You’ve borrowed or rented a DVD, but you don’t want to a make a full-size copy of it. The best solution would be to compress it to progressive lossy formats like DivX or Xvid. But there’s no need to buy any commercial software to do that since the same can be done with free software. In this guide, I’ll demonstrate the easiest ways you can rip a DVD. The test movie I’m using here is A Night at the Museum.
Before going through this guide, let me remind you that while ripping DVDs is really easy, re-encoding & compressing them is no feat for low-end computers. Encoding times may range from a few hours to days… so beware if you have a slow PC.
I got these figures from this guide:
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ with 512MB DDR RAM & PATA HD - 13 hours
Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz 1 MB L2 cache with 1GB DDR2 667MHz Dual Channel RAM & SATA-I HD - 7 Hours
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 OC 3.6 GHz with 4GB DDR2 700MHz Dual Channel RAM & SATA-II HD - 45mins
DVD Shrink
If you don’t want to go through the relatively complex method of ripping to DivX & instead you just want to compress the DVD by removing some of the unnecessary features from the DVD, then DVD Shrink is your friend.
When you insert your DVD, DVD Shrink scans it & presents you with the various components of the movie.
It’s quite unbelievable how much space those various soundtracks can take. By selecting only the essentials like English 2-Channel Audio, you can save up to 1GB! But DVD Shrink has yet another ace up its sleeve - you can compress the video!
DVD Shrink allows you to adjust the compression rate via a quality ratio. The minimum ratio is 59.8%, which means you are guaranteed to get an excellent quality. Using the minimum ratio, I’ve been able to reduce my 4.3GB DVD to a mere 1.5GB!
The compressed video will be saved in the same structure as your DVD in VOB format, so you can directly use it to burn several compressed DVDs on a single DVD. What’s more, DVD Shrink removes the DVD protection & makes it region-free! However, this compression can take anywhere between 2 hours to 6 hours…
Download DVD Shrink here:
http://www.esnips.com/doc/94d1e209-484d-40a7-9a86-5669621bd9c3
Rapidshare Link
Read this guide for more info: http://www.mrbass.org/dvdshrink/
DVD Ripping
You’ve got a powerful PC & you’ve always wondered how DiAMOND, VOMiT, mVs, FLAiTE or aXXo have made their DVD Rips. Now you can do it yourself.
The first step in ripping a DVD is… to rip it! For that we need DVD Decrypter.
DVD Decrypter allows you to remove the protection of a DVD & save it in an AutoGK-friendly format. DVD Decrypter automatically selects the longest video, but if you want other parts of the movie like the bonuses, check the rest of the Chapters. The mode to be used here is IFO. If your DVD is badly scratched you may want to “Ignore Read Errors” in the Advanced Settings.
If you enable Stream Processing, you’ll be able to select which language tracks you want to rip. Select only the ones you want as the rest will take unnecessary space.
That’s it. Hit Decrypt & the job will be done in 10 to 15 mins. (My Night at the Museum DVD was a pirated copy without any protection… so it was really quick, nothing to decrypt!)
Download DVD Decrypter here:
http://www.dvddecrypter.org.uk/
Check these guides to learn more about DVD Decrypter:
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/dvddec.htm
Chotocheeta.com
AutoGK
This is the BIG THING! Prepare yourself or rather your processor for some serious endurance encoding. Auto Gordian Knot is the “noob” version of the more powerful DivX program Gordian Knot. While Gordian Knot software is nothing short than a real Gordian Knot for most users, AutoGK simplifies everything.
For the input directory, browse to the directory where you saved the DVD ripped by DVD Decrypter.
Did you know you can use two audio tracks in a DivX movie? I’m selecting English & French soundtracks here. For the subs as well, you can even use several subtitles.
In the Advanced Settings, there’s nothing really “advanced.” You will want to keep everything on Auto & maybe 128kbps VBR for the Audio. The codec is DivX (you’ll need to download the free codec here first). The output format is avi. & do check use External Subtitles! Otherwise the subtitles will be hard-coded in the movie & you won’t be able to use multi-subtitles.
If your movie is bigger than 2h, you’ll want to go for the 2CD Rip - 1400MB, but if it’s less, go for 700MB! Since Night at the Museum is only 1h 50min, the 700MB Rip is enough. Add the Job & press Start!
Download AutoGK here:
http://www.autogk.me.uk/modules.php?name=Downloads
Download the DivX codec here: http://www.divx.com/
Check out this guide as well: http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/autogk.html
My configuration:
Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz HT
1.2 GB DDR RAM at 133Mhz
& IDE Hard Disk
Time taken: 4 hours 31 min running at 100% CPU usage!
As I’ve already told you, this will take time unless you have a very powerful PC.
The Result:
Filesize: 824MB
Resolution: 720 x 400
BitRate: 618kbps
Frame rate: 23.976 fps
Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out to be a “700MB” Rip… mainly for 2 reasons. First is the movie length, which at 1h 50min was way too long to fit in a such a file size & the second reason is that I had selected the 5.1 Audio Channels sources, which unfortunately took much more space than expected. But the positive thing is that output quality & resolution is really excellent.
The less-than-700MB target could have been achieved if I had only selected 2-Channel Audio & set the target size to around 620 to 650MB.
& yes, do preview the video to determine the exact final size.
