DVD ripping question, low volume newbie...

[goldstein]

So I am trying to back up a DVD of the movie "Heat" and I am quite the newbie; I was hoping someone here may offer a tip to the problems I am encountering.

First off, the movie is 175 mins long and I want to squeeze it on a 700 mb disc; so I have chosen the flask/Divx5 compression route. A couple of problems resulted:

1) The volume is way low compared to the original disc...in the audio codec selector (I am using Flask) I chose Mp3 160bits as opposed to the PCM wav due to the effective compressibility of MP3... but how can I pump the volume up...it is too low?

2) The resulting output video file is set at 720x480 (which is the size of the original dvd)...but I noticed when I tried to shrink the size of the output dimensions (like 512x386) there was no real reduction in final divx movie size...am I correct in assume that the output dimensions has no impact on the final divx file size?

3) I tried adv bitrate calculator software but it had no option for adjusting the dimension of the output file...so, is the only thing that makes the file bigger or smaller is the bitrate selector in DIVX (currently set at 400 due to the length of the movie)...true?

4) I decrypted the vob files of the dvd onto my hard-drive (7 gb sheesh)...apart from the flask/divx method...is there another better foolproof software solution to backing up dvds?

5) When I open the ifo file in flask mpeg, it automatically chooses the biggest movie file to compress...which is a good thing, but I noticed in some other programs like DVD2AVI you can only compress vob files individually...what happens afterwards is that you have 5 or 6 vob files converted to divx avi...is there a quick lossless way to tie them together as a single file?

any help...

thank you thank you thanks

[dsp]

Hopefully I'll be able to answer a couple of your questions.

1) I'd suggest first record to WAV audio then use another program (such as VirtualDub) to rencode the audio at a higher volume without affecting the video at all.

2&3) The video size doesn't play a part in the file size as the bitrate selected is what determines the final file size. Though if you reduce the video size, the quality will get better. I'd suggest a lower resolution to keep good quality and stay within your 700MB limit.

4) Not that I know of.

5) See 1) for information on that.

Hope I've helped

dsp

[Wombat]

Also, getting Heat on 1 CD is not something I'd want to do. After all, it came out on 2 VHS tapes.

[box]

Visit www.doom9.org , you can find answers to all your questions there.

Personally I use Gordian Knot, for the ripping and encoding-setup, and VirtualDub / NanDub + DivX 5.02 for the actual encoding part.

With this combo, you can perform volumecompression on the audio at rip-time, and use vbr mp3 encoding.

Oh and be sure to read Doom9's GKnot+DivX5 tutorials.

[orangejulius]

320x240 WMV will fit it on one CD maintaining reasonable quality.

<a href="http://www.lukesvideo.com/wm8encoding.html">Step-by-step tutorial</a>.

<small>edit: fixed link</small>

[EvilDonnyboy]

They say "undefragmentation" in that link. hahahahaha

[goldstein]

thanks guys

1) I'd suggest first record to WAV audio then use another program (such as VirtualDub) to rencode the audio at a higher volume without affecting the video at all.


wouldn't that take a lot of time to do?

i'll try

[dsp]

Not nessicarily, as the encoding to WAV should speed up the video file creation (no 'encoding' needed), and the increase in volume shouldn't lower the rendering speed of the MP3 and it doesn't reencode the video.

dsp

[HaloFX]

I use Xmpeg (the follow up to Flask), it offers normalization to help boost up the audio. The trick is to set the audio settings right before you start the encoding. Otherwise it forgets the setting if you change any of the other settings. It can also read straight off the DVD, so you do not have to rip it to the hard drive first.

GKNOT does do a little better job on the quality, but it is much more difficult to setup and takes alot more time. Xmpeg will be a breeze if you are familiar with Flask.

As mentioned before, check out Doom9.org, they have the skinny on just about every app worth using.

The bitrate is the main factor in determining file size. A 480x210 movie @ 800kbps will be about the same size as a 720x480 @ 800kbps. If you are playing them back on a TV, the 480 is a better size, since a tv has a very low resolution. The 480 will also offer sharper detail, and many times looks better at full screen than a larger size like 720. But of course this will very from movie to movie and by personal preference. I also found that a 480 will encode faster on my rig than a 720, even at the same bitrate.

I simply had to experiment with several ripping apps and different settings till I found what worked best for me. Rip a single VOB file to your hard drive and compress it with different apps and settings. It won't take as long to compress and then compare the results.

Smart Ripper (see Doom9) can rip and combine the vobs into larger files larger files. I would avoid creating a single 7gb vob.

[goldstein]

ok, i stripped the wav file separate from the video file; I know how to reintegrate it using virtual dub...but that does not allow me to compress the wav file...how do i convert it to mp3 AND reintegrate in in virtual dub?


oops I just figured it out...under audio choose full process mode and make adjustments...

but do I leave direct stream copy for video? no degrade of picture, right?


and should I anticipate any sync audio problems?

[dsp]

Yeah you would leave the video at direct stream, and you should find no audio/video sync issues.

dsp

[TnT]

For normalizing wav files get Normalize and NormalizeGUI. Very fast and easy to use.

[rugger]

Ok, my suggestions:

1) Install the Radium MP3 codec. How you find it is up to you, but you won't have video/audio sync problems with this version of the MP3 codec.

2) Use Xmpeg. Make sure you set the following options:

a) 1:1 output perspective, since you are making a divx movie for computers.
b) crop the black bars off the movie, since that saves video bandwidth for real information. Also crop off any distorted video areas around the edges.
c) Set colour processing mode to YUV2. This is much faster than the default RGB.
d) Don't bother resizing, since MPEG codecs are not very biased to video size, but more biased to the compressability of the video's action.
e) Set the output codecs to:
Video codec: Divx codec with 1-pass quality based, quantizer set to 2. (the quality slider)
Audio codec: MP3 codec with 64kbps. While the audio won't be crash hot, it should be fine. If it was set to 128kbps, you would be consuming 160Meg in audio alone, which is a disaster for the video side. If you feel 64kbps is too low, 96kbps is the utter maximum I would use in this case.
f) Open the audio player panel. Turn on normalization. Click on the search button underneath it. This will take about 10 minutes to determine the highest amplification the audio will handle without distortion.
g) Run the operation. Make sure you have about 4 to 5 gigabytes free on your hard drive, since the video is not being fully compressed at this stage.

3) Run the video to ensure audio is of sufficent volume and quality. The video output should be very close to the DVD original at this stage

4) Open the video file in virtualdub. Set the video proessing mode to "Fast recompress". Set the video codec to Divx to 2-pass mode, first pass. Make sure the "Use MV" option is turned on. If you are using the Pro version, you can also turn on the GMC and Bi-Directional encoding options. Set the bitrate to 485kbps. Set the Audio processing mode to "Direct Stream copy" Now save the video. VirtualDub will now process to video, and produce an empty AVI file. Now Do that over again, setting the video codec to the second pass. Now save it again. This output is now the completed output.

There are ways that might be quicker, but this works well enough for me.