alternatives to VOB2MPG

[Kelly Bolding]

Hi all,

I'm wondering if anyone could recommend reliable tools for converting VOB files from DVDs into MPG access copies. We've been using VOB2MPG, but I recently discovered that a file we downloaded to enable the program to work with Windows 10 introduced some security issues that our IT team was not happy about. It seems like Handbrake is one potential option, but I'm just curious if there are any other options I should look into. (Something that works on either Windows 10 or a Linux machine running BitCurator would be ideal.)

Thanks so much in advance for sharing!

Best,

Kelly

Kelly Bolding
Processing Archivist
Princeton University Library
609-258-8313
kbol...@princeton.edu 
she/they

[Tallman, Nathan]

Hi Kelly,

 

Handbrake can do this (https://handbrake.fr/). Here’s a tutorial walking through the steps; it’s a bit old, but I know Handbrake can still do this. https://www.itsupportguides.com/knowledge-base/tech-tips-tricks/how-to-convert-video_ts-vob-dvd-files-to-mp4-using-handbrake/

 

Thanks,

Nathan

 

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[Kieran O Leary]

I was a big fan of makemkv but had difficult handling the license keys, and actually buying a license proved difficult. It can losslessly rewrap the av streams into a batch of mkv files, and then you can use ffmpeg or something similar to create whatever access copies you want. 

Best,

Kieran O'Leary

[Esmé Cowles]

Kelly-

I've used both Handbrake and FFmpeg for this and generally found they both worked well. I'd say Handbrake has better functionality for previewing the video to check settings, add filters (like deinterlacing), etc. so that seems like it might be a better fit if you're handling a bunch of different DVDs that have different settings.

FFmpeg is a command-line program with pretty much the same features, but would require more trial and error to get the settings right. It's easier to automate, and we use it in our audio/video processing pipelines in our repository. If you had a bunch of DVDs you wanted to process with the same settings, it might be a little more efficient to figure out the settings once and then be able to script processing with FFmpeg.

-Esmé

—

Esmé Cowles <esco...@princeton.edu>

Asst. Director for Library IT

Princeton University Library

[Matt Innes]

Kelly,

From my understanding, VOB2MPG and Handbrake are essentially just GUIs running FFmpeg in the back.

If you want to stick to non-CLI options you could use VLC's 'Convert / Save' functionality, which is also FFmpeg. You can customize the output to get the type of file you're looking for. What you need to do is direct VLC to the VIDEO_TS directory of the disc. There are a few tips to get this to work. If you are working with a disc image, you will need to mount it rather than just open the disc with VLC. This is pretty straight forward with Disk Image Mounter in Linux, but if you happen to want do this with Windows but are working with a .dd created with Guymager, you can change the file extension to .iso and Windows will provide you the option to mount it in the right-click context menu.

That said, personally I would recommend working with FFmpeg directly, as it gives you more control and is one of the best tools when creating access copies of digital AV materials. Being command-line also makes it more scalable as Esme mentioned.

AMIA's ffmprovisr has some documentation to get you started: https://amiaopensource.github.io/ffmprovisr/#dvd_to_file.

All the best,

Matt Innes

UVic SCUA