handling .vob files

[mwheeler65]

Hello. I have DVD files stored on a micro SD card. I can see which file in the VIDEO_TS folder contains the primary content--its size is just over a GB, while all others are just a few KB. I want to import the content into Premiere Pro CS6 without quality loss and excerpt it to create a new sequence. What would be the best way to proceed?

Many thanks in advance......

[Mo Alani]

Import the big file only and you can start editing no need for the other files

after you import the file drag it to this icon to create sequence with the same specification of the file

or Right click on the file  > New sequence from clip

Muhannad.

[SAFEHARBOR11 · Accepted solution]

First, copy the .vob files to your hard drive, may be more efficient than working off the card itself. Import .vob files into Premiere. Right-click a clip and choose New Sequence from Clip, or just drag a clip onto the New Item button at lower right of Project Bin. This will create a Sequence with the proper settings to match the footage. Now you can do any clean-up editing that you want to do on the footage, then export.

What export format do you want? Another DVD, H.264 for online?

"Without quality loss" - if you are going to do any editing at all of the material, if will get encoded again to whatever export format you want to use - this will not be a lossless process.

There are free tools online for ripping DVD content that I have used in the past, for instance when I had a DVD with a menu error that I needed to fix, when I no longer had the original clips. I was able to rip .m2v clips from the DVD, and since Encore accepts .m2v without transcoding, I was able to build new menus and create a new DVD using the same clips from first DVD, without transcoding them, so there was no loss at all that way. But again, ANY editing of clips in Premiere requires new clips to be rendered out, so there would be some loss with that process.

There are a LOT of free apps online for cutting, splicing and dicing video clips in various ways, so it is possible that you may be able to trim your clips or combine clips without loss because the software rewrites header files and such...these apps require some skills - no consumer interface necessarily, many require scripting of commands. This is not something you can do in "editing" software like Premiere though, different process entirely.

Thanks

Jeff

[mwheeler65]

Thanks, all, for your input and insight. This put me on the right track.