[wellylug] Linux *.VOB to *.MPG using *.IFO ?

[Lorraine Offord &Tony Wills]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Gavin Porter
I recommend MakeMKV to convert the DVD format data into mkv files.

You can then split the file into individual chapters using:
$ mkvmerge --output <outfile_root> --split chapters:all <infile>

That will give you an individual file for each chapter whilst retaining the 
original encoding format.
...
--------------------

Ahhh! Great stuff, I've been trying different things for three days, none of 
them quite satisfactory.  But even though I had to download and compile 
MakeMKV, and upgrade to version 7 of mkvmerge (my distribution only had v5.6 
which didn't have the 'split chapters' option), it works way better than the 
other methods I was using which tended to result in MPGs which claimed to be 
only a few seconds long, even though they were much longer (they would play, 
but you couldn't skip fowards or backwards etc).

mkvmerge seems to work 100%, but makemkv has a few quirks:
I just wanted to create mkvs in the same folder as the DVD files (copied to 
hard disk folders already), makemkv wanted to copy from the CD drive to a 
fixed location (or one based on the DVD name) ... a command line version 
would be good (I'll have to go find one).
Another quirk is that it always found a few cells before where it calculated 
the first chapter should start, so it 'inserted' an extra chapter at the 
start of the output - always resulting in a junk file as the first chapter.
The last quirk was that it silently discarded a second long (1 GOP long), 
perfectly valid, chapter (it was just a location shot to remind me of where 
the footage was from).  Not a big problem if you notice that it's happened, 
but it means you have to be watchful that nothing gets lost unexpectedly. - 
I think it may just discard the last GOP if the recording ends sooner than 
it expects.

I've spent the last few hours converting files, and it certainly works far 
better and smoother than anything else - so, many, many thanks for the 
suggestion :-)

-- Tony.