I am trying to do something I think should be simple but I'm having no luck. I want to copy some of my DVD's to a hard drive to be used by a Media Server running Microsoft's Media Connect software which can handle >10 GB .mpg files. The steps I've been taking are 1. Decrypt the DVD with DVD De-crypter 3.5.4.0 to make an iso file 2. Using DVD Shrink 3.2 to copy the main movie .vob files to the hard drive 3. Using VOBMerge 2.5 to merge the .vob files 4. Changing the .vob to .mpg on the merged file When I do this both the merged file (and the individual .vob files) play for a little while then just stop. I have no idea what the "correct" method is to do this or what I'm doing wrong. I do not care about file size, only quality, as I am copying to a Terrabyte drive. Can any of you really smart DVD folks offer any help? Thanks.
Decrypt, but not to ISO, Shrink, extract to elementary streams using ReJig, mux to mpg using Muxman. Simply renaming the file doesn't always work. If you have the storage space, you don't even need shrink.
Thanks rebootjim. I have downloaded rejig and muxman and will give it a try. As a newbie, could you tell me what "extract to elementary streams" is, and is "muxing" the same as encoding? After I do all of this, will I be left with a single .mpg file of the movie and will the quality be that of the .vob files? Thanks again.
REJig in file mode, takes the .vobs, and joins them into one complete movie, but saves the output as separate video and audio streams. Muxman joins these elementary streams back together into one mpg. The .vob's on a DVD contain the mpg, so there's no "encoding" needed, nor wanted. It doesn't re-encode (unless you tell rejig to do so), so there's no loss of quality. Make sure you set the "compression" in rejig to 100%...you'll see the option. This means no compression. Default is 70%, which you can usually do with no discernable loss of quality, but a reduced file size.
Rebootjim, you are the man. It sounds to my naive brain that your suggestions is exactly what I want to do. I will try it out and let you know. Thank you so much. BTW, do you know why AC3 audio streams that play so well through my DVD player and receiver but rendered useless when played directly through my computer. Does that have to do with the sound card on my computer?
No, it's simpy a missing codec. Download and install the AC3 decoder, and AC3 should then playback through most software players.
Rebootjim, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. In Rejig, it seems I can get an video and audio file from either the ifo or file mode. In the file mode it seems I need to do two separate functions, one with the video file and one with the audio file. I am not sure whether to hit the demux button or the re-compress job or re-compress all button. In the ifo mode it seems to do it all at once. Anyway, when I open MuxMan and enter the video and audio stream and hit start, it creates a bunch of .vob files and others rather than a single .mpg file which I thought it would. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? Thanks for all of your help. I tried to find guides for rejig and muxman for what I'm trying without success.
Rebootjim, I found a tool called Imago MPEG-Muxer (http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=ImagoMPEG-Muxer) which turned out to be perfect for me in its simplicity. All is does is multiplex two elementary streams so even I couldn't screw it up. The results are fairly quick and excellent and it is free. At the end of the day what I wanted to do was fairly simple, thank you so much for your help.
Glad you found some software that works for you. I've been using ReJig and muxman, and I'm used to how they work. ReJig does take two steps to get the video and audio in file mode, and I actually prefer it that way, if doing DVD's, because it will keep AC3 audio sync (if you tick the box). There are guides for both at http://www.videohelp.com
"Muxman joins these elementary streams back together into one mpg." For the record: Muxman mux'es the files into DVD files (VOBs), not mpeg / mpg. From the readme file for Muxman 0.14g (July 13 2005): "Right now the program makes a working DVD with one VobID." ------- As a general note, the problem with "Imago MPEG-Muxer" is that it's TOO simple; you can't, for example, specify a time offset for the audio file to get the audio and video in sync.. (at least not in the GUI).
I have been able to get the offset done with Rejig. When I use the Imago MPEG-Muxer, that task is already done and the files that I've made to play directly from my hard drive via the Media server have been perfect. At least so far.
