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I am having problems trying to import a purchased DVD which is NOT encoded.

VS recognises the DVD ok and displays info as -
Format DVD video
TV system PAL 25fps
and displays all the 'chapters'.
I select the chapters I wish to import, VS then appears to load the selected video chapters but each file created is blank (black screen) with NO sound yet the length of each is about correct.

The DVD disk is NOT encoded (copy protected) and I am able to copy it using Ashampoo.

Any ideas why the imported video is blank with no sound?

Have you tried copying it to your hard disk and importing from there? Or using Nero Recode or Roxio?

Hi Ken,
Yes after reading some other posts from users who were no able to even load I tried copying all files from the DVD to hard disk and then importing from there without success either.
I will now have a look at Nero Recode and/or Roxio. The original DVD only runs for 30 minutes so that shouldn't be causing any problems of being too long.

Downloaded a freeware version of Nero Recode and then the 'fun' began.
After I installed it and tried to run it, even though my CPU usage was showing less than 10% and the disk activity light was OFF the program didn't do anything (nothing displayed on screen) AND other programs I tried to run started up but then stopped. Couldn't even shutdown the PC using START>Turn Off Computer.
Warm booted, uninstalled and reinstalled - SAME problem so I restored my PC to a point before I installed ReCode. I won't be trying that again.
Is Recode part of another full Nero application which works?

Yes, very much so and totally trustworthy. It is a major module in the full Nero suite and has been for years. In fact the guy who originally devised DVD Shrink now works for Nero, specifically on Recode. It does exactly the same thing as Shrink.

Which makes me ask if you have tried Shrink -- but not so much to actually reduce the size of the movie which is its primary function. If the disc is only 30 minutes, Shrink would not need to reduce it -- it would just copy it as it is, but perhaps enter new code which may allow your computer to 'see' the disc. That is what made me think of Recode in the first place.

Otherwise, I would have to start thinking that there may actually be something wrong with the clip itself...

As a final step, have you tried renaming at least one of the .vob files with an .mpg extension and see if that opens in VS...?

I tried renaming the .vob files to .mpg but still no good. Even Widows media player won't play them - no error message either apart from 'acquiring codec' and then 'codec found'.
I also had tried DVDShrink without success.
I used GSPOT which reported the .vob files as follows -
MPEG-2 (1vid, 2 aud)
Bit Rate 10080kbs/VBR that's high isn't it?
Codec - MPEG2
Pic 720 x 576
So all that seems ok.
Strange thing is that the DVD has 4 .vob files. The first 2 which are short WILL play but they are the menus.
The main video won't play. They start to play, and then after a few seconds the 'slider' quickly jumps from the far left (start position) to the far right even thogh the length is many minutes.
Hopefully that information may be helpful to someone reading this post.

You might try running it through Super and see what it does. You could use Super to convert the VOB files to MPEG-2, and since you already know the properties of the MPEG-2 files, you can set Super to those properties.

jparnold wrote:Strange thing is that the DVD has 4 .vob files. The first 2 which are short WILL play but they are the menus.

Although you have stated that the DVD is not encrypted, there are all manner of shenanigans used on encrypted DVD's, including blank VOB files, dummy sectors and others.

You might try using the freeware programs ripit4me and fix.vts which work as a front end for DVD decrypter and can filter out all the dummy files and so on.

I also wonder if the problem may relate to telecine, whereby original movie footage at 24ps is viewed as 25fps video.

SUCCESS
I used SUPER with output to MPEG2 and the resulting file plays ok.