VOB sizes

i like everything about AVI.NET (VOB -> AVI converter) except the TIME it takes (48 hrs for some clips on my PC!) and the "CONVERT TO SIZE" setting. it doesn't seem based on the size of the input. for example, it usually offers output sizes like:

350M -- 1/2 CD
700M -- full CD
896M -- 1/5 DVD
1120M -- 1/4 DVD
1493M -- 1/3 DVD
2040M -- "maximum"

is there a particular REASON for this? i'm not even burning the output anywhere; just trying to make AVI files!

if i start with a particularly SMALL input, it also offers me "175M -- 1/4 CD". still, tho, why the distinct "levels" to begin with, rather than just some %age of the starting clip?

my gut always says "use highest rez possible", but when 2G "maximum" is offered as output for a 500M input, i'm not even sure what's happening. is the output really like 150M and all the rest is just wasted in this sort of "reserved space"?

as such, i am tempted to use the LOWEST rez offered -- esp since my VOBs all began as VHS tapes a year or so ago -- but i am not quite sure. is a 350M avi, say, par for the course for a 45 min VHS?

if they didn't take SO FERKIN' LONG to convert, i'd save a copy at EVERY LAST SETTING OFFERED and then decide later on whether i can actly SEE any diff, but if anyone has any opinions ("use the highest!" "use the lowest -- 175M waaaay better rez than VHS offered in first place!"), i'm all ears.

oh, while we're on it, what about "bitrate" and "constant quality" settings? i've just been leaving them whereever they start, but i'm not sure those are "defaults", actually. more like: changing the aforementioned "size" setting alters the "bitrate" and "quality" settings to match!

one big vicious circle. i just want SIMPLICITY!

 

Try this link to some free video editing programs. I use VirtualDub to make my avi files. You can open VOB files in it and convert them to avi files.

http://www.doom9.org/

There is a forum where you can ask questions and walkthroughs if you need them.

Not sure why it would take so long to convert. What are your computer specs?

 

i used VirtualDub early on, but i seem to recall MAJOR problems. several ppl here pointed me at AVI.net, which has worked just fine, albeit SLOOOOOWLY.

(VirtualDub might have been the source of a bunch of AVIs which simply WON'T PLAY, i forget. AVI.net, whatever it's operational probs, has given me perfect OUTPUT).

i'll have a look at that blog. altho...with all the VOB experts in this forum, i'm still all ears here as well.

PC is XP SP3 laptop, 512M RAM, 80G HDD, btw. i have a LOT of "speed" problems on this thing (HEAT, i think), over and above what 512M RAM shud represent. heck, i've had PCs with 32M RAM which ran faster than this!

 

I've never had problems with VirtualDub before. Odd.

I've never used AVI.NET before. I don't think I'll be much help. Sorry.

As for your computer, you should be able to use the program much faster than 48 hours for converting a large clip. If you search this site there are threads that talk about keeping your computer in good shape and speeding it up.

This link for example

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=106650

 

are you starting with VOB files?

seems to me I was using VD when trying to edit/truncate/convert between MPG and AVI. some time BEFORE (and seperate) from my attempts to get a handle on a pile of VOBs.

as for the "speed" stuff, yeah yeah. i do all the necessary "tricks". i've just got one CHRONIC problem no one's ever found. 6 or 7 threads on the matter already -- don't wanna get into it tonite!

 

hi, i put all this on the back burner, and have switched PCs twice since last posting. is avi.net still the recommended app? in the course of DLing a recent copy, i notice much better "buzz" over autoGK. particularly for the issue i first posted about: the confusing interrelationship of sizes and bitrates and resolutions -- one ad for autoGK specifically stresses how much clearer these are in that app. plus how the defaults are all logical...unlike avi.net which left me in "fish or cut bait" indecision until i hunkered down with the manuals....

a few more apps as well -- handbrake, FD-something, FileConvert-something, etc etc. any of note? autoGK still seems to be the one most popular.

have DLed several, but gonna start out w autoGK if the experts here agree.

