Splitting and Joining then Converting VOB > MPG > FLV

[deportu]

Hello fellow VideoHelpers, I come to you with a simple request. I have several VOB files here that I need to split and join with others and I'd like to know what programs will make my life easy here. I don't need much control or extreme quality, this is going to be for uploading FLVs to a website.

I specifically need:

To be able to convert VOB to MPG.
To be able to split/join parts from VOB files (or MPG files, after I convert), whichever works.
To be able to convert MPG to FLV (I already use Riva).

If there is a way to do this directly with the VOB files, I would be even more grateful, the MPGs I only think of including because I suppose they're more compatible with a lot of software (including Riva which is what I use for FLV). But you're the experts. I definitely don't need anything powerful I just want to do this with a few simple clicks. I tried some software but the amount of options was overwhelming and I honestly don't have the time right now to delve into tutorials. What I need to do is too simple for me to care for much options.

Advise me please? I need this ASAP!

[redwudz]

Are the VOBs in a full DVD? If so, you could use VOB2MPG to extract them to a single MPEG file. I don't think that will work on individual VOBs. Quick and dirty, you can change the VOB extension to the MPG extension and open them with most any MPEG editor. But if you have subs or more than one language in them, that can cause problems. Some video editors can handle VOBs directly, but they are likely all payware.

Lots of other ways also.

And welcome to our forums.

[deportu]

Damn, I only grabbed the VOBs that had the parts I needed. Is there nothing I can do with that? I'm pretty sure they have no subtitles or other audio tracks than the first one.

What can I do about splitting/joining?

[redwudz]

I'd try renaming the extension from .vob to .mpg as the easy way. Then you could add them into a MPEG editor to do any splitting or joining. An alternate method is to open the VOBs with VirtualDub Mod, do your editing and export them as DV or other low loss format. Then convert that to FLV. VDM can't directly convert to FLV, just AVI type formats, but it can edit, join, cut and filter easy enough.

I don't normally use FLV format, so not much help there.

[deportu]

I can't join files in Vdub.

[redwudz]

I didn't want to elaborate on the VD(M) method as it adds a few steps and a MPEG editor would be easier, but with VDM you would have to convert them all to a AVI type format like DV first with VDM, then add them back in and join them.

But the advantage is DV is it's very nice to edit with as every frame is a keyframe and you can cut precisely wherever you want, something very difficult with other AVI or MPEG formats. And DV is fairly lossless, about 5:1 compression, so it can preserve the quality. The downside is it uses about 13GB per hour of hard drive space, but for editing, not really a problem. And the DV should convert to FLV fairly easily. DV also shares the same framesize as a DVD, so no resizing and resulting quality loss from that. It's also interlaced the same as most DVDs.

[guns1inger]

The problem with just taking VOBs from different discs to combine is that they must have the same characteristics - resolution, framerate, number of audio tracks (which must be in the same order and have the same number of channels and compression) etc. If not, you need to get them in a common format. VOB is not that format.

However as you seem disinclined to do too much work on this, try joining with AVI Demux instead.

[filmboss80]

Try Mpg2cut2 (freeware, so you have nothing to lose) for cutting your VOBs and saving as mpeg2. Then use Riva or Winff to make your flv files. I can't guarantee perfect results, but it's worth the try. Experiment with some short clips before you commit a lot of time to it.