Guinea pigs for new software required!

[jimmalenko]

I have followed CD and DVD backup since 4X CD burners were the best thing since sliced bread at $300 AUD (about 6 years ago). Being a member here for a while has shown me so many people who were in the same boat as me before visiting this site and finding out what I needed to know. I was inspired to try different things - and that is the key of this forum, people. Don't post here saying "Would this work ?" Try it yourself. We here do not know everything automatically - we know what we know from trying things and learning from experience !

Anyway, I have been inspired to write a GUI that interacts with DVDDecrypter, DVD2AVI, BeSweet and TMPGEnc Plus to take complete titlesets off a DVD and output them in a M2V and a MP2 format, ready for remuxing in your favorite authoring program. I was interested in the ability to place a couple of movies on each DVD where bitrate wasn't overly important - I have a few blue movies that don't need more than 2000kbps. This allows me to get 4-6 hours onto a DVD. It also opens up the possibility of getting sequels and trilogies on the one DVD at around SVCD quality. I think this is a good learning tool for the full to semi-noob.

Basically, You put the DVD in your drive, select the titleset and set bitrate of audio and video, and let it do its thing. it interacts with all of the programs in the right sequence with no user interaction required once you start it. It rips the titleset using DVDDecrypter. It Demuxes the streams using DVD2AVI. It converts AC3 audio to MP2 using BeSweet. It then converts the video to the required bitrate using TMPGEnc. All you need to do is go into TMPGEnc DVD Author or your favorite authoring software and select the video and audio streams.

I am very close to finishing my GUI. I have extensively tested it and of course I think it is brilliant and easy to use but you would too if you've run it 200 times ! At the moment I have only done a PAL version as I am from the land of Oz and this is all that I need. I have toyed around with the idea of making presets such as VCD and SVCD as well as NTSC support but these have been placed on the todo list as completion has neared. At the moment it only outputs in MPEG-2 so you would need to have acquired TMPGEnc Plus from somewhere. All the other programs are included in the installation package because they are freeware.

If there is anyone out there that has any suggestions or would be interested in trialling my GUI please let me know here or by PM.

[mastersmurfie]

Don't post here saying "Would this work ?" Try it yourself. We here do not know everything automatically - we know what we know from trying things and learning from experience !

At the moment I have only done a PAL version as I am from the land of Oz and this is all that I need. I have toyed around with the idea of making presets such as VCD and SVCD as well as NTSC support but these have been placed on the todo list as completion has neared. At the moment it only outputs in MPEG-2 so you would need to have acquired TMPGEnc Plus from somewhere. All the other programs are included in the installation package because they are freeware.

If there is anyone out there that has any suggestions or would be interested in trialling my GUI please let me know here or by PM.

jimmalenko...i would be interested...if there was NTSC support...I have never tried PAL with my TV or DVD player...so don't know if it works or not...but, like you said...

we know what we know from trying things and learning from experience !

so send it on!! PM me if interested...

mastersmurfie

[jimmalenko]

Just to update on proceedings:

I have tweaked a little bit and now have ChapterXtractor on the go also.

You put your DVD in, Start the GUI, select the titleset(s), Video and Audio bitrates and press the go button. It extracts the chapter info into a text file. It rips the DVD to your Hard Drive with DVD Decrypter. It demuxes with DVD2AVI. It re-encodes the audio into MP2 with besweet. It re-encodes the video into M2V with TMPGEnc Plus. It copies the M2V, the MP2 and the celltimes.txt file into its own directory and starts the whole process again if you have selected multiple titlesets. All using command line options in a batch file created by VB.

[mickle]

If it could use CCE as well as TMPGEnc Plus then I would give it a try.

[jimmalenko]

I'll have to start saving then !

The whole NTSC thing is something I do not know a lot about either. the 23.97/29.97 fps thing confuses the hell out of me. Good thing I only have to worry about 25fps.

I'm certainly open to a few suggestions anyway.

[reboot]

Send me. I have a ton of friends who all want a "one button" app, mostly because they can't be bothered to figure out a 3 button procedure.