Ripped DVD Video Playback Stutters, original DVD does not

Question

I have a DVD of home video made from a VHS that I'm trying to rip so I can post it to YouTube. I've ripped a couple of videos using both Mac DVDRipper Pro and Handbrake to compare the output after I noticed some stuttering in my first rip. The videos from both apps have stutters in the same spots but the stuttering doesn't exist when I play the disc in DVD Player.

It's not often, sometimes every couple of minutes for just a moment. Other times it will go 5 to 8 minutes without any stutter. I've noticed momentary sound dropping out for these stutters in both QuickTime and in QuickLook, and also just now in VLC. It's nothing major but annoying and something I'd like to fix seeing as the source DVD doesn't have these playback issues.

Could extracting the DVD as a disc image first and ripping that solve the stuttering playback?

I'm ripping from the optical drive in my 27" iMac under Mavericks. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

It sounds like the framerate of the rip doesn't match the framerate of the DVD. I would check if those match. The QuickTime Inspector can do this or a great tool called MediaInfo.

Answer 2

Something you could try is to copy the VOB files from the DVD and concatenate them all into one MPEG file, then you can see if the original file is corrupted.

Here's how:

• open your DVD in Finder, and navigate to the VIDEO_TS folder. Inside will be all the DVD files .BUP, IFS and VOB. The VOB files are the video objects, they're what you want.

• Now find which VOB files are your actual content. Look at the file sizes, it will be the larger ones. For each title on the DVD there is a set of VTS_ x_y.VOB files where x is the title number, like 01, 02, 03, and y is the part number. Each title will be composed of one or more VOB files, so for VTS_01 there will be

VTS_01_0.VOB

VTS_01_1.VOB

VTS_01_2.VOB

and so on. You want to join these together (excluding the one numbered zero).

• You can use the cat command to copy them to a new file and join them together. Open the Terminal and type cat (make sure you type a space after cat). Then drag the VOB files for each title onto the terminal window, starting at number one - so excluding number 0. It will fill in the path for you. it should look like this:

  cat /Volumes/DVD_name/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB /Volumes/DVD_name/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_2.VOB /Volumes/DVD_name/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_3.VOB

• now we want to send them all to a new file, using the redirection operator >. Type > (the greater than symbol) after the list of VOB files and then type the name of the file you want to create, with a .mpg suffix, eg newvideofile.mpg. By default terminal opens in your home folder, if you want it to write the file somewhere else you have to type in the path. For example to write it to your desktop use ~/Desktop/my_new_video_file.mpg Don't use spaces in the file name, or if you do make sure you put quotes around it.

  cat /Volumes/DVD_name/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB /Volumes/DVD_name/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_2.VOB /Volumes/DVD_name/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_3.VOB > mynewvideofile.mpg

This will take a while, depending on how large your video files are and how fast your DVD drive is. Once it's done you'll have an mpg file which you can view or transcode.