Some FREE Advice on DVD Encoding which you might or might not know - ASK YOUR Q's too
 

What I am going to do here is trying and help some of you out with your questions about encoding DVD content, what programs I have used and found useful and some which I might have not!

Now the last couple of years I have been encoding a lot of video as well as doing all the programming, integration of design and code and numerous other tasks. I missed the days of having free time. I would sit on my laptop with 5+ instances of VNC running trying to get my work done while managing encoding.

Here is how I encoded some of the best fucking quality content ever!

First, get these programs:
SmartRipper - http://www.afterdawn.com/software/vi...martripper.cfm
Mpeg Mediator - http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/do..._mediator.html

You'll have to buy either cleanerXL or a program called procoder 2 pro (I believe) these are the programs which actually encode the video. I?ll stick to cleaner XL examples since that WAS what I used.

Step 1
Rip the DVD using SmartRipper. Try to rip the DVD so that each scene falls into a chapter/VOB file, you might need to join multiple VOB files but that can be done with smartripper by going into the setting tab and then to file splitting options and selecting the max-filesize option. This will make you?re life easier instead of ripping to one big VOB file.

Step 2 ? Converting VOB files
Make sure you got lots of HDD space. I found the best program for this to be Mpeg Mediator which is very much like the programs DVD2AVI and FlaskMpeg.
Export the video to a raw/uncompressed avi file. Make sure that you keep the sound track in the AVI instead of demuxing it to a file. When I converted the VOB files to AVI the resolution I used was the biggest format I was encoding for. In short, I converted the 720x480 VOB file to an uncompressed AVI file at 320x240 with an uncompressed wav soundtrack knowing that the final format I was encoding for was never going to be bigger than 320x240.

You can then load that file into Cleaner XL or procoder 2 for final encoding. Here are some encoding specs I would use for the video but that is best left open to you and your desire to consume/save bandwidth.

160x120 ? 100-150Kbps Video, 8Kbps audio
320x240 ? 500-700Kbps Video, 8Kbps audio

Try to use 2pass encoding as it will improve the quality slightly and decrease the bandwidth required.

Buy the highest quality source of content you can. If you do buy DVD licenses get the DVDS or VOB files, they?ll make a big difference to the video you?ll end up putting on your site. If you buy non-DVD content see if you can get the video on DV Tape or burned to DVD Media in it?s native resolution. The screen shots you?ll get will be absolutely stunning and the videos you encode will be absolutely amazing.

The less you fuck with a video the better the outcome of your content will be.

Good advice! :thumbsup

I have been encoding with Pro Coder 1 and pro coder 2. Pro coder 2 keeps crashing. I am back to pro coder 1. Works great.

I havent played with procoder 1/2 too much but from what i saw in 2 and its ability to handle VOBs without the huge delay that cleanerXL takes to processs it, it's well worth looking into!


Another program i forgot about which could be very useful (Thanks for reminding me Morphius) was DVDx and its ability to convert VOB -> AVI AND split by the AVI file size.

From what i can remember the Mediator/Flask Mpeg like programs produce a better quality AVI file BUT are more prone to glitches and bad DVD encoding (encoding to non-ISO spec) whereas DVDx will take a pretty fucked up VOB file and still make sense of it.

DVDDecrypter --> VOBs on your hdd --> Chopper XP (to split the files into the scenes)--> DVD2AVI --> DV AVI files on your hard drive --> Cleaner XL (Or TMPGEnc Plus, Windows Media Encoder, or your favorite encoding app) --> WMV, MPEG-1 files on your hard drive also works well.

Cleaner is VERY nice. Only thing you have to make sure to work around is some pain in the FUCKING ASS bullshit with micro$oft's .NET.

Cleaner XL uses 1.0 .NET, and not the new supposedly 'upgraded' 1.03, 1.1 and so forth.

I was using .NET fine, then blew out my motherboard. Got back PC, reinstalled everything, and had an ENOURMOUS fucking headache with .NET because cleaner uses the 1.0 version, not the newer. :321GFY

But Cleaner XL (when working) is a fucking awesome program, and the quality is subpurb. Not to mention having all of the various formats avi/DivX/Xvid and so on. Making it very nice and useful for those of us who encode in various formats via web/DVD/etc.

:thumbsup

I agree Cleaner XL rocks. It is my main encoding app. The interface is a little slow and it is an expensive program but the batching capability and multiple encoding formats and ability to save encoding profiles are great. I am happy with it for the forseeable future, but don't know if there will be a future version of the program though since the creators Discreet were bought out by another company.

Does chopper allow you to mark in/out points for scenes which span multiple DVD chapters?

DVDRipper is an exceptional program too, you can select which chapter(s) you want to rip but i dont believe that if a scene is broken down in to multiple VOB files that it would join them together like smartripper would using the file splitting/max filesize setting.

Those encoding apps are pretty good but the reason i like cleaner XL so much is that it supports wmv/mov/mpeg/rm and just about every other format as an output as well as allowing you to batch jobs for all those output formats using the same source. IMHO its much easier to batch it all from one place for all formats than many other programs :thumbsup

CleanerXL also doesnt like WMP10 so make sure you dont install that :thumbsup

Yep. It's a picky program. Some of the programs you can/can't have, as well as some of the other tweaks here and there. But when it is working, it is a great program, and helps clean up clips, both in quality, deal with noise, and also get them smaller.

Too bad about them being bought out.

Most of the problems I had with Cleaner XL after reinstall were because of micro$oft and their 'upgrade' (term used loosely) to the .NET application. :321GFY

What do you guys think about the ImTOO DVD Ripper?

I've never tried it but if you post a link to it i'll give it a shot!

http://www.imtoo.com/ Have heard people recomend it... Have 6 DVDs to rip and want the best and quickest solution :)