How to convert VOB to MP4 on Mac (home DVD files, offline)

The DVDs are from the years when every family event was burned to a disc: the wedding video, school plays, a shop’s transfer of your parents’ VHS tapes. Your Mac has no disc drive, so someone copied them to a hard drive for you, and now you’re looking at folders called VIDEO_TS full of files named VTS_01_1.VOB, VTS_01_2.VOB, VIDEO_TS.IFO. Double-click one and QuickTime Player refuses it. Photos won’t import it either.

This guide covers how to convert VOB to MP4 on a Mac: which of those files actually hold the video, how to join the parts of a disc into one file, the free ffmpeg route, and the drag-a-folder route for a whole box of discs. Every method runs on your Mac with nothing uploaded, which is the right default for family footage.

In this guide7 sections

What’s inside a VIDEO_TS folder

A DVD-Video disc isn’t one video file. It’s a small folder structure, and only some of it is the video you want:

• VIDEO_TS.IFO, VIDEO_TS.BUP, VIDEO_TS.VOB are the disc’s main menu and its navigation data. The .BUP files are backup copies of the .IFO files.
• VTS_01_0.VOB is usually the menu for the first title set: a still or short looping background, not your footage.
• VTS_01_1.VOB, VTS_01_2.VOB… are the video itself. A disc can have several title sets (VTS_02_1.VOB, VTS_03_1.VOB…), and DVD recorders often make one per recording.
• AUDIO_TS sits next to VIDEO_TS on most discs and is almost always empty.

Inside each VOB is an MPEG program stream holding:

• MPEG-2 video at standard definition: 720×480 on NTSC discs (North America, Japan), 720×576 on PAL discs (most of Europe, Australia). It’s shown at 4:3 or stretched to 16:9 on playback.
• Audio in Dolby Digital (AC-3), MPEG audio (MP2, common on European recorder discs) or uncompressed PCM, sometimes with several tracks.
• Subtitles, if any, stored as pictures, not text.

Two things make VOB harder than the camcorder files covered in the MTS to MP4 guide. First, the picture is MPEG-2, not H.264, so there’s no lossless rewrap worth having. Any MP4 your Mac will actually play needs the video re-encoded to H.264. Second, nearly all home DVD footage is interlaced. Camcorders, set-top recorders and tape transfers record 50 or 60 half-frames a second, and on a modern screen that can show up as fine horizontal combing on anything that moves.

The 1 GB cap explains why one recording is several files. DVD-Video limits each VOB to 1 GB, so a long recording is split into consecutive parts that belong to one continuous stream. Depending on the recording mode, each part holds anything from about 15 minutes to an hour.

Step zero: get the files off the disc properly

Do this before converting anything, whichever method you use:

1. Copy each disc to its own folder. Any USB DVD drive works with a Mac. Drag the whole VIDEO_TS folder into something like ~/Movies/DVDs/Disc 01. A copy on your drive is faster to work from than the disc, and old burned discs do degrade.
2. Keep one folder per disc. Every disc names its files the same way, so ten discs give you ten different VTS_01_1.VOB files. Separate folders keep them apart.
3. If the disc looks blank or has no VIDEO_TS folder, it may never have been finalized. DVD recorders and DVD camcorders only write the structure other drives can read when you finalize the disc, so put it back in the device that made it and run its finalize option.
4. If you find a DVD_RTAV folder with a .VRO file instead, that’s a disc recorded in VR mode, a different format from DVD-Video. The ffmpeg commands below usually read it, with the .VRO in place of the VOBs.
5. Commercial movie discs are a different matter. They’re encrypted, and Finder normally can’t copy their VOB files at all. Everything here assumes home-made discs, which aren’t.

To find the main video, sort the VIDEO_TS folder by size. The run of near-1 GB files (VTS_01_1, VTS_01_2…) plus the smaller last part is your recording. The small _0.VOB files and VIDEO_TS.VOB are menus, and you can leave them out.

