Update: Here’s a better way to do this:

My new YouTube video shows how to use Pinnacle Software to upload from DVD to YouTube without having to worry about getting viruses from free downloaded programs:

DVD to YouTube.com video: How I converted a DVD VOB file and uploaded it to a YouTube video as an AVI file

I had a job to do: create a YouTube channel for our new Word Church Akron location.

And I wanted to upload the introduction DVD to YouTube, but I didn’t know how.

Inserting the DVD into my laptop, I saw that the files on that drive were mostly VOB files, with one being pretty huge.

I focused in on converting that VOB file into one of the file types accepted by YouTube, like these:

* Windows Media Video(.AVI)
* .3GP (mobile phones)
* .WMV (windows)
* .MOV (mac)
* .MP4 (iPod/PSP)
* .MPEG
* .FLV (Adobe Flash)
* .MKV (h.264)

Searching for “VOB to AVI” and “convert VOB to AVI” and “DVD to YouTube video” and “upload DVD to YouTube video” turned up a lot of promising free programs, and I even took a risk at downloading three of them.

But I only downloaded the ones that my Norton program gave the green arrow checkmark next to in Google SERPS.

AVStoYou AVS Video Converter 6 didn’t work for me — neither did Convertvobtoavi.com, nor searching for a screen capture video program that would convert VOB to AVI.

I even called Best Buy to try and find a legitimate program in a box that I could buy that would accomplish the DVD to YouTube task, and the guy recommended the $70 123 Media Max program — not an affiliate link, because I’m glad I didn’t buy that.

But searching through the bad reviews on Amazon.com from customers who actually bought and tried to use that program taught me to stay away.

Finally, what worked in converting a DVD to YouTube.com was Media Coder

Thank God for leading me to the Media Coder website — where I downloaded the latest MediaCoder x86 Edition version.

“If you are not sure, get this one,” the Media Coder website helpfully says below the x86 version.

The exe downloaded just fine, with Norton calling it safe.

Media Coder is described as a freeware media transcoder, a software created by a person living in China who accepts user donations.

The Media Coder was kinda confusing, but thankfully other folks had written about older versions, so that helped me muddle my way through.

The author also has his Google ads close to buttons you need to click, and I don’t blame them.

But anyway, you’ve gotta click “config wizard” to set up some options after downloading the exe file.

I checked “Revert all settings to defaults (recommended)” button on the first screen the first time I did this. I plan to leave my settings alone the next time I run the program, so it’ll save my options.

Then I used some of the step-by-step instructions I found on Geeks Engine (even though they look a little different in places than the Media Coder GUI I used) to learn the specific options I wanted on the actual Media Coder program box.

I do remember when I first tried to select a file, the Media Coder took quite a while to scan the DVD — and the DVD I used was only just under 15 minutes long.

When the “scanning…” message at the bottom left-hand side of the Media Coder program finally disappeared, it let me add the file I wanted — mine was named VTS_01_1.VOB — and then it began the conversion process.

But before that, I’d set some options:

Under “output folder” in the top right-hand corner, I selected a new folder I created on my C: hard drive.

Under the “container” tab, I made sure to select “avi” from the container drop-down menu, like Geeks Engine suggested.

Under “audio” they suggested the encoder be set to “lame mp3″ so I went with that and left all the other options alone.

Perhaps in time I’ll learn more about what all these options mean, and hopefully learn how to save time converting portions of DVDs to YouTube.

That sucker seemingly stalled or ran all night. I thought it was just another non-working download — so much so that I even closed my laptop because it was making so much noise with the DVD.

I may have even shut it down or taken it out.

But lo and behold, bless God the next morning, my VOB file had been squished down to a reasonable 583 MB from a lot larger size.

When I selected my file and pressed the “start” button to start transcoding jobs, I was delighted to see the actual video I wanted to transfer from DVD to YouTube playing on the screen.

And I was even more happy when that video appeared as an AVI file in my output destination, and I was able to upload it to YouTube.

Here’s that video that was uploaded from YouTube from a DVD, and the audio and pic look smooth and clean to me: