by: Colin Mon, 02-22-2007
This tutorial will attempt to show how to use serveral free tools to convert your DVDs to HD quality to view on the computer.
To keep this guide as short and easy to follow as possible, I'm going to utilize several other well written tutorials on doom9.org.
Downloads
First you should download the GordianKnot Rippack, Media Player Classic, Xvid 1.1, VirtualDubMod and my filepack.
Install Gordian Knot, Media Player Classic, VirtualDubMod, and Xvid 1.1. Then Extract the contents of filepack.rar to your Avisynth plugins folder. It should be something like C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins.
Ripping
Some of you may have ripped a DVD before, but if not don't worry, it's really easy. Go to Start > All Programs > Gordian Knot and click on robot4rip. Then follow this guide from Doom9.org to get a good rip. Especially make sure that the force film is done properly. If, at the end of the file it says %95 percent FILM or higher, amek sure to set Field_Operation=0 and Frame_Rate=23976. I didn't do this the first time, and it meessed up the timing and the encoding.
Processing
The first thing to do in order to lower the encoding time a bit is to crop the video. Open Gordian Knot. This program can seem very intimidating, but you'll only be using one specific aspect. In the lowerleft there is button that says open. Click on it and open your .d2v file that you created from the rip. Your film should now open in the background. Look to the right of the button that now says close. and see if the number by the FPS is 23976. If it's not, then make sure you used Force Film. Now click on the tab that says resolution. In this tab you should see a button that says Autocrop. It will now go through the video and try to find the best way to crop the video to remove the black bars.
In the same tab, click either the NTSC or PAL radio button, depending on your source (europe is probably PAL, America NtSC). Under Input Pixel Aspect Ratio, click the radio button that describes your materials aspect ratio. If you're unsure, just watch the video frame and see which one makes the video look the most normal.
Ok, now, find the dragable bar at the bottom of the screen, and drag it to the right until the value below Width is 1280 or your desired horizontal resolution. Write down the values under width and height.
In the window with video frame click File then Save & Encode. Ignore all of those options, then click save and save this .avs somewhere you can find it again., and close Gordian Knot Open this .avs file and copy the line under #CROPPING, which should look something like crop(6,60,706,356). Now open HD.avs in the filepack, and paste that crop line where it says to.
Now you're going to have to do some editing of that HD.avs file. Replace *PATH TO .D2V FILE* with the path to the .d2v file from the rip, and use the values you wrote down for width and height to replace *WIDTH* and *HEIGHT*. Now save this file and exit.
Encoding
WANING: Encoding can take an EXTREMELY long time. On an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ it took me 2.5 days. During this time, however, I was able to use my computer for other activities as long as they weren't processor intensive.
Open VirtualDubMod, and open up you HD.avs. Under Video selct Full Processing Mode, and then select compression. At the botom of the list pick XviD MPEG-4. Then click configure. Where it says Profile @ Level choose Highdef from the dropdown list, and click the more button next to it. Under the Profile tab, choose MPEG as the Quantization type.
I suggest doing a Twopass encoding for the hightest quality, so from the drop down menu, choose Twopass - 1st pass, then click more. Save the statsfile in a place you will remember with a name you will remember. Make sure Discard first pass is selected, but Full quality first pass isn't. Next to Quality preset, click more. Configure Xvid so that Turbo, Use Chroma mothion, and Use VHQ for bframes too are all selected, along with setting Motion search precision to ultra High, and VHQ mode to 1.
Click ok, on all of the popups until you get back to the main screen. Then hit F7 and decide on some name to save your first pass as, but MAKE SURE you check Don't run this job now. Click Save, and then go to Video > Compression. select XVID again and selct configure. Under encoding type, now selct Twopass - 2nd Pass, and hit more. Make sure that the statfile for this pass is the same as the one created from the first, and then click ok. Where it says Target bitrate put in 3500. You can try different bitrates, 3500 for a 2 hour film created a 3 Gb .avi file. Then click Ok again until you get back to the main screen. Hit F7 again, choose a name for your second pass, and once again choose Don't run now. Then hit F4, and click start.
Multiplexing