OK to rename .vob to .mpg?

[stphilli]

My goal is to get the mpg2 stream from a dvd into a form I can use in windows media encoder to make a .wmv file to be played on my PocketPC. So far I have done the following...

1) Rip with smartripper in movie mode so I get the main movie only in one large vob file and use steam processing to just take video and 1 audio track I want.

2) Rename the .vob to .mpg (played this in windows media player for a couple min and it played fine)

3) convert to PocketPC .wmv with windows media encoder.

I am in the process of doing step 3 now and it seems to be working fine. My only question is, is it ok to do what I did in step 2 just renaming the vob to an mpg? It seems to work. Are there any possible problems or reasons I should avoid using this method in the future? Any help is appreciated.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Most encoders will accept the .mpg extension if the audio is MP2,not AC3 or DTS.

[spectroelectro]

Contrary to popular myth, a VOB is not just an mpg file with a different extension. A VOB is wrapper that can contain many different things. For instance, a VOB can contain a WAV file + a 720 x 480 m2v file. That won't work if you try to play it through a MPEG-2 directshow filter.
A VOB can also contain an mpa (mp2) or ac3 audio file + a 352 x 240 m2v file. That may also cause your DirectShow MPEG-2 filter to give an error mssg.
Generally speaking, a VOB file is not just an MPG file with a different file extension.

[stphilli]

Thank you for the help. I knew that a vob file was not just an mpeg with a different extension, but I was hoping that if I just had one audio and one video stream it would work for what I'm trying to do. The audio I kept was AC3 so its possible it didn't work. I haven't checked the results of the encode yet but I will post my results later today. If it didn't work, I will just demultiplex converting the audio to wav, then multiplex into an mpeg2 file and use that. I was just trying to avoid these in between steps...

[stphilli]

I just got home and checked the wmv file i created using the steps I outlined and it worked fine. The audio and video are both great. It appears the renaming didn't prohibit windows media encoder from encoding the file correctly. I am going to continue using this method to make movies for my pocketPC until it fails, but I understand that in general it isn't a good idea to rename vobs to mpg.

[Renegade6]

I will give this a try. Thanks for the info guys

[Suntan]

Another option would be to check out Pocket MVP at http://www.corecodec.com/ It is a media player that will play Divx and Xvid movies with either MP3 or Ogg Vorbis audio.

Personally I prefer Pocket MVP/Xvid better than Microsoft/wmv.

[RabidDog]

Vobedit is a good tool .. that will show you all the info and allow full demux of all streams.