VOB files and incorrect playback time

[Pootle]

Hi,

I'm in the process of transferring all my blu-rays and DVDs onto my media server, and impressing a few friends with Mezzmo along the way...However I am having one problem with VOB files, and wondered if anyone else had come across this.

I've ripped close to 100 of my DVDs to the server (as combined/merged VOB files), but about 25% of them show a short play length (ie Finding Nemo is just over 6 minutes, Raiders of the Lost Ark is 57 mins). They all start to play fine, but after a certain amount of time it stops playing and returns to the menu. The time varies according to the DVD, but each specific film always stops at the same time.

I have ripped using DVD Shrink with settings so that it produces one large VOB. I've also used it to rip several 1GB VOBs and then used VOB Merge to combine, but the same thing always happens. Tonight I'll try RipIt4Me to see if that makes a difference, but does anyone have any ideas?

I'll try using VOB2MPG to convert to MPEG tonight, but I'd prefer not to have to do this as it makes the process much longer

Thanks

[Paul]

I am not sure, but perhaps when merging the files together their time stamps are not properly adjusted, thus you get the first file's duration? Have you tried using DVDFab?

[Pootle]

No, I don't have DVDFab - I'll give it a try. Thanks for the suggestion

In the meantime, I have tried converting to .mkv with MakeMKV and also converting to mpeg with VOB2MPG. Both formats show the correct playing time and seem to play properly, so maybe I'll just stick with MKV

[Paul]

If your device supports MKVs natively, then that would be a better choice than VOBs.

[smitbret]

I've noticed this, too, but the results are never repeateable. If I get a .vob file that appears messed up, I just reencode it with Ripbot264 to an .mp4 file and save the space anyway.

[Pootle]

@smitbret - How long does it take you (on average) to reencode a DVD, and what kind of file size do you end up with - and what is the quality like?

I'm ripping to an MKV container in about 20 mins. I'm trying to figure out whether the extra time & effort involved in reencoding is worth the saving in disk space

I started doing this with Blu-ray using Handbrake, but at 6+ hours per film to get to 720p I couldn't really be bothered...

Thanks

[JohnM]

The problem is that internal to the VOB the timing signal is messed up. It doesn't bother dvd players because they do not use it. (So the dvd makers don't care.)

To correct the problem get a piece of sw called VideoRedoPlus. You can get it at http://www.videoredo.com/en/ProductPlus.htm get the free trial version. When you run it you want to open your file and use tools->quickstreamfix
this will rewrite your file as an mpg and fix the time signal. It should take about 3-4 minutes to do a movie. I was impressed enough that I bought it for that one feature.

[SilverKnight]

I can confirm that DVD fab has the same problem as DVD Shrink when using the "copy main movie" feature of DVD copy product. I expect the timing information is encoded in the actual stream - which DVD rippers don't actually modify (they just decrypt it). Is there no free product to fix this problem? (e.g. videoredo is the ONLY solution?)

[JohnM]

You can check out the tools available at doom9.org
Some of them will let you demux the audio and video. Then you can use ifoedit to rebuild. It is a lot more work and will take longer. If you have a lot of movies to do grab videoredo for its trial period. It is full featured and you will be able to do all your movies before it expires. It also has a batch feature that will let you build a bunch in a row. Let it run overnight. (You have to add them to the batch one at a time but it works well.)