Import VOB Files

[mikesteve]

I tried to import VOB files from my hard drive into MSP12. The files make up a 2 hour movie from a Sony handycam I used the handycam to burn the tape files to my DVD recorder and made a dvd.

I select import media and go to the VOB files on my hard drive and use the control key to select the 5 files. When they are brought into the timeline the 2 hour movie is only 3 minutes long. I use the all files dropdown to select the vob files since they do not show up when you click on the video ts folder. I can't figure out why they are not being converted to mpg and not being 2 hours long.

I then tried to import from my dvd drive and the dvd disk. The files are converted with no problem and they movie is 2 hours long.

Is there a way to convert the VOB files on the hard drive to accomplish the same thing as the dvd drive does?

I have Steve Grisetti's book and could not find anything on this.

[RJ Johnston]

Try selecting only the VTS_01_0.IFO file. That contains information on how to put the individual VOB's together. Vegas Pro can do this, but I'm not sure about Movie Studio.

You will have to select to search "All files (*.*) when browsing in Vegas because the IFO file extension isn't normally included in any of the other file format groups.

[Steve Grisetti]

As Robert says, some of the VOB files in your VIDEO_TS folder are for your menus and menu animation and some are the video itself. You may want to preview these VOB files with VLC Player (a free download) to see which actually contains the meat of your movie. (I believe DVDs break longer movies into 20 minute segments, so you may need to gather a couple of the files to get your whole movie.)

Once youv'e done that, make sure your project is set up correctly by going to Project Properties and using the Match Video Project Settings to Media tool, as I show you in the book, and making sure that your deinterlace method is set to Interpolate Fields and that the option to Adjust Source Media to Better Match Project or Render Settings, as I show you in the Appendix. This will give you the best possible performance and results.

Other than that, once you import your file into your project, be sure to allow the program a few minutes to conform the video in your VOB file before you start editing.

I've done this often and it should work great! The challenge is being patient as the program conforms the files if you're working with a longer movie.

[mikesteve]

Thanks Steve and Robert. When I included the ifo file it worked fine. Any ideas as to why vob's are not included in the dropdown list in VMS? Steve, I really like your book. I will be getting the DVD Architect book next.

Mike

[RJ Johnston]

Mike, I always figured that Sony prefers that you don't know how to copy DVD's that way, so they left out the .IFO and .VOB file extensions from the drop-downs. You can run into trouble if you load just the VOB files. There will be lost frames where the VOB files join on the timeline, whereas the VOB's should join seamlessly -- which they will if you use the IFO file. You also run the risk of having the audio out of sync with the video when loading just VOB's.

[Steve Grisetti]

Thanks for the info, Robert. I was not aware of that either!