Ready to 
DVD Ripping Lesson One – DiVX Tutorial
Robert Hallock
August 5, 2003 2:10 AM ET in Tech
Why you should consider it: 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.
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 at Short-Media insist that this guideline is to be used
with Digital Video Discs (DVDs) that are also legal, retail copies.
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:
DVD
Decrypter
DVDx
DiVX Codec 5.0.5
CladBRC
.NET 1.4
DivX4 Bitrate Calculator
by Spark
Ripping the DVD (Single movie track discs):
Place the desired DVD in your DVD drive of course, then launch DVD decrypter.
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 720×480 (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:
AVI Specific:
Within this section, you’ll want to click the Audio Lame button and change
the bitrate to 128 kbps. 192 is unnecessary for an mp3 file, and just makes
your video bigger. If you want to keep 192, your video quality will suffer VERY
slightly. If you’re encoding with XViD or DiVX. Both formats fully support LAME’s
mp3/AC3 encoding schemes. However what one MUST change is the codec to DiVX
5.0.5. You’ll notice at the very top of the window I have set it to use AVI
(DiVX, YUV,…), this allows you to have access to the third-party video codecs
we’re employing. So drop down, select DiVX 5.0.5 and notice you now have Pass
1 settings, and pass 2 settings.
Two pass DiVX/XViD files are the best. On the first rendering pass, the DiVX
codec does not output anything. Rather it examines the file and continuously
maintains a log of the theoretical bitrate it requires to adequately display
the scene within the bitrate you will select. On the second pass of the file,
it actually renders the final output according to the log and the selected bitrate.
This produces the highest quality videos for any given resolution and bitrate.
So to configure pass 1, click the button and see this screen:
This is the DiVX console for selecting bitrate. On the variable bitrate mode
under FIRST PASS, select Multipass, 1st pass. Now, you question how
to acquire the proper bitrate settings? Launch CladBRC now and see this window:
|
In the movie length section, set the length of the movie in minutes. In the
second red box is how many megabytes you wish the output to be. In this case
I selected 1400MB (You can make it any size you please) for the final calculated
bitrate of 1331. Going back to the DiVX window, type your calculated bitrate
within the box to the left of the “kbps” acronym and hit ok.
Now you’ll click the Second Pass button on DVDx, and select Multipass,
Nth pass and otherwise keep the same settings (In this case 1331kbps).
You’ve now defined the most important part, the bitrate parameters. Going back
to this window:
It’s now time to define the resolution. To do this, select Zoom -> custom.
Now hit apply and revert back to the main window for a moment (Never close this
program). You’ll see something like this:
Notice that I have taken the green box and moved it from the full 720×480 down
to the 720×356 that The Matrix uses. I have pulled the green bar around the
VIDEO ONLY (very important to get the most out of your bitrate). However, most
times you will not drag properly and get a video height that’s a multiple of
8, so here’s where the DiVX4 bitrate calculator by Spark has a valuable tool,
the ability to select proper, custom aspect ratios:
You noticed that you dragged the green crop box in DVDx to the height of 356,
but that’s not right. So using DivX4 bitrate calc v2.4.2 by Spark, you can move
the little arrows at the top of the first box to lower the height of the film
to the Nearest Correct Height. In this case, it’s 352. Remember that
number and close the program. Go back to DVDx, and go into the output settings:
For the resolution put 720 as the width, and your new multiple-8 width in the
second box. For Max Frame, click the Whole button. For Volume
don’t exceed, disable this feature as you cannot split multipass DiVX files
using this program. With these settings all defined, you’re now ready to hit
apply! Going back to the main window it’s time to click on the yellow folder
to select the encoding destination. Once that is done, hit the red dot and wait
between 2-5 hours for the computers most of you use.
Here is The Matrix encoding the first few minutes with the lovely Trinity:
And when you’re all done, you should have a high-quality DiVX rip of your DVD
with image quality that rivals DVD, identical DVD resolution, and 6 channel
sound! And all at 1/4-1/6th of the space a DVD requires. Should you wish to
reduce the size of the video, you can reduce the resolution, reduce the sound
quality, or reduce the bitrate. Of all of these methods, reducing the sound
quality to 128kbps and reducing the resolution to another integer with the same
aspect ratio (The Matrix is 2.04:1, so 720×352 could be reduced to 512×256) are
the best options.
Best of luck rippers! Questions? Ask me. Problems? I’ll try to help. And please
await the next installment where I instruct how to reduce retail DVDs to the
size of a DVD-R and burn it in less than 90 minutes spent at your PC!
Robert “Thrax” Hallock - www.short-media.com
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