality). Then re-author your DVD with whatever authoring software you like.

[Epicurus8a]

Womble MPEG Video Wizard or MPEG-VCR. Frame accurate cut and join editing with no re-encoding (no loss of quality). Then re-author your DVD with whatever authoring software you like.

Womble has a 30 day free trial period. I think they are also offering a discount coupon if you decide to purchase. MVW is great! Check it out.

[wwjd]

Two other software recommendations would be VideoReDo or TMPGenc
DVD Author. Both will work with VOB's. VideoReDo is $50 and TDA around
$60. Solid easy to use software for mpeg.