Black frames in VOB files from DVD movies in Vegas?

[thefiddler]

I'm just playing around with some video from some films in Vegas (VOB files ripped from DVD movies that I own), but I keep getting black frames. They just appear occasionally, and there's usually only one by itself, then there wont be another for at least several minutes. Sometimes the image seems a little screwed up too (like it shows the previous few frames again instead of the next few).

These problems are apperant even when I use the keyboard to advance one frame at a time. So it's not just the real-time preview. Do I just need to rip with something other than DVD Decrypter? Or maybe turn off the option to strip the Macrovision? I'm just not sure why it's doing this, and am therefore not sure what to try to remedy it.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[guns1inger]

That's the risk of using VOBs. VOBS contain more than just the video and audio. Many DVDs are authored with short clips and titles that aid in the structure - perhaps to cheap a way around the spec - that you don't see during normal playback. Ripping the VOBs and and using them without demuxing the just the titles that you need menas you can pick up things you don't want.

The VOB container was designed for DVD playback, period. It wasn't designed for editing or anything else.

If you must work with the content, demux what you need and use that instead. Much less risky.

[thefiddler]

Okay, so how's the best way to demux? You don't have to explain in really basic terms, I've dealt with this stuff before, but it's been a while. I'm still going to need to rip the VOB's though, right? Then what, just run them through whatever software will demux them for me? Will that preserve the DD Audio, and keep the 29.976fps video, plus keep both in synch/the same length?

EDIT: Baisically, I don't care about subtitles or any other info, I just want to be able to play around with the video, & preserve the surround audio, & not have a big pain in the butt trying to get the two synched up. I thought that because Vegas could import VOB's, I could bypass all that, but appearantly not.

Thanks for the help guns1inger.

[guns1inger]

VOB support in Vegas was mainly for those horrible DVD cameras and for DVD recorders. They tend to have little to no extraneous crap in them. The advantage it does have is the preservation of AC3 audio tracks.

Before going down the demux route, try using something like DVD Shrink in re-author mode to get just the video and audio that you need into a single set of VOBs. No menus, subs or other bits and pieces. Then import these new VOBs into Vegas. This might aloow you to get what you want without the detritus.

[thefiddler]

That sounds good. I'll give that a try. I knew that's why they had VOB support in Vegas, but I guess I just thought it gave me a shortcut. Oh well. I'll try the DVD Shrink route, see if that works. Oh, and I don't have to preserve the DD surround, but it would be nice. I really don't want to re-compress the VOBs though, since I'd like to put some clips back out to DVD when I'm done.

[guns1inger]

You can change the compression settings for the title to "No Compression" in Shrink. if it is too big for the chosen disc disc you will get a warning, but it will still produce an output without compression. I often do this to create stripped down titles for processing in DVD Rebuilder.

[thefiddler]

I think there must be a way to get it set right in DVD Decrypter, I'm playing around with some of the settings there. Too bad the website is gone (since it got bought or whatever), I just don't know enough about all the settings to be sure what's right. Hopefully with a little playing around I'll get it though. That will be best for me. If this doesn't work, I'll try DVD Shrink.

Here's a question: what exactly is happening if I Demux? There's an option to Demux on DVD Decrypter, but do I want to use the files that creates?

EDIT: here's the problem with demuxing: I can't import .m2v files into Vegas. So once I get it demuxed from DVD Decrypter, I have an M2V video file and a VOB audio. The VOB audio is great because its still Dolby Digital, but now how do I repackage the M2V in a readable format without recompressing it?

Surely somebody's been through all this before and has discovered a streamlined way to work with DVD movie files?

[thefiddler]

One method I've figured out is that I can rip Demuxed as I said. Then take the .M2V files into a great little program I ran accross called SUPER, and convert them to .AVI (Huffyuv). Then I pull the .avi files into Vegas & synch them with the .VOB's (sound only). This works except the .AVI files are huge of course becuase Huffyuv is lossless compression. I just wish I could figure out how to get SUPER to let me convert them to a true DV coded instead of Huffyuv. This would make for smaller filesizes, though a little more compression in the process then if I stuck with Huffyuv.

Just thought I'd give an update in case anyone else is/does try the same thing.