DVD to H264 video & AAC audio from DVD Decrypter

[pieterisme]

Ok guys I know this is probably done to dead but it seems there are way too many choices or programs and I have gotten a little confused on how to put other guides to use for my needs.

Basically I have my dvd collection on multiple small HDD's in vob format ripped with dvd decrypter. I have re-encoded allot of my series before using AutoGK with some modifications. To 40-45mins per episode into 350mb avi's with the following settings;

Video: XVID 720x544 25.00fps 983Kbps [Video 0]
Audio: MPEG Audio Layer 3 48000Hz stereo 115Kbps [Audio 1]

Well I would like to redo some of them and compare results (better size to quality would be nice) using H/264 and aac audio in mkv's for sub support (for the few anime's)

I have been playing around with the following MakeMKV, XviD4PSP, Handbrake, mkvmerge, IfoEdit, VobEdit etc. I got some decent end results. But I would like a process to follow could you guys help me out please.

Also what the (i will use the word loosely) standards in regards to SD/HD sizes for 25min, 45min, 1hr 30min, 2hr, 2.5hr etc

Untouched DVD Souce files I already have on HDD (i don't want to rip em all again)
VTS_02 - Stream Information.txt
VTS_02_0.IFO
VTS_02_1.VOB

Please go easy even though I have some encoding experience. I would say I am a noob.

[jman98]

Unless you have some really old PC equipment and are restricted to the dying IDE format for hard drives, very large SATA drives are affordable. You can get 1.5 TB drives for under $100 US (I am guessing that you are from the UK, so you can convert that to pounds). Is there a good reason why you are hell bent on re-encoding all your stuff? You could save a ton of time by simply ripping your DVDs to ISO format and saving those on large hard drives. No conversion necessary. No loss of quality. All DVD contents preserved. There are an awful lot of cheapskates in the world who place no value at all on their spare time and would rather save money by spending all their spare time re-encoding their stuff to make it fit on one hard drive rather than just pay the money for an extra drive and not re-encode at all, so if you are one of those people perhaps others can help you.

Welcome to the forums. I mean you no disrespect in my answer, but I am just bluntly telling you that you don't HAVE to re-encode your stuff. There IS a better alternative out there by just ripping to ISOs, but if you don't care about your time and just want to save money, others can tell you how to encode to H.264.

[pieterisme]

With respect to yourself..No I am from Australia, and I just have alot of main movie section vobs on HDD's 500gb sata, (computer terms 3 months is old, so please don't assume that I am trying to penny pinch). I don't need the extra stuff thats on dvd which an ISO would provide and since I have good sources and backups already. Why would I re-rip them.

I want to recode my vobs into new formats so I can keep some movies small enough to be portable and work over bad wi-fi reception from my router to other rooms in the house.

FYI I will probably only redo a few movies for practice and comparison not the whole collection.

Not that I am not grateful for a reply but...
Could someone that is willing to help me with doing some better quality encodes for size compared to old school xvid, please give me a hand.
Then once I know how to do h264 type encodes I can use that process instead of AutoGK/Xvid etc

Thanks
Pete

[jagabo]

Use something like Xvid4Psp with the x264 CRF presets. Pick the quality you want and encode. The file will turn out whatever size is necessary for the quality you specify.

[hech54]

After reading the first post...I've been trying to gather up a gameplan to reply but....there is so much wrong with your thinking that I don't even know where to begin.
1) DVDDecrypter? - I hope these rips are from at least 5 years ago or you are screwed.
2) This is your DVD?

VTS_02 - Stream Information.txt
VTS_02_0.IFO
VTS_02_1.VOB

That mus be a damn short movie if that is your entire DVD....and that is not going to play
if burned to an actual DVD even if it is just one episode.
3) VOB files? VOB files are NOT your DVD....the entire contents of the VIDEO_TS folder is your DVD.

etc
etc
etc

[pieterisme]

Use something like Xvid4Psp with the x264 CRF presets. Pick the quality you want and encode. The file will turn out whatever size is necessary for the quality you specify.

Sweet I Actually have an encoded a few episodes at HQ 22 (2pass at the size) as I have been typing etc. Seems fairly simple to use with good results. What would be other encoder programs options say something along the top 5 or 10 with pro/cons?

