Converting VOB files not working for me

[pm149]

My problem is converting VOB files to anything - I had a look around to see if anyone else had the same problem, but I could only find post where the symptoms are much the same, but the task was different, so I put up a new topic. Basically, no matter what VOB file I try, and no matter what I try to convert it to, I have the bell ring within a second, and it looks like the job is finished, but the info is like this

Encoding started on Mon Jan 8 22:26:59 CST 2007
Input #0, mpeg, from '/Users/peter/Desktop/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_2.VOB':
Duration: 577014:31:52.8, start: 29.957489, bitrate: N/A
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg2video, 720x576, 25.00 fps
Stream #0.1: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 256 kb/s
Could not open '/Users/peter/Desktop/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_2.VOB.ff.dv'

...and there is no result anywhere to be found. I tried the advice in another post, of ticking a few boxes in the menus, but no result. I have an Intel mac with the latest OS X update, 10.4.8 plus security fixes. I have 2Gb RAM I have updated ffmpegX today to 0.9x r2, and installed the latest binaries. Thanks for any help.

P

[llee782]

What happens if you select that file (/Users/peter/Desktop/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_2.VOB) in the Finder and press command-d? That should put a copy of the file right next to the original (you'll probably want to delete the copy afterwards, if it works). That's a relatively simple and sure way to confirm that the directory can be written to and the file can be read.

[pm149]

What happens if you select that file (/Users/peter/Desktop/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_2.VOB) in the Finder and press command-d? That should put a copy of the file right next to the original (you'll probably want to delete the copy afterwards, if it works). That's a relatively simple and sure way to confirm that the directory can be written to and the file can be read.

Thanks llee782. I found I couldn't duplicate by cmd-d, but I could operate on it when I dragged the file to the desktop, and ffmpegx could work on it from there. Now I have a strange problem. When ffmpegX does its conversion, it gets to 100% - and keeps going, to 200%, 300%, $00%, 500%. I'm not sure how far it would go if i left, presumably forever?

[llee782]

What happens if you select that file (/Users/peter/Desktop/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_2.VOB) in the Finder and press command-d? That should put a copy of the file right next to the original (you'll probably want to delete the copy afterwards, if it works). That's a relatively simple and sure way to confirm that the directory can be written to and the file can be read.

Thanks llee782. I found I couldn't duplicate by cmd-d, but I could operate on it when I dragged the file to the desktop, and ffmpegx could work on it from there. Now I have a strange problem. When ffmpegX does its conversion, it gets to 100% - and keeps going, to 200%, 300%, $00%, 500%. I'm not sure how far it would go if i left, presumably forever?

I think it might be advisable to consider progress reporting to be somewhat cosmetic and not the main focus for ffmpegX. Wait for the outcome for a reasonable amount of time, check attributes of files in the output directory (whatever you chose in ffmpeg's "save as" field, or for tools that don't use save as, the same directory as the source file) that appeared after you started your conversion process, and if you can't see any changes, then report the details available from the Progress application, which is apparently displaying the progress info. It would help to know precisely what conversion you're trying to make, although some folks would probably be able to make a pretty good guess from the line included in your opening post, "Could not open '/Users/peter/Desktop/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_2.VOB.ff.dv'".