OK looking for a bit of guidance with this, I’m a bit stumped at the moment.
I want to move some DVD’s onto a portable media centre for travelling with the kids. The media player will play VOB’s (and AVI’s and MPG’s). Apparently VOB’s can contain a menu structure.
Can I get a single VOB file that contains the video and menu structure?
I can rip using dvd::rip but that gives me a bunch of different vobs. I can rip with dvd::rip or k3b to get a single large avi but that doesn’t have the menus.
what is this media centre, likely a load of you know what! and what’s the media player it uses. can it play .iso image files?
there is sure to be a way around it. oldcpu might help if he is back of his hols.
Its easy to do, but it requires a bit of knowledge.
If one is simply copying a dvd then a program such as “dvdbackup” will rip the dvd to one’s hard drive in the video_ts structure that contains the .vob files. So will k9copy and a number of other programs.
If instead I start with a bunch of .avi files that I want to put in the video_ts .vob format, I first create “.mpg” files in the precise DVD format (ntsc or pal). I do that with a program called “tovid”, although the program “avidemux” can do the same (as can other programs). I like tovid, as it has a nice command line option. Say I have a file called original.avi and I want to convert it to a .mpg file in ntsc format, with sound nicely normalized to other video files I have created. Then I simply type:
tovid -dvd -ntsc -normalize -in original.avi newfile
and that creates newfile.mpg in the correct ntsc mpg format suitable for creating a vob file.
I typically create my own vob structure for every custom DVD that I create. I use a command line program (dvdauthor) and a custom xml file that I create with a text editor (because I know the exact syntax).
I then type:
dvdauthor -x myconfigfile.xml
and that creates a vob structure in a directory called “video_ts” specified in the “myconfigfile.xml” that I created with a text editor.
I do a quality check of the “video_ts” directory by opening the directory (yes the directory, not the file) with the program “vlc” . Once happy, I burn the dvd with a program such as k3b. Now you do not want to burn a dvd, but you probably want to do the quality check with “vlc”.
However creating a custom xml file with a text editor is a bit beyond the skills of most users.
You will find programs such as “mandvd” that combines all the above steps, and gives you an option NOT to burn the DVD directory, but rather save the end product on one’s hard drive in a “video_ts” directory full of vob files (in the correct format ready for burning).
I don’t have any links handy, but if you search on “dvdauthor” and “video_ts” you should get some good hints. … Sadly the disadvantage of knowing too much about the command line method (with hand created xml files) of doing things, means one no longer knows the GUI method, and there knowledge gap can be too big to “gap” when trying to teach someone.