Dodgy VOBs misreporting length

[Joolz2020]

Having ripped more than 200 movies in a short space of time for use on my WD media player, I am frustrated to find that quite a lot of them don't know how long they are!

Typically (but not always?) the reported time seems to be half the true length of the movie. The WD player has no problem playing the movie, and you can pause it fine. However the player functions to jump forward (or back) 10 mins (or search at all), or resume in the place you left off after switching off the player are all screwed. Both result in erratic behaviour which I guess is because the player is confused about the misreported length when trying to jump to a point in the movie.

These dodgy VOBs also crash an old version of PowerDVD, and on Windows Media Player if you pause, play recommences from the beginning.

DVD Decrypter is the ripper I've used for these movies, although today I've repeated a rip using DVDFab 8 with the same result.

[AlanHK]

VOBs were never meant to be stand-alone media files.
VOB files are part of a DVD fileset. The IFO files have the indexing and other info about them.
Maybe if you ripped them to MPEG you might have a better result.

If your player supports ISO files, you could rip the entire DVD to an ISO file and have all the menus, etc available.

[guns1inger]

WDTV supports full DVD playback from ISOs if running the latest beta firmware. if you don't need menus and chapters, use VOB2MPG and play the resulting mpg files instead

[PuzZLeR]

Yes, VOB files were never meant for playback "as is", only in a DvD structure, and one thing that is causing your problem I believe is the segmentation that is in many VOB files. You must remove it.

Converting to .mpg should solve your problem (as mentioned) but it's not as simple as just changing to .mpg via file extension.

Since you've already ripped the DvDs, and you may only want to work with the VOBs now, the best way I can recommend to correct this, although not free, is with NeroVision. You can enter each of these .vob files one-by-one.

Make DvD ->DvD Video -> Close Tips (if pops up)
Set up an Import folder: More -> Configure... ->Folders tab and select a directory
Drag each VOB file into the interface.

A popup should display mentioning "multiple segments" and so forth. Click "Yes"

Let NV do its thing as it analyzes and enters it into the project. When finished, one of two things will happen:

1-If there's an .mpg associated with the .vob file in the Imports directory, then it should be a corrected version of what your problem is. You can go ahead and use this instead for your playback/edits/encoding.

2-If there's no .mpg file associated with .vob file in the Imports directory, this means there was no segmentation in the .vob. This means that this .vob is "safe" and shouldn't give you problems. You can then keep it as is, change the extension, or encode it.

[Joolz2020]

Made an ISO of Star Wars I with DVD decrypter, which adds 1Gb to the final file size. I didn't get the DVD menu - it just starts the movie, which doesn't bother me. Also the text at the beginning of the movie ("A long time ago..." and the scrolling 'story so far') flickers between multiple languages, affecting the audio. I think this is because the movie has multiple angles just to handle this opening text in different languages.

On a positive, the movie now reports correct length. Also, the subtitles (subject of different post) work fine (once I worked out which subtitle track contained the 'starwarsese' translation).

If I could pick and choose what goes into the ISO (ie just angle 1, only the main 6-channel audio and not the 2-channel version and commentary, specific subtitle) maybe the file size would come down significantly to produce a perfect solution.

Will try a few more things suggested by responses. Thanks for your help.

[hech54]

Made an ISO of Star Wars I with DVD decrypter, which adds 1Gb to the final file size. I didn't get the DVD menu - it just starts the movie, which doesn't bother me. Also the text at the beginning of the movie ("A long time ago..." and the scrolling 'story so far') flickers between multiple languages, affecting the audio. I think this is because the movie has multiple angles just to handle this opening text in different languages.

Completely normal....when you use outdated, 6 year old ripping software....and use it improperly.

[PuzZLeR]

NeroVision is also an excellent, and very under-rated, DvD stream ripper (VOB->MPG), not just something that can correct the behavior of your VOBs.

It hasn't failed me once with homemade/commercial DvDs of mine either.

Another thing you also can try for this problem with your VOBs is VideoReDo (again not free but worth every penny for this great app).
Tools -> QuickStream Fix... -> Enter the Input/Output streams.

[Joolz2020]

hech54, can you elaborate on how I am using DVD decrypter improperly? I posted in the newbie area for a reason. Thanks.

[hech54]

hech54, can you elaborate on how I am using DVD decrypter improperly? I posted in the newbie area for a reason. Thanks.

Use DVDFabDecrypter

[Joolz2020]

I'm looking at DVD fab but I can't see how to output as ISO instead of VOB.

VOB2MPG has produced a bigger file and the length is right, but it's unusable - audio stutters and video is non-existent. I don't know how it's coped with multiple angles - maybe that's what's made it come out so badly.

[guns1inger]

If you use VOB2MPG of a screwed DVD Rip you get rubbish, as you have found. You need to a do a proper, movie only rip with DVDFab HD Decrypter, then use VOB2MPG. If you want an ISO output from DVDFab HD Decrypter, change the output type from folder (the default) to ISO. Use the Help files if you need instructions.

[Joolz2020]

I used VOB2MPG directly with the original DVD.

ISO seems to be giving me the best output for my WDTV - it solves the misreported length problem and also the subtitles issues I have been having. Found the ISO option in DVDfab now - I was looking at the ripper section rather than the copy section. Been using DVD Shrink to make an ISO.

Thanks guys for your help and patience.

[guns1inger]

VOB2MPG cannot work with protected DVDs, which is why they need to be ripped first.