Subtitling
Most media players (except from VLC) require DirectVobSub to display the subtitles. But I’m sure that if you have been downloading Scene released DVD rips, then it’s must have been quite painstaking to find the correct subtitle for the correct file size.
You can always use Subtitle Workshop to sync, join & edit subtitles to fit in with your rip. But unfortunately, it doesn’t allow you to rip subtitles directly from a DVD.
Why would you need to rip subtitles when AutoGK already does it? The main reason is the size & quality of the subtitles. AutoGK directly extracts subtitles in their native .sub format, meaning it’s not real text & its file size is between 5 to 20MB. But with a text-only srt subtitle, the file is less than 100kb & the display quality is much better.
The solution to subtitle ripping lies is DirectVobSub itself. When installing the add-on on your PC, you get the option to install SubMux & SubResync. It’s SubResync that I’ll use here to extract the subs.
As I’ve already mentioned before, the subtitles are stored as vector images for easy resizing… so you would need an OCR reader to identify all the characters.
But unfortunately, for SubResync to recognise all characters you have to manually identify each letter, Capital, italic, number, etc. which is quite painstaking & not devoid of errors…
But the end result is a 75kb srt file that boasts impressive text subtitles! Remember that the srt should have the same filename as the movie & should be placed in the same directory.
Download DirectVobSub here
VobSub Guide: http://www.divx-digest.com/software/vobsub.html
Download all the required software here:
DivX Codec
DVD Shrink
DVD Decrypter
AutoGK
DirectVobSub
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top sa man............bring us crack for vista next time dude.....
Can't do that! MS will sue me! :P
Easily the best DVD ripping overview I've seen on the Internet. Great work!
Thanks! :D
cooool
thats nice
btw no u can get a movie for only 100mb! ! ! !
rmvb.quality is better than cam or ts
Yeah, rmvb compression is awesome!
But i prefer mkv... Both use H.264 but mkv is usually HD rips! :D
good... work...
i tried auto gk .. but the time it took was too much. hush...anyways it is worth trying!!
gud blog dude...keep it up.
Thanks for this tutorial, having tons of success, the only problem I'm having is with episode discs, how should the process change when dealing with these?
Thanks again
@Anonymous
Here you go...
Check out this guide:
How to convert episodes from a TV Series DVD to DivX/XviD
Thanks for the above link for episode rips, but I think I got ahead of myself. I was judging my "tons of success" by the first half of the movies, it appears that about half of them lose the video/audio sync toward the end. Any suggestions?
Or in the name of saving a ton of time does anyone know of a single program that will do all of the above? I'm willing to pay for it so it doesn't have to be freeware.
Thanks
@Anonymous
Check this out:
http://rapidshare.com/files/109164852/Create.a.DVDrip.like_aXXo.rar
There's the fix to the audio/video sync problem as well. (Apps included). :)
Thanks carrotmadman6.
Hi, I tried following this, but DVD Encrypter generate multiple VOB files and AutoGK, as far as I can see, will only take one VOB file at a time. How do I do this so as to end up with one video file?
No, you have to use the DVD Input setting of AutoGK to select the folder where the different VOB files are stored - usually "VIDEO_TS"
:)
It wouldn't let me select a folder - I had to chose a VOB file. However, I got round it by finding the option in dvd encrypter to produce one large file instead of a few smaller ones. Magic.
gr8 work man
ha! just saw that post. will have to try that out, usually i just rip my dvds off with VLC :P
@Kyu
I stumbled upon that VLC-ripping guide (by Lifehacker i think?) & I was shocked that you could do ripping with VLC! :P
I'm thinking of making a new guide for ripping to x264! :D
Great Stuff!!...this guide is just what i was looking for. i'm about to search to see if you've done a "To x264" guide. BTW, i dl'd some x264 hd video in mkv format, and after a few searches, i can't seem to find any way to convert it to hd-mp4 recognizable by my ps3 or 360...any chance you might have an idea on how to do it?
@neenk
Here's a simple guide to converting to mp4:
http://forum.videohelp.com/topic348406.html
You can find more guides here:
http://www.videohelp.com/guides
:)
I would like to thank carrotmadman6 said... May 16, 2008 5:37 AM @Anonymous
Check this out:
http://rapidshare.com/files/109164852/Create.a.DVDrip.like_aXXo.rar
There's the fix to the audio/video sync problem as well. (Apps included). :)
awesome.. and the tutorial is also wicked.. great job..
i will be sure to give it a go now i have downloaded this
thanks again
thanks for the great tutorial, you make it look so easy..
thanks. really helpful
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Ruth
http://systemmemory.info
hello,
i love your blog very much...
i am a great movie buff ...
recently i faced some problems with Auto GK ...
Audio out of sync with the video...
Please help me out...
@Anonymous
Check out this guide:
http://www.gromkov.com/faq/faq2004-0064.html
;)
carrotmadman... first of all, thanks so much for your tutorial, I've definitely ended up with an aXXo quality rip on my first try!
One question though... I'm using a DVD that is 16:9 widescreen, and am viewing my rip on a 16:9 widescreen LCD... Yet I still have letterboxes across the top and bottom- what do i need to change here?
@Anonymous
That's because the Aspect Ratio is set to anamorphic. :)
You need to press Ctrl+F9 to access the hidden settings, where the aspect ratio can be changed to 16:9.
See this guide - link. ;)
i downloaded auto gk 2.55 from softpedia.It asks for input 'file',rather than folder n i have 5 files.plz help
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