Trying to copy .vob file from DVD, sometimes it has audio, sometimes not.

[rougher]

Hey guys, I am trying to Help my sister make a DVD resume. To do this I am trying to copy a commercial she made from a DVD so I can put it into her new DVD resume. I have used DVDShrink, vStrip, DVDRebuilder and the old copy and paste method to copy the file I needed. Then I rename the .vob to .mpeg and I try to edit the commercials I need (since there are 5 in the one .vob file and I only need 3) but there is no audio. It only seems to have audio in PowerDVD but in TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 or Sony DVD Architect 3.0 it has none. Does this have to do with the audio bitrate on the file? Can I change that somehow? Is renaming the extension from .vob to .mpeg messing it up? I am not sure where to go from here but any help or suggestion would be great.

Thanks.

[jimmalenko]

I would lean towards AC3 audio being the issue - PowerDVD definitely can play it and TMPGEnc Plus definitely can't handle it without the AC3 plugin. Dunno about DVD architect though.

[redwudz]

I would suspect AC3 also. Fairly common on DVDs. I wouldn't change a VOB to a MPEG by changing the extension, though. You might get away with that a few times, but a VOB can have several audio channels or languages, subtitles and some other formating information. They are a lot more complex than a MPEG. The easy method is to use a program like VOB2MPEG and it will extract the whole DVD to one large MPEG. After that, you could drop it into Gspot 2.60 and see what audio and video it really has. Other programs can convert VOBs to MPEGs also.

If it's AC3, you could try installing AC3 ACM Decompressor and see if TMPGEnc sees the audio. Or if AC3 is a problem to work with, you could convert it to WAV format and it may be easier to work with. The audio bitrate is likely 48Khz, which is what you want for DVDs. If you look to the upper left for 'WHAT IS' DVD, you will see the DVD specification and format. As long as you stick to that, you should have no compatibility problems.

This guide by Baldrick may give you some information on converting DVDs to something you can easily edit: https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=224833

And welcome to our forums.

[rougher]

Wow, I did not expect such a quick response - thank you very much for your help. I installed VOB2MPEG (after installing .NET Framework 2) then I used that program to extract the MPEG out of the DVD Folder. After I used GSpot 2.1 to open the file and see if It was a AC3 Audio. Unfortunately under Audio Format it shows as "n.a.". Even in Video Format it is "n.a." It is "n.a." for nearly every box except for the bottom area where it shows:

DirectShow Render
Source: MEDIASUBTYPE_MPEG2_PROGRAM
Splitter/Other: Mediamatics MPEG-2 Splitter
Video Media: MEDIASUBTYPE_MPEG2_VIDEO
Video Codec: DScaler Mpeg2 Video Decoder
Audio Media: "Shows blank"
Audio Codec: "Shows blank"

I tried opening the MPEG in TMPGEnc again with no success

By the way is there a good MPEG editing program you guys can recommend to cut/edit this file?

Thank you again, your help is much appreciated.

[rougher]

Also is it possible that the audio bitrate is not the correct one? Is there program I could use to change the bitrate?

[redwudz]

That's too old a version of Gspot. Try 2.60 and it may tell you a little more. The original Gspot was for AVI, so it may not read MPEGs properly. Don't panic yet. Your audio may be OK.

[rougher]

In the immortal words of Borat: "Great Success!".

I did what you said good sir - downloaded and installed GSpot 2.6, and it confirmed that it does have the AC3 audio, but it also says I have it installed. And I still can't make a functioning DVD with it in Sony DVD Architect. I'm stuck with DVD Architect because I need the DVD to look and function a certain way and it's the only one that I've used which seems to allow me to do that. The Audio is still not coming through. Also Is there another program besides TMPGEnc I could use to cut this up?

This is the information that came through on GSpot 2.6:
Sys Bitrate: 10080 kb/s VBR

Audio
0xbd[0x80]:48000Hz 256 kb/s tot , stereo (2/0)

[rougher]

This may be more informative, I included a screenshot of the GSpot results:

[rougher]

Also I forgot to mention that I installed the AC3 ACM Decompressor that you guys recommended. I think it was named AC-3 ACM Codec 1.31 "AC3ACM.zip". And still no audio from the TMPGEnc Plus or Express.

[jimmalenko]

I daresay you'll probably have to extract the AC3 to WAV and then remux it into the MPEG if you want to stick with the applications you're currently using.

[rougher]

Just an update, problems are solved! I think what I ended up doing was what jimmalenko recommended. I split up the video and the audio using TMPGEnc, and then using BeLight, I converted the AC3 Audio to .wav and then put the new audio.wav together with the video.m2v; then voila! problem solved.

Thanks for all of your help guys. I really appreciate having a great resource like this forum and you kind folks around to help us noobs.