General Question

Jack79's avatar

Easy way to turn a DVD into an mpeg file?

Asked by Jack79 (11027points) August 1st, 2009

Clarification: I have the permission to do this by the copyright owner.

Last year I played in a short film (about 15min) and I have a DVD of it (with all those .vob and .nfo files and so on). Since this was not made for commerical purposes, I want to upload it onto youtube, just for my friends to see, and the director agreed, but neither of us knows how to do this.

I don’t want to go into a complicated process or install some new programme onto my PC. I was just wondering whether there was a simple way such as Windows Movie Maker, or maybe Quicktime?

Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0

11 Answers

jrpowell's avatar

http://handbrake.fr/

I know you said you don’t want to install anything but it is simple. Handbrake is probably the best way to do it.

martijn86's avatar

Easiest way is to copy the VOB files to your harddrives and rename them to MPEG.
I used Mac The Ripper to copy DVD’s into a single file.

Why mpeg btw? Why not a modern h264 (mp4) compression?

rooeytoo's avatar

I have mac the ripper but always use Handbrake. @martijn86 – why do you prefer Mac the Ripper, do they do the same thing? I agree about Mp4 though.

@Jack79 – I think you are going to have to install some new software. Go to www.versiontracker.com and put in what you want to convert and see what it suggests.

I don’t claim any great expertise though so perhaps someone else will come up with a simpler method.

Jack79's avatar

@martijn86 if that really works, it’s exactly what I was looking for. It’s only a one-off so I don’t want to bother with installing a programme just for that (I try to keep my PC as empty as possible, it’s a question of principle). And I don’t care about the format, this is just to go on youtube, I just want whatever format youtube supports.

jrpowell's avatar

Renaming the vob probably isn’t going to work. And even if it did it would take a long time to upload it. A vob is probably going to be a Gig (or more) and a H.264 version will be a tiny fraction of that.

Jack79's avatar

It worked! Thanks :)
Unfortunately the movie is over 10min, so I’ll have to chop it somehow to fit onto youtube, but renaming the file was the simplest and fastest way to get my job done.

Thank you all for your answers :)

martijn86's avatar

Now that the files are called MPG, you can open it in Quicktime or iMovie to chop it up and save it to MP4.
I’m with you on the whole, keeping the pc clean principle!

Inofaith's avatar

on a Mac, use “handbrake” best way.. takes time but it gives you quality results.
(read up about which encoding settings suit you best befor you start though)

rovdog's avatar

Why don’t you try putting up on Vimeo instead- I’m not sure but I don’t think they have a ten minute limit. Check it out.

Response moderated

Answer this question

Login

or

Join

to answer.

This question is in the General Section. Responses must be helpful and on-topic.

Your answer will be saved while you login or join.

Have a question? Ask Fluther!

What do you know more about?
or
Knowledge Networking @ Fluther