Newbie - Question regarding VOB to DVD transfer?

[Greggles]

Hi All,

Short term reader, first time poster here ......

I am hoping that you all can help me with something relating to VOB to DVD transfer.

Apologies if this topic has been done to death! I have spent many many hours trawling thru the posts but havnt found something that 'hits the spot'

My situation is this. I have a Panasonic DVR300 camcorder that has been used to capture many precious moments of my childrens early years. These moment are now captures in VOB & VRO form on MANY re-writable mini discs.

Can someone help me simplify a method that will enable me to convert these movies to a DVD for standard playback? What I really want to do is set-up a method that will be reliable and effective from here on in. I dont want to play around with them and set up some bad habits, only to find out in a few years that I wasnt converting them to the best method possible!

Any help would be VERY much appreciated!

[guns1inger]

Assuming you don't need to do any editing, I would do the following

VOB2MPG top extract the videos form the discs as MPG files
A good authoring tool to author a DVD, with menus if you wish
Burn the final disc (s) with Imgburn

VOB2MPG is free for the standard edition, but there is a faster version available for a few dollars. Imgburn is free and is the best there is.

The authoring tool is a personal choice. There are free tools available - DVD Styler, GUIForDVDAuthor, DVDAuthorGUI - or there are payware tools. There are also all-in-one converters like AVS2DVD, DVD Flick (both free) or ConvertXtoDVD (payware) that can be used, however you need to make sure they don't re-encode your video.

[Greggles]

Cheers guns1inger

Thanks for the feedback! I will give it a try.

Would the process change much if I did want to edit?

Reason for asking is that I have noticed that the camcorder records in a difference format dependent on the settings. For movies that cane be edited on the camcorder, I believe it records in a VOB format? Alternatively, for movies that are to be played back on a DVD recorder, it records in a VRO format.

[guns1inger]

I believe it is the other way round, and that only counts if you are editing in the camera. If you want to edit on the PC, the only thing that changes is that after you have your MPG files, you use an editing tool to edit your footage, then you author.

Editing MPG brings some considerations that a format like DV doesn't. MPG wasn't designed for editing, and the compressions levels used standard definition consumer cameras means that repeated re-encoding, even only one or two times, can very quickly degrade the quality. There are editors that are smart enough to work with MPG files and that only re-encode the small sections that get changed during most editing. Of course if you make large changes - say a colour adjustment across a whole clip - then everything will get re-encoded. But for standard snips and joins and small transitions, very little has to be done. This means your footage doesn't get re-compressed, and the process is much quicker than some other formats where everything must be re-encoded.

A solid, simple editor is Womble MPG Video Wizard. There is also a version that can edit, then author basic DVDs. For what it does and what you get, the price is pretty good. For simple snipping there is also VideoRedo. AVI Demux, which is free, can do pretty much the same, but you have to find the right version, as it can be flakey doing different things in different versions. VideoRedo, on the other-hand, is pretty solid.

There are others, like tmpgenc, but I haven't used them, so I will leave them for others to comment on.

[PuzZLeR]

There are others, like tmpgenc, but I haven't used them, so I will leave them for others to comment on.

TMPGEnc MPEG Editor is one of the most under-rated tools and definitely another solid option for virtually lossless MPEG edits just like VideoReDo and Womble (I own and use all three depending on task).

Unlike Womble, which is for the more complex stuff involving combos, fades and transitions, TMPGEnc MPEG Editor is a simple editor for when you only need quick cuts, joins, and batch re-/de-multiplexing.

I also run one lossless pass through TMPGEnc MPEG Editor on any finished Womble project to correct residual GOP errors Womble tends to leave behind.

[Greggles]

Thanks heaps guys!

Might also give TMPGEnc MPEG Editor a try. It appears to come recommended according to many of the posts I have read in the past.

Most of my edits will involve simple cuts etc. When I started using the camera, I had the discs formatted to edit in camera. I preferred this however wanted to try the alternative to see if the output was any different. The VRO & VOB confused me somewhat however I am thankful that you have cleared this up! Cheers!

In summary ( unless I have this wrong )

No Edit Required - VOB2MPG -> Imgburn

Edit Required - Womble or TMPGEnc -> VOB2MPG -> Imgburn