mini-DVD to burn to DVD later

[ann]

I was wondering if I'd be safe in making mini-DVD files that could be lifted off the CD-R later and put on a DVD without any re-encoding?

I might not even worry about making a mini-DVD that will run as a mini-DVD, just put the DVD compatible files on there as a backup solution.

What do you say?

[Baldrick]

Yes it will be safe. You should be able to simple copy the VIDEO_TS folder to a DVDr or use the video if authoring a new DVDr with no reeencoding.

[Scobo]

You could store DVD compliant MPEG2 files on CDR but bear in mind that you will only get about 15 minutes of high quality MPEG2 per CD.
Authoring then burning to CDR as a miniDVD would be more complicated when you came to transferring to DVD-R as you would need to convert the .VOB files back to MPEG2. (Assuming you want more than 15 minutes per DVD-R)
Another option is to create CVDs if your standalone player supports this format.
I currently have some CVDs converted from VHS and get great reproduction from the original tapes. The MPEG2 files from these disks can be copied to your hard drive and authored for DVD-R burning very easily.

[Baldrick]

Convert vob to mpeg2 is simple with vob demulitplexers or rippers, no reeencoding required.

[ann]

Hmmm...

Many of the files I want to back up are small. I'll end up with many small files that I would then eventually put on a DVD when I get a burner.

I don't have any hardware that takes mini-DVD. WinDVD doesn't even work on my computer. I used to think it was the DVD-ROM, but no, it's somehow got to do with refresh rate or something. Even the file I rendered didn't play, but would change the picture every time I moved the frame of the program.

So would I be better off with some intermediate file format, and then wait with the authoring until I'm ready to burn a real DVD?

I've got WinProducer3 (came with the board, which is only a few days old right now). I've done capturing before, but got tired of the cranky hardware (DC10+), and right now it's straight DV, with analog2DV done in the card.

[Scobo]

In that case I would recommend encoding to DVD MPEG2 and storing the files on CDR or just keep them on your hard drive if you have the space.
Windows Media Player will play these files but a better program is Power DVD.
It will also play miniDVDs and many other formats too.

[EricB]

Well I suppose its obvious, but I still don't know how to convert a vob to mpeg2 without re-encoding. Can someone point me to the tools / directions?

[Scobo]

With a single VOB all you need to do is change the file extension from .VOB to .MPG.
With multiple VOBs (MPEGs of over 1GB are split into VOBs of 1GB at the authoring stage) you can convert and merge the VOBs to one MPEG2 file retaining original video stream without re-encoding using Smartripper.
To do this open Smartripper then load your disk with the DVD content.
Click the Movie button then the Stream Processing tab.
Click on the video stream and select demux to extra file then do the same with the audio stream.
Finally click start and the video will be ripped to one .M2V file and the audio to one .AC3 file or .MP2 file.
Some authoring software will require you to mutiplex the audio and video files but with others such as Spruceup you simply load the .M2V file and it will automatically link the audio file (you must first rename the audio file to the same name as the video file and, if the audio is MPEG, change the file extension to .MPA)

[EricB]

Suppose you have a VOB but not the original DVD. I haven't found a way to get SmartRipper to process the VOB into an MV2 and MP2.

If I just change the extension to MPG, then DVD MovieFactory sees it as a non-compliant file.

Is there a program which will demux the VOB?

[Baldrick]

tmpgenc can demux some vobs
www.vcdhelp.com/demultiplex

[EricB]

I'm using version 12H of TMPGEnc. It doesn't handle VOBs directly from what I can see. Maybe someone can tell me if later versions do.

I was able to convert a VOB to MPEG2 by using SmartRipper as described above, but it creates an M2V (video) and a VOB (sound).

TMPGEnc would allow me to process the VOB sound file to MP2. Then I mutiplexed the M2V and MP2 in MPEG tools.

I still don't know of a way to do this without having the original DVD to rip the file.