 

oh, at this point maybe i should also ask: is AVI the way to go with these things in the first place? isn't WMV higher quality while actually being more compact?

since i'm startng fresh, any particular reason to choose MPG vs AVI vs OGG vs WMV etc?

i am starting w VOB files.

 

I don't keep up on video converting but always preferred AVI because it is the most compatible with other software. Editing an AVI is easy and fast with VirtualDub rather than trying to edit a WMV with Windows Movie Maker. Most of the reason I ever did VOB to AVI converting was to make a small clip from a movie so easy editing after conversion was my priority.

AutoGK was my preferred software because it was so automatic and provided the best results compared to the all in one video converters you see advertised like WinAvi. Part of the reason for the good results is that it uses two-pass encoding by default which means it is slower. But on a modern machine it shouldn't be too bad.

It uses the same 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 CD/DVD options for output size. I always chose 1CD(700mb) or 2CD(1.4gb) depending on the length of the movie.

Any scene I think about making a clip of is already on youtube so my experience is probably outdated but I think autoGK is worth a try. If you test Handbrake I would be curious how it compares to autoGK or avi.net in your opinion.

 

LOL. pls see my previous comments about "48 hrs" per clip!

so do you understand those size issues? i mean, why are VOBs of varying sizes all coming out at the same levels? if i have a 1.2G/20 min clip and a 1.4G/23 min clip, how can it offer me the exact same sizes for the resultant AVIs? is it laying out some sort of "box" into which the AVI sits -- with room to spare -- unless big enough to overflow into the next box size?

first impression is that the bitrate and resolution fall to match. what the...?! why would i want my 1.4G clip to convert at 6/7 (= 1.2/1.4) the resolution, just so it all comes out the same size?! that is beyond "kludge"!!

nor do i see a tendency for AVIs in the wild to all fall into neat little sizes like this -- if all AVIs were 350, 700, or 896, say, i think i would have noticed by now!!

no, they seem to be w/e size the length and resolution require. so how are THEY being made?!

the illogic of preset output sizes has my head spinning. what am i missing here?!

:confused

 

I really don't do much encoding anymore. I only posted to say that autoGK produces very good results. I used to run an old P4 just for encoding--I wasn't worried about speed as that is all that machine did and it would take about 4hrs. to encode a whole movie to a 700mb or 1.4gb size avi. A new machine should only take about 1/4 to 1/2 that time.

The preset sizes were for when HD were much smaller so people needed to save large file to CD to get them off the HD to free up space. So avi movies were split into 700mb pieces to fit onto CDs.

People who encode now use customized settings to get the avi to come out to variable sizes. I never got into encoding that deeply to worry about these type of settings. The few times I tried (using autoGK), I saw little quality difference between the preset 700mb size and the custom size that usually came out to 800-950mb. So I just stuck to 700mb unless the movie was particularly long >2 full hours and then I went up to 1.4gb.

I hope someone more into encoding can give some answers as to how to customize settings. Or give Handbrake a try. I think most of the variable size files you see around are probably using Handbrake rather than AutoGK.

Videohelp.com is a good site for reading up on video converting if you haven't already found it.

 

autoGK gives me 3 options:

1) save as "1/2 CD, full CD, 1/2 DVD" etc. as discussed
2) input customized size
3) xfer with quality: xx %

both 1 and 2 affect #3 directly, as i had suspected with avi.net (much easier to see here).

IMHO option 2 is even weirder than option 1! who goes into this with a magic number to shoot for..."and damn the resolution"?!

i realize there may be such situations, but it seems to me the default should be to xfer with 100% quality, whatever the output size; if things need to be adjusted from there, ok, fine, THEN offer some variables.

anyway, i buzzed past 1 and 2 and changed #3 back to 100% (it started out at 75%, based on w/e default #1 had been). which i will do for ALL future conversions unless someone can convince me otherwise.

3 hrs now on pass 1. sigh. any hopes of this being lightning fast have been dashed.

 

FINISHED!

took 6 hours but it finally wrapped up. alas but the output file is 7G. what thu...?!

