How to convert a multi-feature DVD to DivX/XviD with ease using freeware

manono · Member Joined: 28 Aug 2003

No, AutoGK just converts to AVI. You'll need a different program (or programs) to create a DVD from AVIs. Maybe try DVD Flick or AVI2DVD.

Cheekie_Moonkie · Cheeky Monkey Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Location: United Kingdom

jeflaw · Member Joined: 10 Jun 2007 Location: United States

i think my problem is the same as redkev & nxcmp from above - and it seems theirs never got resolved.

it occurs when a virtualdub window is open on the 2nd pass.

i think i disabled symantic, but i still get the message...

any further thoughts?

jeflaw · Member Joined: 10 Jun 2007 Location: United States

okay - i solved the problem. it was due to auto gk using an old version of virtualdubmod, which is incompatible with the anti-virus.

so i dnloaded the newest version of vdubmod, and replaced the old one with it.

perhaps someone should re-do auto gk with the newest version of the software?

Cheekie_Moonkie · Cheeky Monkey Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Location: United Kingdom

matrixpreloaded · Member Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Location: United Kingdom

This guide covers the decryption and ripping of TV episodes directly from a DVD. Is any way of doing the same thing, after a DVD has been decrypted and saved to hard drive?

manono · Member Joined: 28 Aug 2003

If the episodes all have their own VTS, then open the IFO for that particular VTS in AutoGK and follow the guide from there. However, if the episodes are all contained within the same VTS, then AutoGK is going to mess up. If that's the case, use PGCDemux to break them up into their own episodes by opening the IFO, choosing the episode you want, setting up a folder for it, making sure to have "Create a PGC VOB" checked, and processing. Then open the resulting VOB in AutoGK. You'll lose any subs doing it that way, though.

matrixpreloaded · Member Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Location: United Kingdom

Thank you for responding manono. I searched thoroughly in DVDDecrypter, but couldn't find a way of reading a DVD ripped to hard drive. Yes, all the episodes are in the same VTS, so I'll give PGCDemux a try.

manono · Member Joined: 28 Aug 2003

MaxBlack · Member Joined: 19 Apr 2005 Location: USA

I'm ripping a TV season for playback on my media players, and love the Multi-Feature Ripper batchfile, thanks CM!

A word of caution however regarding your AGK tutorial: I have found that media players using the Sigma Designs chipset don't like VBR audio (which is AGK's default IIRC). If I ever accidentally use VBR I have to change it to CBR (using VDubMod). You may want to change the guide or at least add this caution...

Thanks for the .bat!!!!! Very nice!!!

Cheekie_Moonkie · Cheeky Monkey Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Location: United Kingdom

MaxBlack · Member Joined: 19 Apr 2005 Location: USA

Wow, you're on top of things here CM! Just to clarify my comment after reading your note, VBR audio can cause odd, unexpected playback issues on Sigma players, ie. jerkiness or stuttering in the video. But the audio does play...

manono · Member Joined: 28 Aug 2003

Cheekie_Moonkie · Cheeky Monkey Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Location: United Kingdom

haridsv · Member Joined: 25 Jul 2007 Location: United States

Am I glad I found this guide, I have about 32 disks with about 8 episodes each that I want to convert so the guide is incredibly useful.

I am trying a trial conversion on a single episode and I am currently stuck. The problem I see is that VirtualDub is kind of hanging and the job is not going forward. In the log window, it says "Running compressibility test." for the last 1hr and from procexp I can see that VirtualDub was started. From the arguments, I figured there is a log file option, but I don't even see the file created. Here is the complete log in the AutoGK window

haridsv · Member Joined: 25 Jul 2007 Location: United States

Cheekie_Moonkie · Cheeky Monkey Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Location: United Kingdom

haridsv · Member Joined: 25 Jul 2007 Location: United States

happypyro · Member Joined: 05 Sep 2007 Location: United States

I also want to thank you for this guide! I have had nothing but success so far ripping my tv dvd's. I do have one question though as I search around these forums - I see alot of people who say h.246 is superior to xvid/divx for quality/size and "future proofing" these backups. That said I am now wondering if I should be converting to h.246 instead? Any guides on the horizon for ripping DVD TV to it?

