I’m blogging about this because I had a terrible time finding a solution to my problem and I want to help other people who are having the same problem.
A while back I was digitizing old VHS tapes using my DVD/VCR combo player/recorder. I was creating raw DVDs from old VHS tapes and then taking the raw DVDs and copying them onto my laptop for editing. But sometimes the VOB files that were created by the DVD recorder would have terribly incorrect lengths when viewed on my PC. For example, a 30 minute VOB file would show up and play as a 10 second long VOB file on my PC. This incorrect time was keeping my PC software from being able to view and edit the VOB files. Apparently this is a fairly common problem with some DVD recorders, since this VOB length information is not actually used by many consumer electronic devices.
It took me a while, but I was finally able to find a simple and free utility called MPEG Streamclip that was able to fix the VOB file length data without having to completely render the entire VOB. This program has a terrible user interface and it also has a couple of quirks. For example, it gives me a couple errors regarding some Apple Quicktime software that is not installed on my system, but it did what I needed it to do anyways. But what do you expect for free, huh?
When you tell it to open a VOB that has incorrect length information, it realizes the problem during the open operation and prompts you to fix the timecode breaks or not. Once it fixes the timecode breaks, you can save as MPG (not Export … Save As) which doesn’t perform any processing nor rendering of the file because the VOB was in MPG format already, or you can export into a number of different video formats.
One other thing. MPEG Streamclip does not require admin rights to install on your PC. Just download the zip, unzip it, and run the executable. Here is the website where you can download the utility. Have fun!
Kurt
Postscript: In January 2017 I got a new PC and MPEG Streamclip refused to run until I installed the Alternate Quicktime package that it pointed me to. This Alternate Quicktime package does require admin rights to install.
Thank you very much! It worked as a charm.
Thank you for the information and tip. I had tried several different converters that failed to render the VOB video clip to any format correctly. This thing finally worked! I had a1 GB VOB video that would show a 16 second time code. Would play okay in a media player or DVD player, but could not be edited at all, as only 16 seconds would show up of the entire video in the editing programs.
Hey, you said you were able to fix the time code breaks and save it without converting, how were you able to do that? Every format i’ve tried seems to require some form of conversion, even mpg. Let me know.
Excellent advice – has fixed a number of old home videos which I’d burned to DVD years ago and was worried when I could only access half of the vob file!
Thank you!!!!! I have been struggling for days to fix one file and this actually worked.
Amazing! Thanks, Kurt. I was having that exact problem. There’s no way I would have found a solution without stumbling on your blog.
THANK YOU!!!!
Glad to be a help!
Yay! That’s mostly why I have a blog … to help people not make the same mistakes I make. That and to make me famous someday. 🙂
Yay! Glad to be of service!
Awesome to know that this blog post is helping people like me!
Glad to help!
Yay!
Hi, thank for the good advice, – but how do i get past the: You must install the MPEG-2 Playback Component before trying to export MPEG2 files! You can buy it online from Apple:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2 ?
any help wold be great – thanks .-)
Thank you very much from Ukraine. It is a real help.
You Sir, helped me a lot! THANK YOU!
omg. This recovered my grandpas WWII interview!!Prison camp. When he was shot down. everything! THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks a lot!!!!
Brilliant, it works! You’ve saved me loads of time, thank-you!
Many Thanks,
I hope i saw this blog earlier, I have been struggling for a while,,, super easy solution.
It works???Finally???Thank you so much for sharing this with us?I have this software for 4 years?never thought it could help to solve such difficult problem, won’t be judging free software ever again. Thanks again!!!!!
No idea why all the “!” became question mark in my last post, but anyway…Thank you so much!!!
I am so grateful for this blog and the software. It worked perfectly! it’s 3 am and i was searching for the solution for this problem from yesterday morning lol. Thank you very much.
Awesome! Spent hours looking for a fix to vob files playing for 7-8 minutes instead of 45. This is it! Thank you so much for this!
Thanks so much!
Helped me out as well 🙂
Had to install quicktime alternative, (it was version 4.10) and after that it worked like magic.
Bless you Kurt!
thank you very much for this. you saved me million hours of encoding! !! :)))
Is anyone else having issues with this?
When I did this, the breaks were fixed to some extent, but in the resulting file, every 3 minutes or so, 5 seconds of footage is skipped
Did not work for me. The program give the quicktime error and then crashes.
Jimmy, please try to install the free QuickTime player from the apple website. Then please reply here to close the loop. Thanks
Thank you so much for the info. Just an update, you cannot install MPEG Stream Clip now without installing Quicktime (40MB file). Once installed when you open the VOB using the software like the author mentions, it automatically checks for breaks and fixes the file with the proper length. Next step should be to save as MPEG as if you try to convert the file to AVI or anything else, it will ask you to install the MPEG-2 component which is a paid software from Apple. Instead just save as MPEG, then install ANy Video Convertor and then convert to whichever file you intend to.
Fantastic, thank you for this finally something that works to sort out this annoying problem.
This worked, I had some videos of 30 minutes, but it showed like it has 14 hours, I run this software once and video was limited to 1hour and 40 minutes, I run it again and then it was limited to the correct length, 30 minutes. So you need to run it again and again to work like it should.
That’s good to know! I would not have thought to run it more than once!
Thanks!
This post helped me a lot! Had an old home movie from 1970 which was getting cut short. Making a short movie for my Parents 50th anniversary party.
Thanks,
Rob
Thank you so much! Your hard work saved me hours/days/?? finding a solution to this problem! Much appreciated!
Kurt, thank you. I spent hours trying to resolve this. The DVD RAM VRO file showed 12 minutes but was actually 3.5 hours. This fixed it and now is changed to a mpeg file. Thanks again.
Thank You!! Excellent work!! worked for me. After having lot of trouble, finally fixed my .vob file.
Hey mate! Thx for your post. It really helped me out! All best and cheers!
This worked, thank you!
I’m obviously not an early adopter, but I’d like to add my thanks for this solution. It worked great.
Lost all my stuff on hard drive – so had to go back to my old mini DVDs to copy. I HAD solved this problem by myself in about 2010 but had forgotten how I did it. Your blog reminded me. Thank you
Thanks so much for the post! It fixes the time problem, and easily combines multiple files into one single file.
Thanks!
Just what I needed! Still works in 2020.
Yay!!!!!
THIS really helped a lot !
fix time breaks cost a lot of bad frames though. is there a workaround with that?
hmmm. I never noticed the bad frames in my application. Sorry.
Thanks a lot for the tip
Thank you for this tip – it enabled me to access a section of video for editing that I couldn’t get to before. Haven’t checked to see if I have lost much in the conversion