VOB File Time Count Resets, Doesn't Consistently Count from the Beginning

[CellPhoneCinemaProject]

Hey everyone,

First, thank you for being an awesome community and being willing to help me. I'm a computer programmer, and I'm working on a project that involves using timestamps from Closed Captions to get screenshots from particular points in a film. We have VOB files that we acquired from DVD's. The problem I'm having is that the time counts reset to zero periodically in these VOB files. It may count from 0 seconds up to, for example, 44 minutes and 12 seconds, and then start counting from 0 seconds again. I need it to count from the beginning the whole way through. Now, one workaround that I've found is just to convert the files to mp4's. The software that I've been using to do this corrects the counting. However, I feel like there should be better options/tools that don't involve changing the file format. Any ideas?

[hech54]

VOB2MPEG
VOB files are only meant for DVDs. Revert them back to their original MPEG2 for less flaky-ness.

[CellPhoneCinemaProject]

Isn't this basically what I'm already doing, just a different file format? I tried installing the program but when I launch it, I get a message that the program has encountered an error and so it won't launch.

[hech54]

You have just the VOB files, not the entire contents of the disc then.
Remember....by converting to MP4 you are losing quality.
DVD/VOB is MPEG2, and "reverting" back to MPEG2 is just changing or removing the VOB"container"....no quality loss.

[manono]

If for some reason VOB2MPEG doesn't work for you, you could always demux and remux. One way to do that is to open the VOB (or VOBs as you can join your videos at the same time if you like) in DGIndex followed by File->Save Project and Demux Video. That'll get you an M2V and AC3 audio (if that's what the audio is) and a D2V you can toss. Any delay will be reported in the name of the audio file. Then remux using ImagoMPEG-Muxer or Muxman taking the delay (if any) into account. You can also completely remove any delays using DelayCut.

I agree with hech54 that anything is better than reencoding the VOBs.