Basic reauthoring from imperfect VOB source

[evilclive]

I've just received a frantic e-mail from someone who asked a third party to convert his camcorder home movies -- wedding, christenings and so forth -- from VHS to DVD format for posterity.

Something somewhere went horribly wrong -- either the third party did an appalling job and my friend forgot to check, or my friend had to recover the files from a hard disk crash -- and so the files are no longer in a fit condition to be burnt to DVDR.

The VHS originals have since been discarded, and copies on DVDR are nowhere to be found, so the only option seems to be to recover as much as possible, and reauthor the DVDs.

In the worst case, the VOB is not segmented into 1GB files; and none of the DVD images have bitwise-identical IFO and BUP files. On the plus side, as these are home videos there is no CSS to descramble.


My advice to my friend went along the lines of:

1. Unsegment the VOB files with a command like:
copy /b D:\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_?.VOB C:MOVIE.VOB

2. Use VobEdit to extract the elementary streams (MPEG video, and either MP2 or AC3 audio) from MOVIE.VOB.

3. Use Mpeg2Schnitt to view the elementary streams, in the hope that they are still reasonably intact.

4. If they're unusable, cut out (Mpeg2Schnitt) or recreate (TMPGEnc) the affected bits, or cry.

5. Reauthor the elementary streams into DVD format with IFOEdit.

6. Burn several copies onto DVDR for safekeeping.

Is there any obvious advice that I've overlooked here?

[setarip_old]

As complicated, confusing and hard to swallow your described scenario is, if (as you seem to be saying), you have playable video on your hard drive, I'd suggest that you simply use a program such as Camtasia, Camstudio, or similar, to simply capture it and then use DVDFlick to convert to DVD...

[evilclive]

That's a reasonable way to process a playable video file with an unknown codec and container.

As far as I've been told, these files are MPEG-2 video in a VOB container, that have been slightly damaged. Standard MPEG-2 fault tolerance means they still play (more or less) in Media Player Classic.

The IFO files are far less fault-tolerant, but for a simple, single-track home movie, any DVD authoring program can replace them easily enough.

That's why I suggested a simple demultiplex and re-package. The grinding way to do this is as I've described; is there an easier alternative?

[setarip_old]

Standard MPEG-2 fault tolerance means they still play (more or less) in Media Player Classic.Then there is no reason whatsoever that they can't do what I suggested.

(I presume that you know that DVD Flick will create ALL required .IFOs, .BUPs, and .VOBs from the captured video)