Thanks again, I really do appreciate all the time everyone puts into these guides for us.

dunncha · Member Joined: 26 Dec 2005 Location: United Kingdom

Hey I hope somebody is still checking out this guide. This is a new thing for me so I have only just caught on. I have followed the guide and it has worked perfectly for all but a few episodes.

Lets start at the start. I have been trying to Rip FireFly Series 1. (These are original disc's) Most of the ripping and the conversation goes fine, except for 3 specific episodes: Shindig, Safe and Ariel. Shindig and Safe are on the same disc, Ariel is on a different disc.

Everything appears to go fine on the rip. (DVD Decryptor). All the .Vob files are more or less the same size. (Give or take 200mb) I would put that down to differing lengths and compression (vob files are about 1.800.660kb) All the Vob files play fine in PowerDVD.

Then I rip with AutoGK using your specified settings and the avi files always cuts off early. I have tried checked the settings and retried again always the same result but not always at the same place.

Correct avi's are around 1.433.00kb (1.5gb) the other avi's vary in size between 100mb and 800mb. Here is the AutoGK record for one of the faulty avi's

01\firefly S01e04\VTS_01_PGC_01_1.VOB
[06/09/2007 20:25:51] Source resolution: 720x576
[06/09/2007 20:25:51] Found PAL source.
[06/09/2007 20:25:51] Source aspect ratio: 16:9
[06/09/2007 20:25:51] Color correction enabled.
[06/09/2007 20:25:51] Analyzing source.
[06/09/2007 20:27:04] Source is considered to be progressive.
[06/09/2007 20:27:04] Output will contain 12003 frames
[06/09/2007 20:27:04] Running single pass encoding.
[06/09/2007 20:41:56] Duration was: 14 minutes 51 seconds
[06/09/2007 20:41:56] Speed was: 13.46 fps.
[06/09/2007 20:41:56] Job finished. Total time: 16 minutes 31 seconds
====================================================

Hope somebody can help.

Cheekie_Moonkie · Cheeky Monkey Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Location: United Kingdom

obsidianjaguar · Member Joined: 14 Sep 2007 Location: New Zealand

Hey My freind .. this is the BEST guide I have come across and been searching for about 6 months .. even my lowly skills are enough to back up my smallville DVDS and even a full length movie and got it encoded to div x without too much trouble .. now the only small issue I have is .. I seem to end up with 3 .avis .. one is only slightly smaller than the VOB and is the full episode ( or movie) and the other two are called xxx disc 1 and xxx disc 2 ... now these are like about half the movie each and play fine , but my question .. it must tkae longer to process three avis , and there must be some option I have accidfently turned on that produces both the whole moive in one file as well as slicing it up looks like for 700mb size? whats going on and how do I fix it , and thanks for being kind to the poor newbies

manono · Member Joined: 28 Aug 2003

Evidently you specified a 1400MB file size. Those are automatically split into 2x700MB files for burning to 2 CDs. If you don't want it split, specify a slightly different size, such as either 1399 or 1401MB.

The only extra time taken is in the splitting, a couple of extra minutes.

papa47 · Member Joined: 21 Oct 2007 Location: United States

This is absolutely an amazing guide! I can't thank you enough for taking all the time and effort to make it. Eighteen months later and this is pretty much the go-to guide for ripping tv seasons! I googled the topic and the first five or six entries led to this page! I've been using CloneDVDMobile to rip tv episodes and the quality is never that good and you have little control over the size of the file. With this method, I rip the file with DVD Decrypter and save the files on the hard drive, then when I go to bed I load up 4 episodes in the queue and when I wake up the job is done. Won't be long and my DVD collection will be digital! Thanks again!!!!

ruud_vx · Member Joined: 14 Nov 2007 Location: Belgium

Hello everyone,

I'm using this guide and I have some questions.