Also another question some of the vobs I have are single vobs with 4 episodes, I would like to split them and to per episode etc, (the chapters don't meet up with the episodes).
Should I be splitting the vob on time frames or ??
What are some tools for vob chopping and mkv chopping for the above?

[pieterisme]

After reading the first post...I've been trying to gather up a gameplan to reply but....there is so much wrong with your thinking that I don't even know where to begin.
1) DVDDecrypter? - I hope these rips are from at least 5 years ago or you are screwed.
2) This is your DVD?

VTS_02 - Stream Information.txt
VTS_02_0.IFO
VTS_02_1.VOB

That mus be a damn short movie if that is your entire DVD....and that is not going to play
if burned to an actual DVD even if it is just one episode.
3) VOB files? VOB files are NOT your DVD....the entire contents of the VIDEO_TS folder is your DVD.

etc
etc
etc

So what is wrong with my thinking? please elaborate.

1) DVDDecrypter? - I hope these rips are from at least 5 years ago or you are screwed.

Those are the single vob I created from using DVDDecrypter (some are about 5gb). Some are very recent. Why would I be screwed..? They stream from my media server to my tv ok??

2) Yes those are the contents that I have chosen to RIP from my dvd's and that were created by DVDDecrypter. I don't ever intend to reproduce the full dvd or I would need the VIDEO_TS folder etc..

3) Correct Vob files are not DVD's but they do contain the audio/video/subs for the media the rest is a map and garbage for the dvd players to read, to do re-encodes I don't need that stuff do I??

[jagabo]

DVD Decrypter hasn't been updated in five years. It cannot handle the protection techniques used on many DVDs since then. Use DvdFab for those.

[pieterisme]

DVD Decrypter hasn't been updated in five years. It cannot handle the protection techniques used on many DVDs since then. Use DvdFab for those.

Thanks Jagabo,

I am aware that it hasn't been updated in a long time, wasn't aware that it was 5 years. I have used dvd fab before but rarely as dvddecrypter works 99% of the time for me. Maybe or dvd's don't have that level of protection yet, either way. Thankyou for the info. Its nice that at least 1 person isn't out for blood forum trolling. Thank you for your help. I appreciate it Jagoboo.

[hech54]

Its nice that at least 1 person isn't out for blood forum trolling.

Just in case that was directed my way....my point I was trying to make NICELY was that you are already off to a bad start and that your terminology is wrong...IE...I have my dvd collection on multiple small HDD's in vob format , Untouched DVD Souce files.
But since you've gone from self-confessed noob to knowing it all....I'll leave you to it. I do predict however that you will be back asking why these conversion softwares won't open or correctly convert your 5GB VOB files or your single vobs with 4 episodes.

Carry on....

[pieterisme]

Its nice that at least 1 person isn't out for blood forum trolling.

Just in case that was directed my way....my point I was trying to make NICELY was that you are already off to a bad start and that your terminology is wrong...IE...I have my dvd collection on multiple small HDD's in vob format , Untouched DVD Souce files.
But since you've gone from self-confessed noob to knowing it all....I'll leave you to it. I do predict however that you will be back asking why these conversion softwares won't open or correctly convert your 5GB VOB files or your single vobs with 4 episodes.

Carry on....

Well clearly I came to the forum for help so I don't know it all, I apologize for my terminology but isn't that what you would expect from a new comer to the forum..
In my defense now one asked me for more information or to clarify, my lack of terminology I may be able to be helped and learn something so that next time I use the correct terminology. How would one learn to use the right terms if instantly they are harassed for not doing so.
If you new I was off to a bad why not say "Large vob files may not be supported by some softwares or since it is possible to encode from vobs as I have now found out, (not through a 1-click solution - this requires a VIDEO_TS folder and its contents) but it is possible without re-creating the video_ts structures.

Anyways rather than dispute anymore I should have said my dvd source files I have are "untouched" main movie vobs with there corresponding .ifo file

I do still need help and this is how things went.
All of the software I mentioned to do open large vobs and will convert, seems even in this short time I have figured out how to set trim points to extract episodes from these vobs and have converted quiet well. I just think that its a little harsh to bash a new comer.

