[Fothb]

Hi there. I searched the forums already for keywords "iDVD" and "vob", but all of the results referred to decoding the .vob files into separate manageable video and audio formats. Unfortunately, that's not what I'm looking to do (if possible not to).

Here's what I'm trying to do... I have a few different DVDs that contain individual TV series episodes from various season boxsets that I've purchased. I want to burn a DVD-R that contains 4 or so of these episodes that are mixed and matched. Sort of a "greatest hits" or "favorite episodes" type compilation if you will. I can isolate and copy over the four individual .vob files to the harddisk, and I can put those on a DVD-R disc easily enough, but I want to create a menu that can be used with a regular home DVD player to choose which episode to watch.

Is there any way to use iDVD (or another app?) to simply create a menu that can be used to point to all of the individual .vob files without decoding them and then turning them back into .vob? I really don't want to separate the audio and video streams only to combine them right back together again unless I absolutely have to.

I welcome any suggestions... thanks in advance!

[Uncle Skeleton]

DVDStudio Pro would be perfect for this, if you can get a copy (or maybe go to an Apple store and test drive the demo machine on this project). Separating audio and video (if necessary, I don't know if DVDSP suports VOB or not) will be no problem at all (bbDemux); it's re-encoding them that you don't want to do, and I think that would be the only way to get them into iDVD.

if you can't get access to DVDSP, try Sizzle, Toast6 or ffmpegX. I don't know to what degree those apps support menus though

[cnelson87]

I'm interested in doing this as well, but I'm NOT shelling out the $$$ for DVDSP for my non-pro usage.
So, consider this a "bump."

[Fothb]

Thanks for the response and bump guys.

Following Uncle Skeleton's suggestions, I checked out all of those applications. First the suite style apps... I looked at DVD Studio Pro ($500), Toast ($90) and Sizzle (Free) and decided to give Sizzle a try. I was able to add individual .vob files via the "Add Title" option, and then I was able to add buttons to the main menu and have those buttons point to the appropriate .vob files. This is definitely what I'm looking for! The app isn't as intuitive as iDVD and the end result doesn't look as good as some of the better iDVD themes out there, but it'll work for now until Apple either updates iDVD with .vob support or someone figures out how to manually edit iDVD project files and redirect the menu links to .vob files.

I'm going to play with Sizzle a little more. I'm very pleased to see that it's mainly just a front-end for a collection of cool open-source DVD related software. If it ends up not doing the trick, I'll try the other apps you mentioned (ffmpegX and bbDemux) and mess with the decoding/re-encoding.

[starman]

I've been dealing with this issue for 2 years.

Here's the problem - the .vob file is the end result of the DVD authoring process. The index files can't be created until the MPEG-2 and Dolby Digital (or PCM) have been muxed together into the .vob format, so it's a chicken-and-egg problem from the point of view of "why would you want to do that?". No software creates an index file from pre-existing .vob files since the .vob files are created by the authoring app first.

What you want to do is take the .vob files as they are and make a new DVD of them.

Can't be done. There's no software out there that takes pre-existing .vob files and makes a new DVD of them.

If someone were to write it, then sure, you're golden.

If it existed, I'd have been all over it like white on rice (or it just slipped under my radar).

What someone would have to do is allow you to create a new index file based on the .vob files you throw at it. I don't know how easy that is, and I'll tell you right now that when you're messing with things like that, you're probably going to lose chapter information unless the app is smart enough to extract the chapter info from each disc you throw at it. And even still, sometimes DVDs are made up of very large .vob files that are segmented into chapters, but most times you're lucky enough to have everything you want in individual pieces. I've personally had to split vob files. It ain't pretty.

It's hideously complicated.

Easy Solution:
The best you could do now is burn a data DVD of the extracted vob files and use Video LAN Client to play back the .vob files in the order you want.

Mike

[Uncle Skeleton]

Mike, have you tried Sizzle? that's what it's there for. I haven't tried it since I don't have a set top dvd player, and therefore no need to author video dvds...but that's the whole purpose of Sizzle...

and by the way:

I'm going to play with Sizzle a little more. I'm very pleased to see that it's mainly just a front-end for a collection of cool open-source DVD related software. If it ends up not doing the trick...

I believe Sizzle itself is open-source too :-)
I know the author to some degree, and I'm sure if you run into any trouble he will be more than happy to find you a fix, and be grateful for the bug report too

[starman]

I read Sizzle's "documentation". I see nothing that solves this problem EASILY.

Mike

[Uncle Skeleton]

so all that "can't be done" and "If it existed, I'd have been all over it like white on rice" talk, you were just blowing smoke? and what do you mean by "EASILY?" You select a source file, you make menus if you want, you press start and go see a movie. What exactly are you looking for? and what have you been doing while "dealing with this for two years?" have you discovered 0SEx in all that time? Or Extractor?

[starman]

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:
so all that "can't be done" and "If it existed, I'd have been all over it like white on rice" talk, you were just blowing smoke? and what do you mean by "EASILY?" You select a source file, you make menus if you want, you press start and go see a movie. What exactly are you looking for? and what have you been doing while "dealing with this for two years?" have you discovered 0SEx in all that time? Or Extractor?

I just said I read up on them. What they're doing is deconstructing the vobs and repackaging them into .vobs again.


What exactly are you looking for?


Something that takes the .vob files AS THEY ARE and just creates new index files for them.

Again:

Extractor is a Cocoa App (MacOSX) to demux mpeg files (VCD,SVCD,DVD).

That's NOT what the author wants (nor do I). Read his article again.

He said:

Is there any way to use iDVD (or another app?) to simply create a menu that can be used to point to all of the individual .vob files without decoding them and then turning them back into .vob?

OSEx doesn't do what he wants, either.

Show me an app that does nothing but take the .vob files AS THEY ARE and just make a new DVD of them WITHOUT decompressing/recompressing them into new .vobs.

Mike

[Uncle Skeleton]

vob and m2v/ac3/pcm are merely different packaging of the same data. there is no compression or decompression occurring when converting between mux'd and demux'd mpeg data. Ever wonder why all the DVD Extractors have equivalent options to product muxed vob files or demuxed m2v+audio files? or why most mpeg2 decoders can accept vob or m2v input? Even ignoring that fact, Sizzle accepts VOB files as input, so I don't know what you're all worked up about...

[cnelson87]

cool! I tried sizzle and you can definitely throw .vob files at it no-problem-o. it just demuxes and re-muxes them, no big deal.
I haven't tried a .vob with multiple chapters, so I don't know if chapter info will be retained. I hope so...