How to convert VOB to AVI

Convert and rip the DVD VOB files to AVI

When you access the DVD drive you'll see at least 2 directories: AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. AUDIO_TS is used for DVD Audio and contains the audio files, whereas VIDEO_TS is used to store all data for the movie. There might be more directories which contain DVD-ROM features for your PC. When you see the VIDEO_TS directory, you will find there are three types of files: .VOB, .IFO and .BUP.

IFOs - InFOrmation - IFO Files give the player important navigational information, like where a chapter starts, where a certain audio or subtitle stream is located, etc. This is the reason why it's only possible to rip certain parts of a movie (like a chapter) with a ripper which can read this files.

BUPs - BackUP - BUP files are just backup files off the IFOs. As their counterparts they are not encrypted.

Inside a VOB - A VOB file (short for Video Object) is a DVD file that contains the actual Video, Audio, Subtitle and Menu content in stream form. Video is MPEG-2, audio can be AC-3, Linear PCM, Mpeg 2 multichannel or MPEG1 layer2 2 channel audio.

If you wish to convert VOB files to PC files for editing, or if you want to store the DVD movies on your computer with the high quality, you can convert the VOB files to AVI. AVI stands for Audio Video Interleave. It is a special case of the RIFF (Resource Interchange File Format). It is a container video format that specifies certain structure how the audio and video streams should be stored within the file. AVI itself doesn't specify how it should be encoded (just like the streaming format ASF), so the audio/video can be stored in very various ways. Most commonly used video codecs that use AVI structure are M-JPEG and DivX ;-). AVI contains code called FourCC which tells what codec it is encoded with.

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Here is one of the VOB to AVI Converter step by step guide, telling you how to convert VOB to AVI format with ImTOO DVD Ripper:

Step 1. Download ImTOO DVD Ripper.

Step 2.Run DVD Ripper and load DVD. Please choose "Open DVD" in the File menu or directly press the "DVD" button in the main interface, then select your DVD Drive in the pop-up window and press the "OK" button.

Step 3. After you successfully load the DVD, the DVD info is displayed in the left window. Sometimes some chapters/episodes hide in another index, you can change an index in "Index" dropdown box to load these chapters/episodes.

Step 4. You can select the audio track for the target files in the "Audio" combo-box in the Input area.

Step 5. You may edit ID3 tag by entering the info in the "Genre", "Album", "Artist" and "Year" boxes. MP3 format supports ID3 tag while Wave format doesn't.

Step 6. Select the target audio format in the "Format" combo-box in the Output area. If you choose "MP3 (*.mp3)" as the output format, DVD Audio Ripper allows you to specify the audio quality by clicking the "Settings" button. In general, you'd better keep the default value, that's enough to reserve wonderful audio quality.

Step 7. In general, DVDs are ripped by chapters. Especially to music DVDs, a chapter is a song. If you prefer to split DVD audio tracks by certain file size, please select "Custom Size" in the "Volume Size" box. You may enter the specifying number by clicking "Settings" button. The default is "5 MB". If you want to rip by certain duration, please select "Custom time", you may enter the specifying number by clicking "Settings" button (the default is 3 minutes).

Step 8. You may specify the output path by clicking "Browse..." button or directly entering a file path in the "Path" box at the bottom of the Output area.

Step 9. With all settings being properly done, click the "Rip and Encode All" button in the main interface or choose "Encode" in the File menu to start ripping.
If you want to encode certain chapter, please select the chapter to highlight it, then choose "Encode Current Selection" in the File menu.
If you want to encode from a specific starting point, firstly, you must change "Volume Size" to "Custom size" or "Custom Time", then choose "Encode From Current Position" in the File menu.
If you want to encode a segment, please choose "Encode Segment" in the File menu, then enter the beginning time and the duration of the clip. For example, you want a clip from 00:20:20 to 00:35:00, you should enter From 00:20:20 and the Length is 00:14:40, after that, click the "Encode" button.

Step 10. After the file is successfully ripped, you may click the "Open Folder" button to browse the output files.