Software to Split Video files with Staggered Episodes

[bobross419]

More or less continued from this thread in General Hardware:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2021839

Now that I figured out the basics of video encoding I've got some more specific questions.

I'm in the process of ripping out my collection of Friends from DVD to individual files for ease of access from the file server. I'm able to rip the VOB files and encode them no problem, but I ran into a little problem...

The episodes are staggered over the VOBs:

Example:
Episode 1 is 20:00 minutes long.
VOB 1 covers 23:00 minutes of video

After Episode 1 finishes, VOB 1 jumps straight into Episode 2.

I'm looking for a program that will allow me to snip and merge the files together so that I can get the individual episodes in their own individual files. Either an app that I can manually go through and specify which timestamps are the cutoffs or better yet something that will read the chapter information and split up the files automatically - Either way will work with auto preferred of course 🙂

I did see this thread ( http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=334940 ) which recommends using either avidemux or mkvmerge gui, but looking at the documentation I'm not sure that either will actually work for what I'm trying to do. I also took a gander at the free software thread, but didn't see anything in there that I think would cut it either. Granted I'm pretty f'n noob with this stuff so I could just be missing it.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. This is turning into a fun project for me 🙂

 

[Ken g6]

MPG2CUT2. Its interface is a little odd - see the helpfile for what the keys/buttons do - but it works great for me even on corrupted MPEG files. I believe I've used it on VOBs, too.

 

[bobross419]

Ok... so I actually figured out the solution to my problem while reading a guide for MeGUI.

I was going through DVDDecryptor using the File view. When I changed to file view then did a split by LFO (Or whatever that thing is called) I was able to rip each episode into its own individual file!

From there I'll use MeGUI on each file to encode it down a bit to save on space. I've already got 8 or 9 gb taken up by my attempts so far lol... I"ll definitely be cleaning that shit out here soon 😉

@Ken
I tried that and it did work for me 🙂 I was able to trim down the video to the specific episode clip I wanted and get it transferred from VOB to VOB. It was when I was researching MeGui that I came across the DVD Decryptor information.

To anyone that comes across this post in a search, MPG2CUT2 does do what Ken said it would and it isn't too hard to figure out 🙂

 

[Comdrpopnfresh]

I've not tried it myself, but hope to shortly and report back.
http://mulder.dummwiedeutsch.de/home/?page=projects#avidemux
I'm intending on using it to transcode tutorial flv files from online streams to mpeg containers w/ mpeg2 encoding for use on my rockbox'd 1st gen ipod nano. Hey- watching a tutorial, review video, or missed tv episode on the bus with a screen that is near-literally postage stamp sized is better than unfortunately catching a view of someone opposite me picking their nose, etc. Plus, the screen has such a limited viewing angle, having not been intended for video viewing, no one would bother leaning uncomfortably close or over a shoulder. no one suspects it to play videos- because apple doesn't let it.

other options:

if you don't mind line-command interfacing; ffmpeg may be worth a try. a low-resource usage program I've used in the past. Not sure about splitting/binding (check the wiki for commands), but it has always seemed to scale nicely with multithreading, and offers a 2-pass encoding run. I think the lack of a gui may be a benefit to it's speed. believe it is open-source/multi platform; linux friendly.

and if you don't mind a shades-of-grey combo of line-command and gui... vlc may be able to provide the functionality you're looking for. I'd check the dev page on that too. If it can, it's at least afford you a narrowing of options and a visual listing of files you want to input + output