Method 1: ffmpeg (free, command line)

ffmpeg, installed with Homebrew, handles VOB well and gives you control over every step:

brew install ffmpeg
ffmpeg -i VTS_01_1.VOB -vf yadif=1 -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -preset slow \
  -c:a aac -b:a 192k VTS_01_1.mp4

-c:v libx264 -crf 20 re-encodes the MPEG-2 picture to H.264 at a quality setting that looks the same as the source for standard-definition video. -vf yadif=1 deinterlaces it, turning each half-frame into a full frame so motion stays as smooth as it was recorded. Use plain yadif instead if you’d rather have half the frame rate and a smaller file. -c:a aac -b:a 192k converts the audio to AAC, which everything plays.

To turn a whole disc into one MP4, join the parts as you convert. VOB parts from one title set can be read as a single stream:

cd ~/Movies/DVDs/"Disc 01"/VIDEO_TS
ffmpeg -analyzeduration 100M -probesize 100M \
  -i "concat:$(ls VTS_01_[1-9].VOB | paste -sd'|' -)" \
  -map 0:v:0 -map 0:a:0 -vf yadif=1 \
  -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -preset slow -c:a aac -b:a 192k \
  ~/Movies/DVDs/"Disc 01.mp4"

What the extra flags do:

• concat: with the ls … | paste part builds the list VTS_01_1.VOB|VTS_01_2.VOB|… for you. A title set can hold at most nine parts, so [1-9] catches them all and skips the _0 menu file.
• -analyzeduration 100M -probesize 100M makes ffmpeg read further into the file before deciding what streams exist. On DVDs, an audio or subtitle stream sometimes starts well after the first second, and without this it can be missed.
• -map 0:v:0 -map 0:a:0 keeps the first video and first audio track and leaves out the picture-based subtitles, which can’t go into an MP4 as text. Change a:0 to a:1 if the track you want is the second one, for example a commentary or second language.

If the disc has several title sets, one per recording, repeat the command with VTS_02_[1-9].VOB and so on. To trade some file size for speed, swap -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -preset slow for -c:v h264_videotoolbox -b:v 4M, which uses the Mac’s hardware encoder.

ffmpeg is free and does everything here, including the join and the deinterlace. The cost is that you’re working out title sets, typing paths per disc, and reading error output when a scratched disc’s copy has a damaged part.

Method 2: Zumkor (drag the files, pick MP4)

For a box of discs, Zumkor skips the Terminal work. It needs macOS 14 or later on an Apple silicon Mac (M1 or later). Zumkor reads DVD .VOB files, AVCHD .MTS and .M2TS, and .TS files, and converts them to MP4:

1. Open a disc’s VIDEO_TS folder and drag the VTS_01_1.VOB-onward files into Zumkor. Leaving out VIDEO_TS.VOB and the _0.VOB files keeps the menus from turning into short MP4s of their own.
2. Pick MP4. For DVD and camcorder footage, MP4 is the one destination Zumkor offers.
3. Look at the rows. Each one shows the exact filename it will produce before you convert. Every disc starts at VTS_01_1, so when you queue several discs into one output folder, the default conflict setting, “Rename with a number”, keeps every file instead of replacing one. A folder per disc is tidier.
4. Click Convert and choose where the MP4s go. The VOB files stay where they are.

The details that matter for a box of discs:

• A queue holds up to 2,000 files.
• The list is still there next time. It survives unplugging the drive the copies live on, so you can queue discs from several drives and convert when each is connected.
• Conversions keep running with the window closed.
• A file whose extension doesn’t match its contents still converts.
• Everything runs on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded, and it works with Wi-Fi off.

Zumkor doesn’t join files. Each VOB part becomes its own MP4, so a 90-minute recording split across four VOBs comes out as four MP4s. To get one file per disc, join the parts first. VOB parts of one title set are a single stream split for the disc’s file system, so in Terminal, inside the VIDEO_TS folder, cat VTS_01_1.VOB VTS_01_2.VOB VTS_01_3.VOB VTS_01_4.VOB > ~/Movies/DVDs/"Disc 01.vob" makes one VOB, and that converts to one MP4. Zumkor doesn’t rip discs either: copy the VIDEO_TS folder in Finder first.

