Rip Quality

[jbowser]

First off, let me say I'm new to all this. I've only ripped one movie successfully. I'm using http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdtovcd.htm and all the tools there: Smart Ripper, DVD2AVI, and TMPGEnc. My question is here, quality. The quality comes out very bad. I'm only doing all of the defaults in each program. Maybe I'm suppose to change something. Which app actually defines the quality? SmartRipper? And are these tools the best to be using? Thanks in advance!

[Sefy]

I Don't understand why your quality comes out bad, I find the quality to be excellent even in the default settings, but quality is in he eye of the beholder, if you want to some how improve quality then all the changes you do are in the TMPGEnc step, just tweak the Template or load a diffrent one.

[jbowser]

So the quality is in the TMPGEnc app? So if I've already used SmartRipper on a few DVDs, then I don't have to re-rip them. Good.

The templates. I didn't even use one. They weren't explained and I didn't know which to use. What is best. I want best quality, I don't mind how many CDs it takes.

[Sefy]

If you didn't use a Template it would explain why you got bad quality, you must use a Template, if you want a VCD then use the VideoCD Template, for the better quality use SVCD for the SuperVideoCD Template, but you must load a Template to set the standard and quality.

[jbowser]

Great! That was it! It worked perfect! Excelent quality. Question though... I used SVCD (PAL), but there was also, SVCD (NTSC), and SVCD (NTSCFilm). Which is best? What is the difference.

Another big question please. When spliting the movie, is there any way to tell the end file size before you start? The movie I ripped ended up being 703MB, and part 2, 833MB. How am I suppose to burn those???? Is there any way to shave a little (VERY LITTLE) quality so that I can fit these on CDs? Or what else do you suggest? How can I burn these now?

Thanks for everything... I'm finally getting somewhere now.

[ya_jai]

NTSC is a standard of Television for USA and other, PAL is a standard for most of Asia countries. So to use one or another(ntsc or pal) is depend on where you live.
To fit a part of movie in CD, I always do the test in a short clip like 5 mins to see how big of size it will be (you can play with setting in tmpgenc such as bitrate to get the most out of CDs). Then split movie half-half to fit into 2 CDs. Hope that helps

[Sefy]

Just want to add regading the format, i'd recommand you always use the format your original DVD came in, if it's NTSC then use NTSC, if it's Film then use NTSC Film, if it's PAL then PAL, I wouldn't recommand trying to do a conversion, cause in most cases it causes a major desync.

[jbowser]

Ok, NTSC or NTSC Film (I'm in the US) would be for me. I'm not sure which the DVD was, so I'm just going to do NTSC... that should work?

Main question here. The splitting. I'm not quite sure I understand it yet. I split it half and half but the halves still came out larger than CDs hold. How do I not loose quality (too much anyways...) but still trim about 40MB off the total file size of one half? Which setting is specific... not quite sure what any of these do. Using TMPGEnc. Thanks again guys!

[Vejita-sama]

If you're using the standard VCD template then 1min=10MB. Just do the math. To make life easier use source range to make multiple MPEGs rather than cutting (see Sefy's DVD Rip guide to the left).

NTSC film if your source is 23.976fps, NTSC if your source is 29.97fps. If you're following Sefy's guide this happens in DVD2AVI. If you have force film on, use the film template. If you don't have it on, then use the NTSC template.

Here's a (beleive it or not) short ver of NTSC framerates. TV is 29.97fps, but each frame is made of two fields (odd and even, which have 1/2 the displayed lines) Because you need both fields to make a frame this is called interlaced. Movies are shot at 23.976fps progressive (that is each frame is complete picture).

You're TV only displays 29.97fps, period! So to play 23.976fps movie on your TV it has to be converted to 29.97fps. This is done my a process known as telecine (aka 3:2 pulldown). So you DVD is (most likely) a 29.97fps telecined movie.

Now when you rip the DVD to your HD you'll get a 29.97fps souce. And you can just encode that. But if you convert it back to 23.976fps (a process known as inverse telecine; aka IVTC), encode it, then apply the telecine filter (so it'll play on your TV) you'll end up with a better encode:

23.976fps @ 2000kbit/s = 83.41kbit/frame
29.97fps @ 2000kbit/s = 66.7kbit/frame

so that's a 25% increase in bitrate for the same movie lenght (sweet right). The problem is that IVTC is SLOW AS HELL, and doesn't work 100% of the time (eg. Anime DVDs).
Again skipping a lot, if you turn force film on in DVD2AVI this will create a 23.976fps source to encode in a few secs, vs. the full IVTC process.

[jbowser]

I'm attempting to rip MEn in Black. I'm assuming I should not use PAL, as someone said it was for out of the country? So NTSC, or NTSC-Film. I used all 3. When I click into the movie... like try to just jump to some random spot, with the PAL, it goes almost instantly, but with NTSC and Film, it takes about 10-15 seconds!!! Why is this?

[Sefy]

jbowser, what is most important is that you match the Template to the Movie, if the movie is PAL then you should use the PAL Template, it does not matter which region you are, cause all DVD players will playback both PAL and NTSC (S)VCD discs.