Lossless VOB conversion with ffmpeg

Is there a way to convert a VOB to another video format using ffmpeg without sacrificing audio or video quality?

tony_sid

Posted 2010-12-31T20:00:10.377

Reputation: 11 651

1i thought we covered this already with the previous questions relating to -vcodec copy and -sameq – RobotHumans – 2010-12-31T20:54:19.773

On that question I was asking about converting an MKV. I thought that things might be different for VOB files. – tony_sid – 2011-01-01T02:02:29.973

Answers

Any time you do any form of format conversion you're likely to end up with some actual quality loss, though if done sensibly you won't be able to detect the quality loss. I do this all the time with tools like Handbrake.

To make life easier, ffmpeg comes with presets to allow you to easily set the options to minimise the detectable loss of quality. Were you to be encoding to x264 then you could use -vcodec libx264 -vpre lossless_medium for instance.

Your choices will depend on your desired destination format, and what tools you want to use.

Cry Havok

Posted 2010-12-31T20:00:10.377

Reputation: 3 486

Surely, there's a way to losslessly stream copy+concatenate to MKVs? – JamesTheAwesomeDude – 2015-08-12T16:16:24.507

MKV is a container, as is VOB. Neither are video formats. If you want to simply change container, yes. If you want to change codec/format, no. Changing container only works if the devices support the codecs but not the container. – Cry Havok – 2015-08-15T10:25:57.257

Yes, I know that MKV is a container format. I also know that VOB is a container format. I did not imply that either one was a codec. In fact, I used the very words "stream copy" (lossless copying of a video stream from one compatible container to another) and "concatenate" (an operation that can be performed on certain codecs to concatenate video without re-encoding it). MKV supports every codec, and mpeg2 can be losslessly concatenated.

– JamesTheAwesomeDude – 2015-08-17T19:02:01.013

2MKV supports all codecs, and mpeg2 can be losslessly concatenated, therefore, it's possible (there may not be any tools currently available to make it convenient, but it's possible) to rip a DVD to a ~4GB MKV with no re-encoding and therefore no video quality loss. Which I think is what @tony_sid was originally asking for (and what I was trying to find out how to do when I found this question). – JamesTheAwesomeDude – 2015-08-17T19:05:44.350

If you mean you want to change a container, that is a VOB to MP4 or MKV without changing hte codec (MPEG2 to H.264, let's say), then yes, it can be done losslessly as follows:

ffmpeg -i your_VOB_file.VOB -c:v copy -c:a copy output.mp4

sup

Posted 2010-12-31T20:00:10.377

Reputation: 527

Note that this rarely works with VOB files (you get errors about timestamps and whatnot) – yms – 2019-09-17T15:02:39.987

Also when converting to mkv, as per comments to answer above by Cry havok? – sup – 2019-09-19T19:21:50.277