dvd to avi to wma or whatever?

[ripla]

Hi, my first post please be gentle.

My goal is to rip from dvd (from which i own the copyright) then edit (basic fade ins/outs and joining/splitting) then compress the end product so I can upload the result to web for the public to download.

I have ripped my video file from dvd successfully using dvd decryptor, i now want to edit the file using (dont laugh) windows movie maker (i find this easiest) and import by converting the .vobs to .avi as this seems to be the preferred format. However i am struggling a bit with the conversion and i'm getting all sorts of interesing results from no picture, no sound to unwanted widescreen to unsynched audio. my questions:
Am i fighting a losing battle by using WMM?
Is there an easier convertor to use which doesnt watermark the video with a divx logo other than imtoo which converts in the preferred format which is also free or cheap?
or am i barking up the wrong tree completely?


Please help, this has been driving me mad for weeks :S

[killingspree]

hi and welcome to the forum

to convert your DVD to AVI, see the guides here (http://www.doom9.org/divx-encoding.htm).

Keep in mind that you will need to compress the video after editing, so it would be best to first simply decompress the video (if you have the necessary disk space to do so) - then do the editing, and then compress to the format of your choice.

About WMM - imho it can do some "pretty" things, but for serious editing it's quite useless. Depending on the kind of money you want to spend (nothing - a LOT) there's a wide variaty of other programs out there that do a better job (imho).

kr
steVe

[check]

The divx format is a version of a specification known as MPEG-4 ASP, which defines how the data is stored. You can get other encoders which are fully interoperable with divx encoders such as xvid or lavc. If you are just starting out with video encoding and want to encode a divx compatible file, I'd recommend Koepi's xvid: http://www.koepi.org/xvid.shtml (download the latest stable binary: http://www.koepi.org/XviD-1.1.0-30122005.exe)

As killingspree said, there are four steps in the method you want: DVD -> intermediate file -> WMM -> final file. Obviously you want the second step to not involve any quality loss at all, so your best bet is to either encode to a lossless format, raw video (which is *very* big spacewise), or a super bigh quality lossy format (such as 10000kbits divx/xvid).