*Senior has trouble with his enlarged VOBS. Medical help appreciated.*

[AnnaMorphic]

A little plea for tolerance: I'm approaching my 72nd year, and have reached the conclusion that I'm maybe not as bright as I was aged 7.2. This revelation has come about because it seems that much which I've learned over the years, I can't now remember. The HDD seems overly fragmented.

Right. So much for the explanation. Here's the situation, hopefully made clear in step by step form:

1) My wife and I are very soon to depart on a 2-week holiday. We don't intend to spend it indoors, but we would like, of an evening, to sit back and watch some TV. The apartment we're heading to has TVs and DVD players. So we thought, we'd take along a few DVDs to watch, seeing as TV is in a foreign language. Well, to us it is;

2) I have compiled a small collection of really old black and white movies that YouTube tells me are 'public domain'. There are seven of them. They all downloaded just fine in mp4 format;

3) In hope of getting them onto one or two watchable DVDs, I ran all seven through WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe. In their original MP4 guise, the total file size of all seven was 2.61GB with a total viewing duration of 10.33.45;

4) I'm aware of the difference between the quoted and actual availability of recording room on a standard DVD, so figured that that these seven ought -- theoretically -- to fit. If they didn't well; I could burn onto a couple of DVDs. No problem. So:

5) WinX HD Video Converter DL advised in its conversion options that the only choice open for me to make the MP4s suitable for DVD burning was conversion to VOB. Or, um, .vob;

6) So that's what I've done. All seven MP4 files are now all seven .vobs. Simples, right? As to overall size, in total the seven amount to 10.8GB. Gosh golly. I probably once knew the reason for that and have forgotten, but anyway. Let's get the darn things burned to two, or maybe three now, blank DVDs;

7) I opened Ashampoo Burning Studio 14, imported the seven titles, and sat back to figure out which to progressively remove until the software reported that it was able to actually burn. . . something;

8) By a process of elimination, I finished up with exactly. . . ONE .vob file. There was no room -- according to Ashampoo -- for any further .vob file;

9) So Ashampoo has now burned a DVD-playable title which comprises of a (discardable) AUDIO_TS subfolder (nothing in it) and the expected VIDEO_TS subfolder, size: 2.58GB and that's it, an ancient black and white movie lasting 1hr and 15 minutes, the sole occupant of an entire DVD disk;

10) I'm going to have to go back to the VOBS and fiddle around to see if it's remotely possible to fit just twomovies onto one DVD, because if I can't, then I'm looking at, what: seven brides for seven brothers? Sorry: seven discs for seven old 1 hour / 1hour 20 minute oldie black and white fillums??

So anyway. That's my problem. VOBS. I know what I've done and I know where I'm at, and unfortunately that seems to mean taking 7 DVDs on holiday. Which I think is. . . absurd. QUESTIONS, then:

(1) Am I converting these MP4s to the wrong file format to begin with??

(2) After conversion, but before burning, should I be chucking the .vob folder with its VIDEO_TS sub folder into something like, um, DVD Shrink?? (But will DVD Shrink or anything like it actually find the VIDEO_TS information inside the .vob???)

(3) Should I just quit this video converting / DVD burning business altogether and go sit on the deck with a glass of medication???

Inspirational ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

PS: Medical help is mentioned in the title of this post because the added weight of a truck load of unnecessary DVDs to my carry-on baggage seems to me to pose the risk of imminent hernia. Which I'd like to avoid.

[manono]

Use AVSToDVD to put your videos on a single DVD. I believe that, by default, they'll be fit into your single layer DVD (4.37 GiB).

Understand that as bad as they look on YouTube, they'll look much much worse with you cramming seven complete movies (?) into a single DVD. I'd suggest you put no more than 2 per DVD, and they'll still look like crap. You might also consider lowering the resolution to Half-D1 (352x576). I don't know for sure if AVSToDVD supports that, but it should.

[usually_quiet]

The H.264 video in your mp4s uses higher compression than the MPEG-2 video required for VOBs, which means the VOBs are going to be larger than the original files at similar resolution. You also are converting incorrectly to watch the videos on an ordinary DVD player.

VOB files are just one of the files that you need. DVD players are only guaranteed to play home-made video DVDs with the type of file and folder structure that one finds on commercially-produced DVDs. Commercially produced DVDs contain IFO and BUP files in addition to VOBs, all located in a VIDEO_TS folder. There may also be an AUDIO_TS folder, which is usually empty for video DVDs. The VOB files need to be 1GB or less in size, and theatrical movies may span multiple VOBs. In addition there are restrictions on the audio and video in the VOBs. See What Is DVD for the technical details.

You need better software to reliably convert your MP4 files for DVD compatibility, author (create) the required DVD files and folders, and burn the DVD. Also, do not plan to put more than 4 hours of video on each DVD-R for watchable quality. 2 hours per DVD would be better.

You might try AVStoDVD to author and use ImgBurn to burn the files and folders to DVD. Both are free. AVStoDVD and other authoring software requires you to choose a video system (PAL or NTSC) for the DVD. If you are going to a country where analog broadcasts used NTSC (USA, Canada, Japan, S. Korea, many Caribbean and S. American nations) use NTSC. You can't rely on TVs and DVD players in those countries to play PAL video. Otherwise, use PAL.

[davexnet]

AVStoDVD supports 1/2 D1 and a low bitrate matrix using HCenc.

I employed them both myself putting 5 1/2 hours on to a DVD-5 a number of years back.
4 documentaries from A&E on the Titanic, downloaded from Youtube. Their somewhat dodgy quality was maintained,
didn't look noticeably worse after the DVD project

[jagabo]

Another thing you need to consider is whether your vacation spot is NTSC or PAL. DVD players in PAL countries can usually handle both PAL and NTSC discs. But players in NTSC countries (North America and Japan) may have problems with PAL DVDs so you want to make NTSC DVDs if that's where you're going.

[AnnaMorphic]

THANKS, everyone, for constructive help and advice! I'm downloading AVStoDVD as I write, so will re-author the original MP4 files. I already have ImageBurn, but for some reason haven't used it in a while and have instead stuck with Ashampoo's software (probably because it was bought and paid for a couple of years back.) I really appreciated unusuallyquiet's guidance on the vob files, too. As for our destination, it's OK., we're staying in mainland Europe (huh: Brexit?) so PAL is going to be fine.

Again: sincere thanks. It is much-o appreciated.

[pandy]

Some pico beamer with embedded player may be a better solution... also from luggage weight perspective.