Sorry to say I still really don't know what settings in XviD4PSP to use but I went with 2pass size 175mb high profile x264 with AAC-LC ABR 128k (15mins encoding time).
Are these setting going to give me the most bang for my buck or is there something else I should tweak?

On a side note; Another issue this dvd is says it has 720x576 resolution, but that is a 4:3 and the dvd doesn't look right unless I play it with 16:9 in MPCStar 4.9, (vlc auto changes it to 16:9).
I am guessing something to do with Aspect Ratios/Resolutions I tried a resize at 720x400 but I dunno if thats what it should be?? Help Appreciated

[hech54]

Since you no longer/neither have valid DVD structures nor an actual video file to work with...my suggestions would be:
First... VOB2MPEG to transcode your irregular VOB files to regular MPEG2 files.
Second....if you want H264...the easiest for me is WinFF with it's MPEG4 - H264 presets(you'll need to specify widescreen or fullscreen in the second preset).
Both of these are free.

[jagabo]

Sorry to say I still really don't know what settings in XviD4PSP to use but I went with 2pass size 175mb high profile x264 with AAC-LC ABR 128k (15mins encoding time).
Are these setting going to give me the most bang for my buck or is there something else I should tweak?

As I noted earlier, I would forget bitrate and use constant quality encoding. With bitrate based encoding you pick a bitrate (and hence file size) and the encoder delivers whatever quality it can for that file size. With quality based encoding you pick the quality and the encoder uses whatever bitrate is needed to maintain that quality. When using constant quality encoding you will often find a 2x difference in file size when encoding multiple episodes of a TV series -- because some episodes compress better than others. The only reasons to use bitrate based encoding are when you need specific file sizes (like when putting a 2 hour movie on a 4.3 GB DVD, or a 90 minute movie on a CD) or when you have a device with playback restrictions. Quality based encoding is also faster since it can be done in a single pass.

Many of the presets in Xvid4Psp are there because some devices have playback restrictions. For playback on a computer I'd use one of the presets for DXVA. That will assure hardware video decoding by the graphics card is possible. If you need to view your videos on a cell phone then you need more restrictive settings.

Try something like "x264 Q21 DXVA SD-HQ Film" for live action material, or "x264 Q21 DXVA SD-HQ Animation" for cartoons and anime. If you want higher quality and don't mind larger files, customize the settings to use a lower CRF value. If you want smaller files and don't mind a little less quality use a higher CRF value. The HQS, HQInsane and other variants enable more or less processing to get a little more or less compression (still the same quality). The longer the encoder spends looking for different ways to compress the video the smaller the final size will be. But going with really long encoding times usually only gets you a few percent more compression, sometimes just tenths of a percent. Usually not worth it in my opinion.

On a side note; Another issue this dvd is says it has 720x576 resolution, but that is a 4:3 and the dvd doesn't look right unless I play it with 16:9 in MPCStar 4.9, (vlc auto changes it to 16:9).
I am guessing something to do with Aspect Ratios/Resolutions I tried a resize at 720x400 but I dunno if thats what it should be?? Help Appreciated

PAL DVDs are always encoded at 720x576 (5:4 ratio). There is a flag in the IFO and/or VOB data that tells the player whether to draw that to the screen as a 16:9 picture or a 4:3 picture. You can do the same with many other codecs, like x264 and Xvid. But often people convert to square pixel encoding where the display aspect ratio matches the frame size aspect ratio. You example, 720x400, is such a case (720:400 is very close to 16:9. 720x405 is closer but you want to stick with frame sizes that are integer multiples of 16 for the best compression.) The advantage of doing that is that all players will display square pixel videos with the right display aspect ratio. The disadvantage is that you lose resolution (576 lines down to 400 lines). You could resize upward instead of downward, 1024x576, but then you have to use higher bitrates to maintain video quality. And any type of digital scaling results in some quality loss. If you leave the frame size at 720x576 you retain all the resolution and don't get any loss of quality from scaling. But some players won't obey the aspect ratio flags. Remember that your player will usually perform another round of scaling at playback time to match the screen size.