VOB to ICO Converter

How to Convert VOB to ICO Online

1. Upload Your VOB File: Drag and drop or click "+ Add Files" to select VOB files ripped from a DVD's VIDEO_TS folder. Batch upload is supported, and Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared.
2. Pick Image Resolution: Default is 256P (256x256), the largest size the Windows ICO format officially supports. Choose 16P or 32P for tab favicons, 48P for taskbar icons, or 64P/128P for high-DPI desktop shortcuts. Pick a smaller size and the icon stays crisp at its target slot; pick 256P and Windows scales it down for every use.
3. Pick a Frame (Optional): Under Frame Selection, choose Specific Frame and enter a Time (seconds) value to grab one still — for a typical 90-minute movie, try 30 for the title card or 1800 for a key shot. Choose Multiple Screenshots to extract several frames across the clip and pick the best one afterward.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and your ICO file is ready to drop into your project's root as favicon.ico or rename for a Windows shortcut.

Why Convert VOB to ICO?

VOB (Video Object) is the container DVD-Video uses inside VIDEO_TS folders — H.262/MPEG-2 video at 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x576 (PAL), multiplexed with AC-3 or PCM audio, defined by the DVD Forum's DVD-Video specification. ICO is the Windows icon container that holds one or more square bitmaps (typically 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, 256x256) used for favicons, desktop shortcuts, and executable icons. Converting VOB to ICO grabs a single still frame from your DVD and packages it as an icon — useful when the artwork you need lives on a physical disc rather than a clean image file.

• Favicon from a film's title card — Indie filmmakers and archivists building a film's website often want the studio logo or title-card frame as the browser-tab icon. Pull it from the disc's intro VOB at the right timestamp and you skip the design-tool roundtrip.
• Desktop shortcut for a personal DVD rip — Rip your home-video DVD to your hard drive, then lift a frame from the wedding montage or birthday clip to use as the folder's icon in Windows Explorer.
• Cover art for a media-library entry — Plex, Jellyfin, and Kodi accept ICO/PNG thumbnails. Extract a memorable frame from the disc's main feature VOB when you don't have an official poster file.
• Logo recovery from old corporate DVDs — Training discs and software install DVDs from the 2000s often had a branded splash in VTS_01_1.VOB. Convert that frame to ICO when the original PSD is long gone.
• Karaoke and music-DVD icons — Music-DVD bonus discs include performer cards in the menu VOBs. A still from the opening titles makes a clean tab icon for a fan site.
• Game-cutscene icon — Early PS2 and PC games shipped cutscenes as VOB on the install disc. Capture a recognizable frame for a mod or fan-project shortcut.

VOB vs ICO — Format Comparison

ICO Resolution Quick Guide

If your icon needs to look sharp at multiple sizes, the recommended workflow is to make one PNG per size and combine them into a single multi-resolution ICO — see the PNG to ICO page for that step after you've extracted and edited your frame.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which timestamp should I pick from a feature-film VOB?

VOBs ripped from a DVD's VIDEO_TS folder are split into ~1 GB chunks (the DVD spec's hard cap), and the first VOB (VTS_01_1.VOB) usually contains the studio intro, FBI warning, and opening titles. For a clean title-card or logo frame, try 5-60 seconds. For a scene from the actual movie, you'll often need to jump to a later VOB (VTS_01_2.VOB, VTS_01_3.VOB) since each disc-side VOB only holds ~7-10 minutes of MPEG-2 at DVD bitrates.

Why is my converted icon only 256x256 max? Can I get higher resolution?

Microsoft's ICO format officially caps embedded bitmaps at 256x256 pixels. The format technically allows larger via PNG-compressed entries (Windows Vista added PNG-in-ICO support), but most icon-consuming software — including older Windows versions and many browsers — will refuse or misrender icons above 256x256. If you need a larger image, convert to PNG instead via VOB to PNG, then downsample to ICO for actual icon use.

My DVD frame is 720x480 — won't squashing it into a square icon distort it?

Yes, this is the catch most people miss. DVD-Video uses non-square pixels (the 720x480 NTSC frame represents either a 4:3 or 16:9 display aspect), so squeezing it into a 256x256 ICO will stretch faces and circles. Best practice: capture the frame, crop it to a centered square on the subject (a face, logo, or object you want as the icon) before or after the convert. If the frame is busy, you can also use JPG to ICO after touching it up in an image editor.

Can I extract several candidate frames at once and pick the best?

Yes — under Frame Selection, choose Multiple Screenshots. The converter samples several frames across the VOB and produces an ICO from each, so you can review them in Explorer's icon preview and keep the strongest one. This is faster than guessing a single timestamp and re-running the conversion.

Why does my output ICO look blocky in the browser tab?

Browsers typically render the 16x16 entry inside the ICO at the address bar. If you generated only a 256P icon, the browser downscales 256→16 on the fly, which loses detail on text and thin lines. For a clean favicon, either run the conversion at a small image resolution (16P or 32P) so the source frame is already simplified, or generate a multi-size ICO by extracting separate PNGs at 16, 32, and 48 px and combining them — most favicon-generator pipelines accept a PNG and emit a multi-size ICO.

Does VOB to ICO work for ripped DVDs that have CSS copy protection?

The conversion itself works on any VOB file you can upload — the converter doesn't care about origin. But CSS-encrypted retail DVDs need to be ripped with a tool that handles decryption (HandBrake with libdvdcss, MakeMKV, etc.) before you have a usable VOB on disk. Most modern DVD rippers output decrypted VOB or strip directly to MP4/MKV; if you have one of the latter, use MP4 to ICO instead. Respect the copyright of whatever you're ripping — fair-use rules vary by jurisdiction.

What's the difference between a.ico file and a.png named "favicon"?

Modern browsers accept both — you can ship a favicon.png if your <link rel="icon"> tag points to it. The ICO format predates web favicons (it's the Windows shortcut/executable icon format) and its advantage is multi-size embedding: one favicon.ico can carry 16x16, 32x32, and 48x48 inside a single file, so the browser picks the right size without a separate request. PNG favicons require multiple <link> entries, one per size. For older Windows shortcuts and legacy IE compatibility, stick with ICO.

Can I convert all the VOB files from a VIDEO_TS folder in one batch?

Yes — drag every VTS_*.VOB onto the uploader at once. The converter processes them in parallel, and each ICO is named after its source. If you only want frames from the main feature (typically VTS_01_* files), skip the VIDEO_TS.VOB and VIDEO_TS.IFO files — those are menus and metadata. If you'd rather get all the videos into a single watchable file first, convert each VOB with VOB to MP4 and use a scrubber to find the frame visually.

Will the converted ICO keep the original color?

The default conversion preserves the source frame's color. ICO supports up to 32-bit color (24-bit RGB plus 8-bit alpha) since Windows XP, so a modern Windows or browser display will show the icon at full color. Older Windows 95/98 systems clamped icons to 256 colors, but that's rarely a concern in 2026. If you specifically need a 1-bit or 4-bit reduced-palette icon for retro projects, use a downstream image editor after the conversion.