Originally, my goal was to convert my VOB files and post them on YouTube. I downloaded four different programs that were supposed to work. Two of them produced audio only files. One of them worked perfectly, it was called, Brorsoft. I used the free trial version since I really didn't have very many videos - five - that I wanted to convert. When it was done, my video appeared, but it had a BRORSOFT logo in the middle of the screen. I could upgrade to the real version of Brorsoft for just $35.00. That just irritated me.
I understand they want to make some money from their product, but I don't like how they went about it. In lieu of asking for money at the end, I think the should just ask for the money upfront. $35.00 and you'll be able to convert an unlimited number of VOB files to AVI. This might have inspired me to look through all of our old stuff to see if I could find other things that need to be converted. I may have contacted a few friends to see if they had anything they wanted converted. Since I only had five videos (three of which were less than 4 minutes long), it didn't seem like a very good investment. I'd figure out a new solution.
Eventually, I found a free DVD ripper. I managed to convert all the videos to a format that I could use with Windows Live Movie Maker. The files did not carry over the audio, but that wasn't a problem because it's very easy to add music to them. Yesterday, I added some of my favorite songs and uploaded three videos to YouTube.
Today's project - my tandem video! This one is going to be a little tricky because I would like to have the original audio. I think I am off to a good start because two of the VOB to AVI converters brought over only audio! I hope I can figure out how to combine them. Fingers crossed!