Several folks have asked about using GridRoom to share video from DVDs. This can be done, but the steps are not obvious. This article walks you through the process with step-by-step instructions. These instructions apply to DVDs burned by a computer or by a video camera that records directly to DVD.
DVDs store information in VOB files (.vob extension). VOB files can contain many different types of data--audio, video, subtitles, menu information, etc. You may be able to import these VOB files directly into GridRoom. Since your success depends on both the content of your DVD files and the configuration of your computer the only way to know for sure is to try it out.
The first step is to pop in a DVD and open Windows Explorer to your DVD drive to see what VOBs are available. The screenshot below shows the files on our son's football highlight DVD from 2007. Notice that all the VOB files are in a folder named "VIDEO_TS". This is where you'll always find the video data on a DVD.
The next step is to figure out which VOBs to import. Your DVDs may contain one very large VOB file or several smaller ones. On this disk we see two VOBs: VIDEO_TS.VOB and VTS_01_1.VOB. The first one is very small and the second one is 918 MB so we can be pretty sure the second one contains the important video data on this disk. If you're unsure which files to import you can play VOB files directly in Windows Media player to determine which ones are of interest.
Next I'm going to start GridRoom and choose Video > Import Video File from the main menu. The Import Settings dialog opens as shown below. Next I'll click on the ... button to select a file.
When the Open file dialog appears I'll browse to the VIDEO_TS folder of my DVD. By default VOB files are not displayed in the Open file dialog. Before I can select a VOB file to import I'll need to change the file filter from "Video Files" to "All Files" (see highlighted area in the screenshot below).
In the screenshot below, I've selected the 918 MB VOB file and named this video "2007 Highlights".
Pressing the Import button kicks off the process. At this point one of three things will happen:
- GridRoom will tell you the file format is not supported and the import will fail.
- The video will be imported with no audio.
- The video will be imported and everything will work fine.
With this particular VOB file the import process started OK. Since this is a fairly long video clip it will take a while to convert to the Windows Media format.
When the import process completes the video is loaded into GridRoom for playback. Everything worked fine--except the imported video has no sound. (The same VOB imported with sound on a different system.)
The important thing to remember is that both the video file (VOB or otherwise) and the configuration of your computer come into play when importing videos. This is because GridRoom depends completely on the video converters already installed on your system (this is the only way we can afford to give away the client software for free).
If you find that GridRoom can't import VOB files from your DVDs you have one more option: convert them to the AVI format using a free tool like Windows Movie Maker. (Microsoft provides free versions of Movie Maker for both Windows XP and Vista.)
If your DVDs were created by a video camera that saves each clip as a separate VOB file you may want to merge them with a tool like Movie Maker before importing them anyway. (GridRoom does not currently support merging multiple video files as part of the import process.)
