DiVX Tutorial ///
how to ripp DVD and save them into AVI or Mpeg Part 1

Ok,so by now you have set up your multimedia home theater PC with TV out and you wanna save your DVDs on your harddrive for easy access and playability!

Ah Great Stuff , so lets have a look how its done !

Introduction:

Ripping DVDs is an oft-talked about, oft-debated, and oft-unlearned topic. Continuously people turn to more dubious sources to acquire copies of the DVDs they own, as they have no knowledge of how to produce a quality copy in one of the few available MPEG4 compression algorithms. DiVX5, XViD1, Indeo, ASF, and the newest Quicktime format are the most common MPEG4 compression schemes. Of these, XViD and DiVX prove to represent the highest quality, the fastest compression speeds, and the smallest sizes. Of these two, I typically choose DiVX for encoding because most people are able to play it, and I believe the DiVX codec to be a more stable platform.

That said, within this tutorial you will find, in order, the steps required to take any NTSC DVD disc and convert to a high-quality DiVX edition that can fit on 1-4 CDs as you choose. More specifically, this tutorial will outline how to produce a DiVX copy with 5.1 AC3 audio encoding at a DVD bitrate, as well as a picture that has a resolution that bears the same dimensions as its DVD-counterpart. The final movie will be essentially the same as the DVD, except approximately 1/4th the original size (5GB down to 1.4GB).

With the steps outlined herein, a particularly enterprising individual would be able to produce a DiVX copy that could be PAL, fit on a single disc, have only stereo sound, etcetera. The options are yours, I'm giving you the basics of the steps I use to watch movies on my PC without having my DVDs present.

Programs needed:

Aspi layers
Smart Ripper or DVD Decrypter
DVDx
DiVX Codec 5.0.5
CladBRC .NET 1.4
DivX4 Bitrate Calculator by Spark

First of all install your aspi drivers

here is an explaination

Ripping the DVD (Single movie track discs):

Place the desired DVD in your DVD drive of course, then launch SmartRipper(my personal choice) or DVD decrypter or whatever other ripper you choose.

Boxed off in red on any picture in this document are the important sections of the programs to change, and the topics I will be covering through the guide. Above are two squared boxes. Under the "Destination," header of the program, one must select where they wish to put the .VOB files (The video object; your movie). Please make sure you have ample space! VOB files consume between 4.7 and 9.2GB of space depending on the disc you're working with. It's suggest you leave 11GB of space open to work with the file you're ripping.

Once you have the destination selected, hit the DVD -> Disk button and come back in about fifteen minutes. All the proper video files will automatically be extracted from the DVD, decoded, unencrypted, and supplied in a readable format. This is the only time you need to work with DVD decrypter.

Ripping the DVD (Multiple movie track discs):

As an example here, I also included Disc Six of The Prisoner DVD collection to illustrate the ripping process on a DVD with multiple video tracks (In this case, Volume Six of The Prisoner has two episodes) with DVD decrypter.

Above is the input section squared off in a box, this contains the list of all the video/content files on the disc in lists of tracks (PGC 1 is track 1, PGC 2 is track 2, etc). Should you have multiple episodes on a disc, you will have to select each track and export it separately (In this case, PGC 1 is the first episode, and PGC 2 is the second episode. I can tell because the length of the tracks coincide with the length of the episodes on this classic series). In this case, follow the same methods listed above for single video tracks, but do it as many times as you need to so one can get all the episodes exported.

Once you have the destination selected and the proper video track selected, hit the DVD -> Disk button and come back in about three to fifteen minutes (Depending on the size of the tracks, and number thereof). All the proper video files will automatically be extracted from the DVD, decoded, unencrypted, and supplied in a readable format. This is the only time you need to work with DVD decrypter.

Here above is The Matrix outputting to my WD1200JB after I clicked the DVD -> Disk button. As you can see, it says that the DVD is 5.73GB in size. This will be the largest file you'll have on the disc. Ripping takes about 12-15 minutes to do...I was playing EverQuest here, so it says 21 minutes.

Encoding the DVD:

Once the file is extracted from the DVD, you're done with it. There's nothing left to do. You can eject the disc, put it away, and close DVD Decrypter. It's now time to launch DVDx which is in my opinion, one of the finest programs out there to convert the decrypted DVD to numerous codeced formats. To do so, go to file -> open IFO.

Now simply navigate to the directory where you extracted the DVD, and open the only .IFO file. This will template the DVD and launch the next window:

The input settings allows you to define the parameters of the video being imported. In this case, all the settings in the boxes are precisely what you should use for a standard, American, NTSC DVD. That's 23.97 FPS, 48kHz/6ch AC3 sound on a baseline resolution of 720x480 (The width of 720 is always consistent for a 1:1 resolution rip from DVD to DiVX, however the height will vary wildly between the mid 200s and mid 400s depending on the aspect ratio used).

Once you have defined these parameters, click ok and get this error:

Follow the boxes, and continue.

Now that you have defined the parameters for input, so DVDx knows what to do with the file, it's time to define the output (That is the DiVX-encoded AVI) parameters. Following the mouse, go to settings -> Output settings like so:

Once this is done, you'll be greeted with the output parameters box:

This is by far the most complex portion of the process. Defining the parameters with which to encode your movie. Step by step, let's define the template as it applies to the red boxes:

Disclaimer:

This document does not promote, condone, or otherwise legitimize piracy. All Digital Video Discs (DVDs) used herein are legitimate retail copies with copyrights belonging to the respective authors and associated facilities of creation. The author of this document and the domain on which it is hosted shall incur no penalties from mishandling of this document in the extrapolation thereof for illegal purposes. We insist that this guideline is to be used with Digital Video Discs (DVDs) that are also legal, retail copies.