Rip DVD Movies

DVD movies are popular because of better video and audio qualities. To watch DVD movies on your PC, you need a DVD drive. Just like Video CDs, you can rip DVD movies to your hard drive, too. Since a DVD movie occupies significant hard drive space, up to 4 GB, you can convert it to a compressed format such as XviD or DivX such that it becomes small enough to fit on a single CD. XviD is a new open-source video format (interestingly, it’s also DivX spelt backwards). It uses MPEG-4 compression for encoding DVD movies. 

To rip a DVD movie to XviD format, you need encoding software tools, some of which are this month’s CD. The set of tools given in the CD include: Smart ripper 2.40, DVD2AVI, VFAPIcodec, VirtualDub, XviDBit calculator, XviD
codec, Headac3h and nandud. 

We used a Pentium 4, 256 MB RAM machine, because encoding DVD movies requires a lot of processing power. First, create a folder on your desktop and copy all the tools mentioned, from the CD. They’re in the \cdrom\utility\ripping directory. Install all the utilities and then do the following steps: 

Step 1

Dump movie on HDD

After you put the DVD in the drive, run Smart ripper 2.40. This tool will show contents of your DVD, chapter by chapter. Select the chapters and the location where you want to copy them. Then click the Start button to activate the copying process.

Step 2

Select the chapters from the DVD and copy them to your hard disk

Extract audio, create project file 

Now you need to extract audio from the movie. DVD2AVI is used for this purpose. It will create two files: first, an AC3 audio file and second, D2V file that contains information about the movie (such as location of the movie files). Run DVD2AVI tool and click on File>Open, select the movie files (.vob) from where you have saved them in step 1. Now press F5 to see the preview of the movie. 

This will show you the statistics of the movie such as aspect ratio and video type. Click Stop once you check the preview and
save your project by clicking Save Project in the File menu. 

Step 3

Use DVD2AVI to create a new project and extract audio to AC3

Create a fake .AVI file 

Run VFAPIConvEN from VFAPICodecV105en folder. This tool will create a fake .AVI file that helps to encode the entire movie to XviD format. Open VFAPIConvEN tool and click on Add file. 

Now select the .d2v project file created in step 2. Here, the tool prompts you to specify the location for the .AVI file to be created. Choose the location and click on Convert.

Step 4

Configure movie for Ripping 

Run VirtualDub and click on the File menu. Open the fake .AVI file that you created in the previous step. Go to Video and select Full Processing Mode. Again go to video and select Filter. Here, a new window will appear to add filters. Click Add, select Null Transform and then click OK. Again from the Filter window click Cropping. A new window will appear that shows the actual display size of the movie. You can crop out the cinemascope area by reducing the display size (this reduces the file size of the XviD movie), and then click Ok. Again from the Filter window, click Add and select Resize that opens a window to set the height and width of the movie. Choose the parameters according to the aspect ratio of the DVD (which is provided on the back of the DVD cover), from the table, and fill them in the resize filter. Then click Ok. 

Create a fake AVI file

In our case the aspect ratio is 2.3:51, so we choose 720X304 for width and height respectively. Again from the filter window, add Deinterlance filter and then select Blend fields together (best), and click Ok.

Step 5

Calculate movie size

Usually you will find that the end part of a DVD is empty. You can skip this unwanted part while encoding into XviD. To do this, in the VirtualDub main window, click on End button. This will take you to the end frame of the movie. Note down the end frame number and then move the slider back, until you find the actual end of the movie. Note that as well.

Use Virtual Dub to encode the movie into Xvid

Keep the VirtualDub running and open XviD Bitrate Calculator from Start>Programs. Set the movie size, in which you want to compress your entire DVD, from the slider on the Bitrate Calculator, for example 700 MB. Next, set the audio bitrate on the slider. For better audio sync, you can set it at 96 kbps. As soon as you do this, the Bitrate Calculator shows you the Video Size in the Option for Encoding frame, which should be noted.

Now open VirtualDub, and click Video from the menu bar. Select Compression that will open a window where you need to select the Compression type. Select XviD MPEG-4 Codec from the list and click Configure button. Here, an Xvid configuration window will appear. Select 2pass-1st pass in Encoding mode frame. Now click Advanced button and select Global tab. Now set Motion Search Precision to 6-Ultra high, Quantization to H.263, FourCC to XviD and Maximum
I-frame Interval to 250 if the movie type is PAL and 300 if the movie type is NTSC. Next, go to Credits tab and select check box Credits at End of the Movie. In Credit Begin at Frame No, specify the initial frame number that you have noted for skipping the unwanted part and in Credit End at Frame No, specify the end frame of the DVD movie, and then click Ok.

Now click on File>Save As and select check box Don’t Run this Job Now; Add it to Job Control so I Can Run it in Batch Mode, given in the lower left end corner. Next you need to give a file name to the XviD movie and click Save.

Step 6

Rip to XviD format

Again from VirtualDub, select Video>Compression and select XviD MPEG-4 Codec. Then click Configure button and select 2Pass-2nd pass Int in encoding mode, in the same window you will find Desired Size(Kbytes) text box , fill it with the actual video file size that you have calculated from XviD bitrate calculator in step 5. Next, click Advanced option and select Alt Curve tab from the XviD configuration and change High Distance from Average % to 100 and Low Distance from 

Average % to 150 and then click Ok.

Now go to File>Save As AVI and select check box Don’t Run this Job Now; Add it to Job Control so I can Run it in Batch Mode, given in the lower left end corner. Next you need to give the same file name that you have given in step 5 for XviD movie and click save button. 

Aspect Ratio
1.33:1	1.66:1	1.78:1	1.85:1	2.20:1	2.35:1	2.40:1
512x384	512x312	512x288	512x280	512x232	512x216	576x208
576x432	576x344	576x328	576x312	576x264	576x248	576x240
640x480	640x384	640x360	640x344	640x288	640x272	640x264
720x544	720x432	720x408	720x392	720x328	720x304	720x296
Source: www.nanomessiah.com

From the File menu select Job control, a job-control window will appear showing you two jobs job1 and job2 click start button to start encoding in to XviD format. This will take couple of hour to encode the entire DVD movie.

Step 7

Convert Audio to MP3/Ogg Vorbis

After encoding the XviD movie, you will get an .AVI file without audio. Now you need to convert the AC3 audio to the MP3 or Ogg Vorbis for final integration. Run HeadAC3 tool to convert AC3 to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis. Click source file button and select AC3 file that you have created in step 2. Next, select the destination format MP3 or Ogg Vorbis that you want to include in the movie. We selected the Ogg Vorbis format. You can change the destination audio file name from destination button. Now click Start button to covert the AC3 audio to Ogg
Vorbis.

Step 8

Integrate Audio to the XviD Movie

Finally you have to combine the audio with the XviD movie, run nandud tool and Open the final XviD file that you have created in step 6 from File>open. Now go to Video and select Direct stream copy, then click on Audio menu and select Ogg/Vorbis audio file that you have created in step 7 and also select Direct Stream copy from same audio menu. Go to File>Save As AVI and save the AVI file with the new name. This will create a final XviD format file with audio in it.

With this you can run this file with Windows Media Player. But you need to install XviD codec, which is also given on this month’s CD. Finally, please note that copying copyright content is illegal, unless you plan to use it for archival. 

Sanjay Majumder