I recently bought the dvd-boxes of Lost season 1 and 2.
Now I want to convert them to 350mb avi's like the ones that you can download.

I used clonedvd2 to copy the largest files on my pc (dvddecrypter wouldn't work for some strange reason; maybe because I also use Anydvd?). I selected the largest files since I think these are the ones that contain the episodes?

I then got a few files on my pc.

and then for every episode separately:

Only difference is a 2, 3 or 4 instead of 1. But I think you'll know what i mean.

I copied the files for every episode in a separate folder and put in every folder also the VIDEO_TS.BUP and VIDEO_TS.IFO.
I'm not sure if I should have copied the 2 VIDEO_TS in every folder but I did in anyway.

Now when I open the ifo in AutoGK it tells me that the ifo contains 2 pgc's(??)
How can I know which one to choose if they only differ a few seconds in length (they're both around 40 minutes)

EDIT: I tried both and it seems to me that I get the same file as endresult?? Is this possible?

One more question: You guys use a fixed with of 640 in autoGK (640x368 is the result that I get) but when I look at an episode of Heroes for example it Gspot show an aspect ratio of 624x352?
Can someone explain me the difference and what the best aspect is that I should use?

I hope someone will be so kind to answer my post.

Thank you!!

Ruud

acid_burn · Member Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Location: USA

Which version of AutoGK should I use? The homepage is up to version 2.48 beta, while the guide uses 2.40.

Thanks for the guide - very informative.

manono · Member Joined: 28 Aug 2003

Hi-

Use either one. Just don't use 2.45. 2.48 pretty much goes back to 2.40, but with some additions. It uses the same XviD version as does 2.40. If you're using XviD with the ESS chipset option enabled (for best playback on DVD/MPEG-4 players), then 2.45 was broken because of a funky XviD it was using.

If I had to pick one, I think I'd go with 2.48. The guide will still apply.

Also, if planning to use XviD, then before installing AutoGK and the XviD codec, make sure you've uninstalled any XviDs you might already have on your computer (Add/Remove Programs).

Cheekie_Moonkie · Cheeky Monkey Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Location: United Kingdom

New Version of DDMFRip.bat (1.04)

DDMFRip.bat is exactly 1 year old today. Therefore, a new version (version 1.04) has been released, which contains updates that have been developed over the course of a few weeks. v1.04 is a fairly major update, introduding several new features and improvements. The old help (.txt) file has also been replaced by a proper help file.

See the original post in this thread for more information.
_________________
Cheekie_Moonkie

Ooh, 'ave a banana!!!

Hey, I know a song about this!
"Ba, na, na, na, naaah.
Na, na, na, naaah.
Na na naaah.
Na na naaah.
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Cheekie_Moonkie · Cheeky Monkey Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Location: United Kingdom

New Version of DDMFRip.bat (1.05)

v1.05 is not a very big update, just some minor new features.

See the original post in this thread for more information.
_________________
Cheekie_Moonkie

Ooh, 'ave a banana!!!

Hey, I know a song about this!
"Ba, na, na, na, naaah.
Na, na, na, naaah.
Na na naaah.
Na na naaah.
Ba na na naaa..."

Ghost_rider · Member Joined: 04 Feb 2008 Location: United Kingdom

Great guide Cheekie_Monkie, very very useful. Thanks for taking the time to explain the process in such detail.

I've used it to rip a few series on DVD for a while now following the method you describe and have had no probs whatsoever. However, I do have a slight niggle with the file size. Even though I specify 349MB as the output size (Custom Size option), the avi files produced are far from that.....usually around 280-290MB. It's not a major issue as the quality of the files is fine, but I'd like to keep them the same/similar size.

Do you or anyone else out there have any idea why my output files aren't what they should be??
I use the Xvid codec, 640 fixed width, and the original audio.

Thanks in advance
Ghost_rider