Thread: .vob to .avi - on the cheap

1. Make sure your DVD is finalized.
2. Place the DVD in your computer drive.
3. Look for a folder titled VIDEO_TS and double click on it to open it.
4. Look for files with the prefix VTS_01_1.VOB and if there is more than one they will be numbered sequentially, so there will be a 2, 3 and 4; they will be 1Gb in size if you hold the mouse pointer over them.
5. Click to highlight these files and copy them to a folder on your hard disk.
6. Once in the new folder, right mouse click on each individual .VOB file and select the 'properties' function at the bottom of the menu - just to make sure the files are not READ ONLY - if they are, get rid of the little green dot in the box.
7. When done, right mouse click again on each individual .VOB file and select the 'rename' function from the menu.
8. Give the file a recognisable name and give it the .avi file extension and hit the Enter key.
9. The icon will change to that of an AVI.
10. Open up Adobe or whatever software you are editing with and it should allow you to import the file, with no problems.

Thanks for this Nikosony. You must be a closet lawyer - 10 steps on how to rename a vob file to an avi !

Of course, renaming a vob file to an avi doesn't make it an avi. That would be like calling your dog 'Trigger', and expecting everyone to believe it's a horse.

I couldn't get Premiere Pro 1.5 nor Movie Maker to recognise my avi files created in this way.

That's possibly because they are encrypted.

Nope - it isn't because of that. I used vob files from both my own-produced dvds and those ripped from commercial dvds. Same results.

Premiere says "Unsupported format or damaged file"


Movie Maker says "....VTS_01_1.avi could not be imported. Unspecified error."

gives me an 'unsupported audio rate' on Premiere Pro 2.0...

Hmm, interesting, sorry to hear my ten step programme didn't work for you guys, I will take the instructions away with me and try them out myself again to see if they are correct. As far as I can remember they worked fine for me. Maybe I've got different codecs on my computer and I used a Sony DVD recorder to do the initial recordings and maybe the settings are different on that recorder, I don't know at this stage. But I will definitely be coming back to this in the next few days. I changed the entire name of the file, not just the extension, are you sure you got rid of the .vob extension and your file is called something like VTS_01_1.avi.vob, that happened to me once and it didn't work. I had to reimport the VTS back onto the harddisc and make sure I got rid of the .vob part. You may also need to import another small file, off the top of my head I can't remember if it's an .ifo or .bup into the same folder as the .vob to make it work.

A 'vob' file type is really a wrapper format meaning the real format of that file (in this case) is an an Mpeg2. It is also possible the audio inside of it is a dolby Ac3 which you must have that codec on your computer to work with in an editing program. Best to convert these mpeg2 files to a real avi file before edtiting. Vir dub will do this.

The reason that re-naming the extension to an AVI is that it will promt an application to at least 'look' at the file and try. In the header is the actual info on what it takes to decode it and if the application doesnt have that codec then it gives an error message.

The point to get about file extensions in windows is that they are only a starting point and what is in the header of the file is where the REAL info is. So renaming an extension does not convert the file to any other format really, it just forces an application or program to at least take a look at it.

Vob files can be dragged straight into Adobe Elements, granted its not the most sophisticated software, but I use it to good effect when making promos from a number of different dvds

VOBS are MPEG2 formats.. If the are compressed with a Variabale Bit Rate then the can not be edited directly via any software without converting them back to a Constant Bit Rate.. this can be done vi nero recode (VOB - AVI)then imported into premiere...