4.3G of input VOB = 7 G output AVI? huh?

seems to play ok and contains the entire video (2 hrs), but what's the basic issue here? is "quality 100%" somehow a misnomer, in that compression in and of itself represents quality drop? even for an ideal copy, should i be using quality = 10% or something??

i should note that the prog ran on an "IFO" file. i tried the various "VOB" files in the folder -- including VIDEO_TS.VOB and VTS_01_1.VOB -- but it kept telling me "wrong filetype".

here's the log. anything unusual here?

[20 Feb 2012 15:42:38] AutoGK 2.55
[20 Feb 2012 15:42:38] OS: Windows Vista (6.1.7601).2
[20 Feb 2012 15:42:38] Job started.
[20 Feb 2012 15:42:38] Input file: C:\vids\disk9\VTS_01_0.IFO
[20 Feb 2012 15:42:38] Output file: C:\vids\disk9\test from IFO.avi
[20 Feb 2012 15:42:38] Output codec: XviD
[20 Feb 2012 15:42:38] Audio 1: ??? AC3 2ch
[20 Feb 2012 15:42:38] Subtitles: none
[20 Feb 2012 15:42:38] Format: AVI
[20 Feb 2012 15:42:38] Target quality: 100%
[20 Feb 2012 15:42:38] Audio 1 settings: Auto
[20 Feb 2012 15:42:38] Started encoding.
[20 Feb 2012 15:42:38] Demuxing and indexing.
[20 Feb 2012 15:46:13] Processing file: C:\vids\disk9\VTS_01_1.VOB
[20 Feb 2012 15:46:13] Processing file: C:\vids\\disk9\VTS_01_2.VOB
[20 Feb 2012 15:46:13] Processing file: C:\vids\\disk9\VTS_01_3.VOB
[20 Feb 2012 15:46:13] Processing file: C:\vids\\disk9\VTS_01_4.VOB
[20 Feb 2012 15:46:13] Processing file: C:\vids\\disk9\VTS_01_5.VOB
[20 Feb 2012 15:46:13] Source resolution: 720x480
[20 Feb 2012 15:46:13] Found NTSC source.
[20 Feb 2012 15:46:13] Source aspect ratio: 4:3
[20 Feb 2012 15:46:13] Analyzing source.
[20 Feb 2012 15:54:59] Source is considered to be interlaced.
[20 Feb 2012 15:54:59] Output will contain 223125 frames
[20 Feb 2012 15:54:59] Using VAQ in XviD
[20 Feb 2012 15:54:59] Running single pass encoding.
[20 Feb 2012 22:00:11] Duration was: 6 hours 5 minutes 12 seconds
[20 Feb 2012 22:00:11] Speed was: 10.18 fps.
[20 Feb 2012 22:00:11] Job finished. Total time: 6 hours 17 minutes 33 seconds​

​

PS: i have w7. i dunno what that "vista" is all about....

and what was that about "double pass by default", sach?!

 

I'm not sure why you are trying for 100% quality. I would think the maximum cap you would want would be about 80% otherwise you might as well just copy the DVD to your HD. When you don't use compression you have to remember that audio takes up a lot of space. Most people that convert to avi do so to create a file much smaller than the original DVD but in a very viewable quality. Is there a reason you want to convert to avi without making the file size smaller? Most times you wouldn't really notice a lesser quality such as a 1.4gb avi would provide.

Why not do another conversion using AutoGK and choosing an output size of 1.4gb and comparing both the time it takes for completion and the quality to the 7gb avi you just created. See what you think when you compare viewing the two files. Is the difference in quality noticeable if you are playing the file on your computer? Is the difference worth the much larger size?

Take a look at your avi with gspot and figure out what is taking up the space. Open your AVI in gspot and look in the left pane under container how much space is video taking up and how much audio?

Double pass encoding is to get the best quality. I haven't read on it for years but I think it basically does the conversion twice to produce a smoother final result. One pass encoding is fine in most cases but I found that I usually chose two-pass as it was recommended since I noticed a slight difference in clarity.

AutoGK prefers the IFO file as the beginning reference point this is normal.

