FAO: RJ (and anybody else...)

[fatboyjim]

Hi,

I read on VCDHelp.com that burning directly from DVD-ROM to VCD can overheat the DVDROM causing it to fail... forever

Any knowledge on this?

Thanks,

[Xayd]

If you're talking about avoiding copying VOB files to your hard drive before modifying them or extracting the streams, then yes you would be working your DVD drive unnecessarily hard.

[fatboyjim]

OK Ta, I won't bother then

What I'm trying to do is this...

I have a DVD of a TV Series here (6 episodes of about 30 mins each)

What will be the file structure of the disc, you reckon?

Jim

[Xayd]

You need program(s) to analyze it. After you determine how it's set up you can decide what you can do with it.

They are here... http://www.doom9.org

1) Look at the vob files on the DVD. The largest numbered set will be the actual audio and video, the rest are probably the menus, extra scenes, etc. Load the IFO file that corresponds to the largest set of VOBs into IFOUpdate. It's probably separated by different playlists for each episode. The program you'll wanna check that with is IFOUpdate (freeware, can be downloaded above). If it says your DVD has multiple PGCs, that's what you're looking at. PGC = program chain, a list of chapters that make up a playlist that corresponds to a particular episode.

2) This might not apply. It might have a different set of VOB files for each episode. If that's the case you could use a program such as FlaskMPEG to convert the individual episodes to MPEG-1 and WAV audio very easily by simply loading the VOBs up into flask and demuxing the audio and video with the options in the program.

Alternatively you could also view the VOBs in DVD2AVI (also available at above link). It will actually play the VOB files and show you what's in them.

There's lots of different ways to assemble a DVD and have it work the same way in a DVD player, so what you've got depends on who authored it and how to begin with.

If episodes have separate VOB sets like I said you can break it down with Flask pretty easily.

If it's one long stream of audio and video that's just organized by separate PGCs and chapters, there's not much you'll be able to do with it other than extract the entire audio and video stream from the VOBs and break them up using your own editing program afterwards. VirtualDub can do this, but it'll take some time on your part.

[fatboyjim]

They were separate, used SmartRipper, DVD2AVI, TMPGEnc then Nero

thanks