Working with VOB files in Final Cut?

[thefiddler]

I personally use Vegas on my HP laptop and love the setup. However, I'm involved in making commercials for the various activities here at my University. On campus we have a Mac with Final Cut on it. I'm not real experienced with macs so forgive me if any of this is dumb.

There are several departments that want commercials made for them and or an activity they are sponsoring. They all have video on DVD (yeah I know it would be better to get some of the raw video, not compressed for DVD, but this is what we've got) that they want us to use to put into their commercial. I can bring them home, pull them into Vegas and convert the video over to quicktimeDV video, then take it up there. But that's a lot of hastle we don't want to go through if we can help it.

So can we pull the VOB's off of DVDs and edit them with Final Cut? If so, how? If "yes, but...", do we just need to get and install a codec or something? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[mikiem]

Not a MAC person, but... Pgcdemux will strip all the relevant files out of the DVD vobs for you on your PC. Imagine there should be equivelant prog for MACs.

That would give you m2v & audio which can be muxed if required for import. Potential prob is that most software won't allow more then cut editing without recompression, but then you're decoding, recompresing anyway going to DV. Might not know for sure on additional codecs until try to import (short test?) m2v or mpg into FC. Check docs?

[AntnyMD]

Or, in English

1. Copy the VIDEO_TS folder onto your hard drive. Better yet, just use MPEG Streamclip to open the VTS_01_1.vob file from the disc itself and, when it asks if you want to open the rest, choose Yes.

2. Select File > Export to DV. Wait for DV conversion to complete.

3. Open DV file in Final Cut Pro and edit edit edit.

[thefiddler]

Thanks AntnyMD, MPEG Streamclip is exactly what I needed.

[jcscmng]

Hey Guys I have a problem when I try this. I ask MPEG Streamclip to convert the VOB file and it churns for about 5 seconds, then claims it's complete. However, when I try to play the DV file in QT 7 PRO or iMovie it is simply the chapter menu that have been converted. None of the approx. 1 GB of video has been converted. What am I doing wrong?
DAVE

[AntnyMD]

Either:
-- dont start with the video_ts.vob file (this is your menu), or
-- fix timecode breaks once you load all the files, then convert to dv.

[jcscmng]

I have always enabled "fix time code breaks" and it still does the same thing. There are two other Video files that are "convertable" and they convert fine, playing back in both QT 7 PRO and iMovie. However, they are only about 30 seconds. So how do I get past the chapter titles to the meat of my video. This is the file where it is at. The other two files are about 900 megs each? I also have Toast Titanium 7 and am willing to use that if it will work better.

[pianoman719]

If you're having trouble figuring out where different content is located on the source DVD, try using Yade X (freeware). It will give you a visual preview of the different tracks, chapters, etc. You can use Save VOB to create a single VOB of an entire title, a single chapter, a run of chapters, etc.

But even in MPEG Streamclip, you should be able to open individual VOBs and get a sense of which sequence of VOBs contains just the motion footage you want and no menus. Once you know the list of VOBs to open, you can shift-click to select them from Streamclip's Open Files dialog.

Once you've opened a VOB or sequence of VOBs in Streamclip, and done a Cmd-F to temporarily fix timecode breaks, you can set in/out points to Export only the section you want.

If the above tips still don't solve the problem, try this:

- In Streamclip, open the VOB(s) you need to Export.

- In Preferences, make sure Fix Timecode Breaks is checked.

- Now choose Convert To MPEG from the file menu. This will write out a new .mpeg with fresh timecode and no timecode breaks.

- Open the new .mpeg file and use that to Export to DV.

Note: If the original DVD is film rate, be sure and use MPEG Streamclip 1.6.b1 or later, which is the first version that can Convert or Demux film rate material:

http://www.alfanet.it/squared5/mpegstreamclip.html

P.S. Make sure you have enough disk space to do the Export. DV is about 2 GB per 10 minutes of video.

[jcscmng]

Okay, I will try this tonight. Thanks for the heads up on the DV file sizes. I will be wanting to make DVDs of my home movies that are up to 2 hours long, which will bring up some more questions. But they can be brought up later. Thanks for your response. Any other suggestions are also welcome.