 

no, i definitely want to do compression, and HEAVILY so!

i thought VOB -> AVI was a certain ratio, 10:1 or w/e, and then that quality %age kicked in AFTER that. i.e., there was certain "perfect" AVI, quality "100%" but 1/10 the size of the VOB. after which 80% quality meant degrade the AVI by 20% or so for net size 8% of VOB etc.

i guess (now) this is not the case. so "quality" here EQUALS compression ratio; nothing more, nothing less?

i recall from avi.net my outputs were around 1/20 of the VOB size and they looked pretty good. does this really mean i convert using "5%" quality?!

fine by me, but that's counter-intuitive. they should label it "compression" something-or-other.

forget the 1.4G output "target" -- i just can't think that way -- give me a ballpark QUALITY %age to start with. as the above indicates, 5% seems to be on the HIGH end.

i'm going to do a zillion tests, but i need a starting point. 3%? 1%?

and double pass is fine. i was just pointing out that it wasn't the default in autoGK.

 

I'd have to look at AutoGK again. But the default is something like 75% I believe you said. Thinking back I believe I changed that to 80% and got a file in the 900mb range. But i can't say for sure. So going to 3-10% would be way too low.

I can only go by what I see around the web. AVI of whole movies generally range from 700mb to 2gb. I know the old rule of thumb was 700mb for a regular drama with little fast action and 1.4gb for an action flick where too few frames would be noticeable when watching the movie. I know you don't like the preset size idea but the rule of thumb works.

I think AutoGK works best letting it go with its preset sizes. People that want custom sizes use VirtualDub or other software. I'll take a look around over the next day or two and see if I can get an idea of what people are using these days. Like I mentioned I never really explored the technical side of it so I won't be able to give you too much detail or tips.

 

D'OH! the 20:1 ratio i recall was not from avi.net, it's from AUDACITY!!!! i specifically recall MP3s being roughly 5% of the original .AUD files....

plus weren't FLAC files in a similar range as AUD? 10-20 times the size of the matching MP3s?

SORRY ABOUT THAT. :-o

so AVI is more like 1/2 of the VOBs, huh. ok. but now with all this SPACE to SPARE (big diff from my last PC), is there any great REASON to convert? just to do editing?

2G (say) is better than 4.3G, sure, but not such a huge amount to be throwing away "lossless". if FLACs were only double their MP3 equivs, i think we'd all be using FLACs these days....

 

hoo boy, i tried the "defaults" -- 1/4 CD. 1/2 CD. 1CD, 2 CDs -- on a 4.3G set of VOBs (basically 2 hrs worth of stuff from DVD) -- and it took 23 hours!!

i'll post some logs later, but something like 1 hrs, 2 hrs, 6 hrs, and 14 hrs respectively.

suddenly my 6 hrs at "100%" quality doesn't look so bad!

-----
btw, i think FLAC size was more like *10* times the corresponding MP3s, now that i think about it. fwiw.

 

Really? I never had it take more than 5 hours and that was on an old P4 with limited RAM. I thought 2-4 hours was a hassle and I wasn't even using the machine for anything else just letting it run in another room.

I am going to check around to see what others are using but I'm really surprised that AutoGK is giving you so much trouble.

FLACs are great! I wouldn't even bother with mp3--that is what youtube is good for when you just want to hear a song a few times.

 

i let it run undisturbed the first 10 hrs, after that i had no choice (work) and started doing stuff in other windows.

frankly i thought it would all be wrapped up in that first 10 hrs -- with maybe 5 to spare!

i have 1.6GHz dual-core w 3G ram. maybe not the best, but certainly way better than my last one (single-core/512k ram), which got similar results.

sigh. is it WORTH it to go through all this to convert VOB to AVI?! when i started, it was to save space (HDD overload and/or need to burn to DVDs). but now i've got room to spare both on the HDD and on flash backup.

i WAS going to edit a few of them, but at this point i'm tempted to store all the VOB origs and revisit the issue in 8 years.....

 

Agreed, but only if you have good equipment and ears

For a listening test, try the quality test files (not tones) from a little Scottish company called Linn Records. < forum software doesn't have Tartan in the colors available

There's no point in using the higher quality if the equipment can't reproduce it.