Converting VOB to MPEG/DVD without losing image quality?

[scroon]

Hi all:

OK, here's my problem. I have a standalone DVD recorder (Sony RDR-GX7) that I have been using to convert some of my old VCR tapes over to digital. I've been taking the recordings, extracting the .vob files to my hard drive using DVD Decrypter (3.1.6) and then editing out the parts that I don't want using MPG2Cut 1.15.

I thought it would be easy to throw the edited vob files in an authoring program and burn these straight back onto DVD without the need for re-encoding, but none of the authoring programs that I've trialed will accept the .vob files that I have created (I've tried DVDLab, TMPGenc DVD author & Ulead Movie Factory) - I'm guessing that this is because the video headers are all screwed up from the editing probess (??if anyone can advise, that would be excellent!).

The only way that I've been able to get these edited .vob files back onto disc is to follow Baldrick's (?) excellent MPEG2 to VCD guide (https://www.videohelp.com/mpeg2tovcd.htm) [basically, this requires decoding in DVD2AVI, then encoding in TMPGEnc] . The only problem that I have with this is that the .mpg files that are created with this process are only 70% of the size that they were initially (i.e. a 3.7Gig file drops down to 2.6 Gigs). I'd like to make the VOB --> MPG conversion without losing any image quality - if anybody has some advice, that would be excellent.

The only idea that I may have for why the file size is so different is that the standalone recorder produces 25fps PAL interlaced video with AC3 sound, and in the conversion I have to convert the audio from AC3 down to .wav [I can't get TMPGEnc to accept the .ac3 audio] - but surely that wouldn't produce such a massive change in filesize? The picture quality of the DVDs this process produces are OK but a little bit cruddier than what I'd expect...

any advice on the conversion would be welcomed!

also, I'd *love* to hear from anyone else with a similar setup (esp if they are editing old TV episodes by a similar process) to see how your set up works...

thanks,

scroon

[Gees]

You can use VOBEdit to pull the video and audio streams from the vobs.

If you're unable to use Ac3 and convert audio to PCM, yes, it will be bigger file size. If your player accepts it, you can use mp2 audio instead (for PAL) for a smaller file size.

[scroon]

thanks mate - I did try vobedit, and, while I followed the tutorial pretty closely, my vob files kinda freaked the program out - I ended up with thousands of 1 second files! So I ran screaming....

[Gees]

:co I think I would too! Don't know what could have caused that!!??

I'd try again. :c) Maybe an alternate guide?

[scroon]

! thanks! will have another play with it & see how it goes - using a different source file, perhaps...

[rhegedus]

You could use DVD2AVI to make .d2v and .wav files that you can load into TMPGEnc and then encode to mpg. Sefy has written a great guide here.

[scroon]

Thanks Rob - I'd been using DVD2AVI to do just that, but the guide lists a few extra setting changes which I will try out....

...acorn computers, hey? Man, I remember 'Granny's Garden' vividly...