How do I convert DVD (.VOB) to reusable format?

[net4ward]

Sorry for asking such a basic question. I have never reverse engineered a DVD before. I have only created DVD's. There is too much information to browse through to know where to begin.

Background:
I created a DVD containing movies and slideshows of this years Adventures (Sacramento Trip, Grand Canyon Trip, etc) each in their own chapter.

I received a DVD of me running in a marathon from a friend. The DVD is not copy protected.

How do I (and what tools do I use) to convert the DVD (or .VOB files that I copied to my Drive) to either an .AVI file or .MPEG file so I can re-author the DVD I have already created, and add the Marathon Video as another chapter to my Adventures DVD?

Or can I just import a .VOB file into my Existing project using either my Roxio's or Sonic's DVD authoring tools?

Thanks in advance for assistance provided.

[killingspree]

hi and welcome to the forum,

honestly, those questions are surely not too basic. ;) anyway, the format you want your marathon dvd in, depends greatly on what authoring application you are using to create your dvd. converting it to avi should definitely not be necessary, much rather it'd be bad for the final quality of your project.

to sum it up, depending on what application you use to author your disk you should just be able to extract the video and audio out of the vob files and reauthor it with the other assets of your adventure dvd.

a good place to start would probably be dvddecrypter with it's stream processing commands!

kr
steVe

[net4ward]

Thanks for the reply. Believe it or not, I tried the "rename the .VOB file to .MPG" when I got home (after reading the numerous suggestions to do that) and Sonic's MyDVD Deluxe v6 imported the video (after first automatically splitting and video and audio). I even then tried it again selecting the .VOB file directly and it still worked.

Thanks for the help!

[killingspree]

that's why i wanted to know which authoring program you use... i did know that some allow you to import vob files directly, as it is just another container for mpg video streams ...

kr
steve