Unable to open Sony DVD Handycam VOB files

chri5k

I am trying to open VOB files from a Sony Mini-DVD camcorder. The DVD has been fixed so it plays fine on the computer. I have copied the VOB files to the hard disk. VLC plays the files. When I drag and drop them to DVDFab Video Converter I get the "The file is unsupported" error. I know I can use DVD Ripper to rip the entire DVD or tracks. I want to use Video Converter so I can select a portion of the footage in the VOB for conversion without having to convert the VOB to MPG, edit the MPG and then encode.

fab_admin

[QUOTE=chri5k;70234]I am trying to open VOB files from a Sony Mini-DVD camcorder. The DVD has been fixed so it plays fine on the computer. I have copied the VOB files to the hard disk. VLC plays the files. When I drag and drop them to DVDFab Video Converter I get the "The file is unsupported" error. I know I can use DVD Ripper to rip the entire DVD or tracks. I want to use Video Converter so I can select a portion of the footage in the VOB for conversion without having to convert the VOB to MPG, edit the MPG and then encode.[/QUOTE]
First I admit I am a little confused with your description.
The Sony Mini-DVD camcorder files are not VOB files.
They must be converted to VOB files in order for Fab to see them.

Yes they will play on a computer using VLC and Imgburn will burn the file to a disk but it cannot be played on a standalone DVD player.

Use the software that came with the camcorder to convert and burn to a disk that can be played.

chri5k

Sorry for the description. The disc is finalized by the camcorder and can be played in a standalone DVD player. I have tested the disc on 3 standalone DVD players in the house and it plays fine. The disc also plays fine with Windows Media player. The disc contains a standard looking VIDEO_TS directory with IFO, BUP and VOB files. It is these VOB files that DVDFab Video Converter can not open but can be played in VLC.

This may be moot since it does not look like I can select arbitrary points in a VOB file with DVDFab Video Converter. It appears it can only select tracks and chapters. I was hoping to avoid the steps of ripping to MPEG's, trimming and then encoding. It sure would be nice to go directly from VOB to H.264 and select a segment of the video.

fab_admin

Understood.. Your mini cam uses the disk. Mine has a 4 gb internal hard drive plus 4 gb chip and the files are not VOB so I do not have any experience with your problem..sorry.

AGJ

Give DVDFab DVD Ripper a try on these files as it sounds like they DVD compliant format and Video Converter is to convert files like mkv,avi to mp4, wmv and such

chri5k

DVD Ripper does rip the files but that still leaves me with either MPEG's, etc. of the entire clip. I want to take a section of a clip and convert it to MP4 without the intermediate steps of ripping, trimming before encoding. Also, according to the DVDFab website Video Converter is supposed to open VOB's.

I was hoping to be able to open the VOB, have a preview of the footage, select an arbitrary section of the footage and encode only the selected section to H.264. Every program I have tried so far wants to rip to MPEG or some other format, edit and then encode. This seems like wasted steps and time. Perhaps I don't understand the structure of VOB's but I don't see why sections can't be selected and encoded without going to some intermediate format.

This is not a slam or anything, I am willing to purchase a commercial product like DVDFab if I could save those extra steps. However, since all programs I have tried, both free and commercial, require those extra steps it makes it hard to justify purchasing a commercial program.

David$

Hi chri5k,
DVDFab >Video converter is supported to open VOB ,and it works well.

Complication

I'm guess here but it might be that you just need to rename the files as DVDFab may not like them with the default DVD file structure names. This is probably to prevent people from using Video Converter when they should be using DVD Ripper.

Another thought is to use DVD Ripper VOB Passthrough first to create one large file and then use Video Converter to make the file you want. Passthrough is very fast since it doesn't encode the video.

Again, I am just throwing out ideas here.