.VOB conversion - high quality for editing in Vegas... how??

[dvd-dude]

I've been using Virtual Dub to convert .vob to AVI. I've only tested it with short clips and it looks good. However, uncompressed AVI is huge! My 3 minute clips are about 5GB... I can't edit a 1-2 hour video that way - I don't have enough hard drive space. However, I've been unable to find another solution.

None of my apps accept .vob files directly besides DVDShrink (not for editing) and Virtual Dub. I want to edit in Vegas 5... is there any way to convert .vob to .mpeg2 (I know it's technically the same thing... well, I think it is). Or is there another option? I tried Cinepak compression once (at 100% quality) and it was too noticable. Anyway, I'm rambling at this point... my basic question is how can I use my .vob files without adding anymore noticable compression in Vegas (without the files being incredibly huge)? Or is this an impossibility? Is there a way to convert .vob to DV maybe? Thanks for your help!

-DVD-Dude

P.S. - Some of my old home videos that I rarely use look acceptable when converted to DVD (really important ones I convert to D8)... but I'd like to be able to rip them and use them for editing if necessary - but I don't want to lose anymore quality. That's the why. Thanks again!

[Tommyknocker]

You can frameserve them to TMPGEnc and save them to mpeg. Or the later versions of AviSynth are purported to open VOB files.

[David K]

You can open the VOB files into Vegas.

Use DVD2AVI to create a frameserve file and then convert that to a VFAPI codec AVI. (Look these up in tools). You can open this up as your video track in Vegas. Then use the .wav file that DVD2AVI created for the audio track.

Look up the old guides to creating a VCD from a DVD using DVD2AVI. One used to have to use these steps to feed a DVD into TMPGenc. (All this now forgotten now that we have one step DVD to DVD-R programs.)

Of course you will lose quality if you edit them in Vegas and then save to mpeg.

To edit VOBs with no re-compression use Mpeg-VCR. It's a video editor that works directly on mpegs (including VOBs) and saves without re-compressing.

[dvd-dude]

I hadn't thought that I would lose quality when re-encoding to mp2 again out of Vegas. It makes perfect sense... I just didn't realize that. Will it be a noticable loss do you think? Anymore noticable than if I captured the DVD through an analog setup (i.e. a video card that i don't have) as if it were a regular VHS tape and then reencoded to mp2?

Sort of stinks that once you have something on DVD you can't really do much with it as a source file without losing quality (if not on the importing you would on the exporting). I realize exporting with compression you always lose quality... but I hoped it wouldn't double the quality loss. Perhaps I would be better off to just backup anything and everything to D8 so I won't have to worry about the double compression issues. I don't have another $70 to buy MpegVCR after buying Vegas. Besides, a lot of the editing I do requires the tools Vegas offers - it seemed like MpegVCR is for more straight forward editing. But if I ever get into converting things with commercials and stuff like that I think that program would rock... save a lot of time from reencoding.

Thanks for the feedback!

-DVD-Dude

[David K]

Mpeg was intended to be a destination format, and thus the problems with editing mpeg.

I don't know how bad the quality loss would be if you did the editing in Vegas and then re-saved in mpeg. It depends a lot on how high a bitrate of the original mpeg. You can test it out. Perhaps it will look OK.

You can do non-linear editing in Mpeg-VCR, once you figure it out. But it is limited to a few transition effects. I use it for making "best of" clips from my home movies that I've already converted to DVD.

[teegee420]

MPEG Video Wizard is a little more robust than MPEG VCR. You might want to check it out.