Old home movies now in VOB and MP4/MPEG-4 formats, want to edit and convert

[myemerald]

I had my old 8mm film, VHS-C, and Hi 8 video files scanned and put on dvds and a usb stick. The dvds are VOB and the usb stick is MPEG-4 (file extensions are.mp4). I don't know the proper terminology, so I'll just refer to them as file formats. Now that I have all of these old family memories safely in digital format, I want to edit them and create dvds or usb sticks to share with my family.

I am playing with Adobe Premier Pro during a 7 day trial, to get a feel for the whole process. I do not understand all of the technology in the digital world and would appreciate help in deciding on the best format and settings to use in exporting my edited movies. I'm seeing things like h.264, which I have never heard of but it seems to be recommended a lot. My needs are pretty basic, I want to put all of the movies in chronological order, cut out some unwanted footage, and save to some type of media that my family can watch either on their computers or dvd player. I want to be sure and preserve the quality without further degradation, as these sat around for many decades and are not in good condition as it is.

Thank you in advance for your help!

[Baldrick]

Latest Adobe Premiere Pro? I think it can do so called smart rendering and it should not reconvert the entire video when you cut. But ONLY if you save as mpeg2 or mpeg4 with same video settings and you can't mix vob/mpeg2 video and mpeg4 video. Or else must you reconvert but if you use highest h264 video quality settings shouldn't you lose too much quality(save your original sources).

[myemerald]

Latest Adobe Premiere Pro? I think it can do so called smart rendering and it should not reconvert the entire video when you cut. But ONLY if you save as mpeg2 or mpeg4 with same video settings and you can't mix vob/mpeg2 video and mpeg4 video. Or else must you reconvert but if you use highest h264 video quality settings shouldn't you lose too much quality(save your original sources).

Yes, Adobe Premier Pro CC 2017. I did see something called smart rendering, I didn't know what it was. Are VOB and MPEG2 the same thing? Do you mean I can't combine them with MPEG4 in the same video and utilize the smart rendering? It sounds like the re-conversion is what causes the loss of quality, and it's best not to do so? I'll look into the smart rendering.