What Zumkor doesn’t offer for this footage. For DVD, AVCHD and .TS files, shrinking, audio extraction, GIFs and subtitles aren’t available, only the conversion to MP4. Once converted, though, the new file is an ordinary MP4. Drag it back in, and you can trim it with the QuickTime-style yellow handles, shrink a clip to send by email with the “Fit a size limit” presets (it lands under the cap, or Zumkor tells you the clip can’t fit, so you can trim it and convert again), or pull the audio out as an MP3, which is handy for a recorded recital or a speech.

Pricing: everything is free for 7 days. After that you can keep converting 5 files a day (25 a week) for free, but free videos get a small Zumkor mark, and each row warns you before you convert. For a family archive, the Full Version is a one-time $19.99 purchase. Buy once and keep it forever, with no subscription and no account. It’s shared through Family Sharing, so the relative who ends up with the next box of discs doesn’t have to buy it again.

If you have one disc and don’t mind Terminal, ffmpeg’s single join-and-convert command is free and handles the deinterlacing too. Zumkor makes sense when there are many discs, when you’d rather drag files than build commands per title set, and when the same drive also holds camcorder .MTS cards, old AVI captures or WMV files from a Windows PC. It converts those in the same queue. The full formats list shows what reads and writes what.

Getting the conversion right

• Don’t upscale. DVD video is 480 or 576 lines. Turning it into 1080p or 4K makes bigger files with no extra detail. It will look soft on a large TV whatever you do, because that’s the source.
• Check one clip with motion first. Before converting twenty discs, convert a part with movement, like a dance or a pan across a room, and watch it full screen. If you see combing, convert that footage with the ffmpeg yadif=1 line.
• Check the shape. A widescreen disc should look widescreen. If people look tall and thin, the output lost the 16:9 flag; add it back in ffmpeg with -vf yadif=1,setdar=16/9. Old 4:3 footage should stay 4:3, with black bars at the sides on a wide screen.
• Check the join. If you joined parts, play across each boundary (around every 1 GB of the original) and confirm the picture and sound carry on in sync.
• Name the results. “Disc 01.mp4” means nothing in ten years. Rename each file after what’s written on the disc while it’s still in your hand.
• Keep the VIDEO_TS folders. They’re the closest thing you have to the master. Once you’ve spot-checked the MP4s, archive the folders to a second drive rather than deleting them.

Bottom line

• Just to watch: open the VIDEO_TS folder in VLC or IINA. No conversion needed.
• Free, one file per disc, in Terminal: ffmpeg -i "concat:VTS_01_1.VOB|VTS_01_2.VOB" -vf yadif=1 -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -c:a aac -b:a 192k disc.mp4, with the extra flags above for multi-track discs.
• A box of discs, no scripts: Zumkor. Drag the VTS files, pick MP4, and convert on your Mac into a folder you choose. Free for 7 days, then 5 files a day free, or a one-time $19.99 for everything.

Whichever route you take, copy the discs to a drive first. Burned DVDs from the 2000s are reaching the age where they stop reading, and once the footage is a folder of MP4s on a backed-up drive, it plays in QuickTime and imports into Photos like any other video.

FAQ

Can a Mac play VOB files?

Not with Apple’s own apps. QuickTime Player won’t open a .VOB file, and Photos won’t import one either. VLC and IINA play VOB files directly, and VLC can open a whole VIDEO_TS folder like a disc. To get the video into Photos, onto an iPhone or into a message, convert it to MP4 once.

Why does one DVD turn into several VOB files?

DVD-Video caps each file at 1 GB, so a recording longer than that is split into VTS_01_1.VOB, VTS_01_2.VOB and so on, anything from about 15 minutes to an hour per file depending on the recording mode. The parts are one continuous stream. Join them before converting to get a single MP4, or convert them separately and get one MP4 per part.

Can I convert a commercial movie DVD to MP4 with Zumkor?

No. Zumkor doesn’t rip discs; it converts .VOB files that are already on a drive. Commercial movie DVDs are encrypted, so copying their VOB files in Finder usually fails with a read error, and getting around that isn’t something this guide covers. Home-made discs from a camcorder, a DVD recorder or a tape-transfer service aren’t encrypted and copy straight off.