Best way for converting VOB to FLV, AVI, MP4

[lana2000]

I need to convert DVD file formats (VOB) to flash formats FLV, AVI, and/or MP4 but the most important thing for me would be the file size as I would like to keep it small as much as possible with reasonably good video quality.

Looking for suggestions for any tool (paid or free), any idea or recommendations?

Note: I have already purchased ImTOO FLV Converter V5.2 but I am not very happy with it as it generates really large files when I do VOB-->FLV.

Thank you.

[hech54]

Are these video you are making for a YouTube type of site?

[lana2000]

Actually it is for a video hosting site (called blip.tv) similar to youtube but it accepts FLV file formats directly.

[zoobie]

chances are, it's copywritten
http://blip.tv/dmca/

[hech54]

Actually it is for a video hosting site (called blip.tv) similar to youtube but it accepts FLV file formats directly.

There are many thing you can do to reduce the byte/megabyte size
of the videos....but sites like Blip and YouTube were never meant to host
quality video in the first place....especially if .FLV format is involved.

Bottom line...quality video and small file size just don't go together.

I used to use FLV Encoder (free)....but now I use AviDemux(also free)
and create Xvid(mpeg4) files to upload to YouTube. My video
clips range anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes....I make anywhere from
30mb to 50mb files(after resizing down....VERY important) and they look
very acceptable.

[manono]

Actually it is for a video hosting site (called blip.tv) similar to youtube but it accepts FLV file formats directly.

It accepts quite a few file formats directly, but I see nothing to indicate that FLV files don't get reencoded, just as all the rest do. You do, though, have the option to set it up to play the original unreencoded uploaded file. And they explicitly say they prefer the uploads to be Quicktime or WMV, for some peculiar reason.

http://blip.tv/faq/

[lana2000]

Those videos are educational free-to-broadcast TV shows, I have no problems to uploading them to any video-host websites, in fact I used to use youtube for this purpose but now it is been more than 6 months I moved to blip.tv just because of the fact that there is no time limit for the length (but within the file size 1GB).
Anyway I am using this on a non-profit and non-commercial site for educational purpose only.
Again, currently I am using ImTOO FLV Converter (imtoo.com) but I was wondering if you know of a better tool or software for VOB --> FLV.
Thank you.

[lana2000]

Actually it is for a video hosting site (called blip.tv) similar to youtube but it accepts FLV file formats directly.

There are many thing you can do to reduce the byte/megabyte size
of the videos....but sites like Blip and YouTube were never meant to host
quality video in the first place....especially if .FLV format is involved.

Bottom line...quality video and small file size just don't go together.

I used to use FLV Encoder (free)....but now I use AviDemux(also free)
and create Xvid(mpeg4) files to upload to YouTube. My video
clips range anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes....I make anywhere from
30mb to 50mb files(after resizing down....VERY important) and they look
very acceptable.

I already tried FLV-Encoder but I am not sure if they support the VOB formats thought, so I am going to download AviDemux see how it looks like, thank you.

[lana2000]

Actually it is for a video hosting site (called blip.tv) similar to youtube but it accepts FLV file formats directly.

It accepts quite a few file formats directly, but I see nothing to indicate that FLV files don't get reencoded, just as all the rest do. You do, though, have the option to set it up to play the original unreencoded uploaded file. And they explicitely say they prefer the uploads to be Quicktime or WMV, for some peculiar reason.

http://blip.tv/faq/

If you submit the file in FLV format then it will not be re-encoded again, it just accept it as it is and in this case you don't have to wait for any other extra conversions.

[hech54]

VOB2MPG

VOB2MPG converts your DVD to MPG file(s). It goes through a whole DVD VIDEO_TS folder and joins up the various vobsets to produce mpgs for the different titles. It does NOT reconvert the video and audio. Requires .net framework 2

.

Also free.
Might solve some of your problems if you find AviDemux a bit daunting at first.

[lana2000]

It is also been suggested to use mencoder ( http://wiki.soslug.org/wiki/vob_to_flv ) , anyone knows about this? to me, it looks great! (but I'll see if I can find a windows version of it not because I like windows but that is the only OS available for me at the moment ).

[poisondeathray]

mencoder is a command line application, it supports most file formats

You can use a GUI, such as automen if you are not comfortable with the CLI

the most important thing for me would be the file size

If the most important thing to you is file size , you should use h.264/aac/.mp4 which will give you the best compression

[lana2000]

If the most important thing to you is file size , you should use h.264/aac/.mp4 which will give you the best compression

Could you please elaborate on this? I am not very familiar with h.264/aac , are these some sort of special settings or they are stand-alone applications ? how can I achieve this ?

Thank you in advance ...

[poisondeathray]

h.264 is a video format
aac is an audio format
.mp4 is a "container"

You will get 30-50% better compression on average than the older flash format (.e.g VP6, or h.263), probably even more at low bitrates. The biggest drawback is that it is very cpu intensive (slow)

There are dozens of free tools to choose from, eg. xvid4psp, megui, ripbot264, avidemux, list goes on.....

There are many ways to do this, there is a guide here for one method:

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic355179.html

filesize = bitrate x running time ; so you will have to do a 2-pass encode at a specified bitrate for a predetermined size.