VOB size on computer vs. size on DVD

[deadmeat]

I recently got from a friend 40 episodes of a tv show, in dvd format, copied from his hard drive to my hard drive.
They were in 2 folders of 20 episodes each, the first folder of 20 had vob, ifo and bup files as you would expect, and was 4.1Gigs. I burnt it onto a single DVD-R disc with Nero Express and watched it with my dvd player and tv, about 11hours of tv.
The second folder of 20 episodes has vob files but no ifo or bup files. I used an application to split the vob files (they had 6 streams per file, each stream in each file being 1 episode) into 20 smaller vob files. The size was of course the same as before I split them, and similar to the first folder of 20, 4.05Gigs.

I thought I would just use Nero Vision to burn them onto a single DVD, but when I loaded all the files(4.05Gig) into Nero, even on the lowest quality it was about 12 Gigs! ???

How, why, does 4.05 Gigs of vob files on my hard dics become 12 Gigs when I want to burn to DVD? It's still going to be vob. What on earth is going on? Is there a (free) way I can get all these vob files onto a single dvd, without further eroding the already low quality?

Ferg

[Baldrick]

I would use something else like if you want a free tool try dvdauthorgui or guifordvdauthor but easiest would be to use tmpgenc dvd author.

And how did you split the vob files? it could cause the problem with nerovision.

[deadmeat]

I tried guifordvdauthor, but the tutorial was a bit long and confusing, plus I couln't add vob files, I had to rename them as mpg files before I could add them.

tmpgenc dvd author looked good, but the vob files in there were even bigger than in nero vision! Just one of the 20 episodes (190Meg on my hard disc), on low quality, was over a Gig. It may be my fault but if so I don't know why, so it's not much use to me.

DVDAuthor is perfect, small, simple, and when I put vob files in they are the same size as they are on my hard disc, 190Meg

I used mpegutils to split up the original large vob files.

Thanks for the help, it's much appreciated.

Ferg

[guns1inger]

Unless you put the VOBs back into separate titles sets, splitting them up is a waste of time as the authoring process will combine them back to 1000MB files.

[deadmeat]

I'm a complete newb at this, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought because I had no .ifo files I couldn't really use the .vob files as they were.
It certainly seemed that way when I tried putting them (the original, large vobs) in Nero Vision; it listed the length of each as 1hr 11min instead of the correct 3.5-4hrs.
So I split them up into one file per stream per original vob, which fixed that problem but also gave me the 'oversizing' problem above, until I used DvdAusthorGui.

Ferg

[psx_pirate]

11 hours of video on one dvdr ..... the quality must be crap!

[theewizard]

nero is recoding and making them larger

infoedit will create NEW ifo and bup files , so you can burn as is

but it will play as one movie, not as seperate videos

you will need another program, to edit create sperate video chapters manully

[deadmeat]

Yep, it's crap! But watchable.
356x288 resolution I think, progressive, and I forget the bit rate, but it would be under 1600Kb/sec.

I found out about Ifoedit too late, I already had the disc burning by then. It would have worked for me as well, although like you say, I would have needed something for chapters. There are probably a few ways to do everything related to DVDs, there's so much software around. I'll leave it up to you guys to say whether the way I did it was best, or easiest, or any good at all

Started with large .vob files, no .ifo files
-> split the streams from each big .vob into smaller .vob files with MpegUtils
-> authored the DVD with DvdAuthorGui (NeroVision and TMPEGEnc no good, made my files much larger)
-> burnt to disc with Nero Express.

Ferg

[theewizard]

dvdauthorgui is a good program, i use gui4dvdauthor aka GFD a similar program that ia also a gui front end for dvdauthor