HDTV Pc and some ripping related Qs [was:Questions, questions, questions??]

[ajbauman]

Before I start with my problems, let me first thank all of you at this site and forum for all of your hard work! Especially those of you who have written guides to help the newbies in this new adventure!

A little background: I just started ripping movies to my hard drive. I am in the process of building a HTPC that resides in my living room. Right now this is my set up:

-P4 3.0 GHz
-1 GB RAM
-Intel Desktop board 865GBF
-Right now I only have one SATA 200 GB HD, but I have 3 more on the way and I am going to set it up in a RAID 5 set-up with a Promise SATA RAID card. (Which will give me approx. 800 GB)
-ATI AIW 9600 PRO video card
-Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card
-Logitech Z-680 5.1 surround speakers
-Standard DVD-ROM
-DVD R/RW
-Windows XP Pro (SP1)
-All going to be displayed on a 50" DLP Rear Projection HDTV 16:9.


Well that is my current set up. I would like this system to hold all of my DVDs and some that I don't have yet, as well as my CDs and enough room to record TV. (That is why I need so much HD space). After reading almost all of the guides that I could comprehend, given my newbie status, I wanted to use GKnot to rip the DVD, then encode with XviD codec so that I could save space on my hard drive. But as soon as I tried to run GKnot using the guide, I got a couple of errors. I then uninstalled all, restored my computer to earlier restore point, and attempted a fresh install of all components. I then attempted it all again to no avail, got the same messages. Couldn't demux audio and video tracks (two different movies). So then I gave up on GKnot and started using DVD Decrypter. I used ISO mode which works wonderfully, but takes up WAY too much space on my HD. Then I started using IFO mode to cut down on some of the size, which seems to work well enough, except it is still 3 - 6 GB per movie. Still a lot.

My questions:

1. When using DVD Decryptor in IFO mode and stream processing, which Audio stream is better for 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound, AC3 or DTS? I have been assuming DTS.

2. Does anybody else have problems with DVD Decrypter freezing your computer when you switch DVDs in the DVD ROM drive?

3. I am really concerned with the video quality but at the same time conserving HD space. What would you recommend? And if XviD, is there another application that I can use besides GKnot that would actually encode the files with the 5.1 Dolby and produce excellent video quality?

4. I use PowerDVD to play the .VOB files that I rip in IFO mode and it works fine, except on most widescreen movies I have two sets of "widescreen bars", one appears to be from the player and one from the actual movie. I there any way to only have one set? (Right now I am displaying it on 4:3 TV)

Well guess that will do it for now! Thank you all in advance for your insight and advice!

Andy

[manono]

Hi and welcome to the forum-

1. The quality of DTS is slightly better than DD 5.1. But it takes up much more space. But I don't know much about DTS, as my receiver can't decode it. I'm happy with DD 5.1.
2. I haven't had that problem.
3. I'd recommend AutoGK to get your feet wet. It'll give you top quality encodes, together with the DD 5.1, and can do it all in one pass (faster), since you don't need specific sizes for burning to CD. I might also recommend using Quality Mode at the default 75%. You can find it in the first post of the mega AutoGK thread:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=64266

It comes with its own (very long and detailed) guide, but Doom9 has a more concise one:

http://www.doom9.org/autogk.htm

[smiller667]

1.) As manono already pointed out, of the two you mentioned, only AC3 is Dolby Digital, for DTS you'll either need a player which can decode DTS or a receiver which can handle it.
In most cases, I'm happy with DD. DTS can use higher bitrates and very often it is a selling point, esp. in Asia. Sometimes the dts track is simply a bit louder than the DD.

2.) no problems here.

4.) The "inner" bars are encoded on the DVD (to make the movie 16:9 in display aspect ratio), the "outer" bars are added by the software player to fill the 4:3 screen without cropping away parts of the movie. You'll have to get a 16:9 TV set to get rid of them.

[killingspree]

[nagging mod mode on] please use a descriptive title when opening a new thread - it's in the forum rules (http://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm)! thanks

i changed the thread title of this thread for you!
[nagging mod mode off]

ad point 2) does this problem only appear for a couple of seconds? if so, yes i frequently experience this short lock up problem when the computer starts reading from the dvd!

kr
steVe

[ajbauman]

killingspree - I appoligize for the incorrect naming convention, and thanks for your re-naming. As to the problem with DVD Decrypter, yes sometimes it freezes for a second or two as it reads the disc. But most of the time I have to do a hard shut down because it just totally freezes my computer.

manono - Thank you for your help. I did try out AutoGK after I read the guide throughly. I did encounter a problem though, once I finished steps 1 - 4, I went to rip/encode to the new file. I first did a preview, and it turned out good, so I decided to rip to the new file. That is where the problem comes in. When using AutoGK the three icons below Step 4 (Add Job, Start, Abort) never became active so I couldn't add anything to the job queue. Do you know why this would occur? Thanks again for all of your help!

[manono]

As soon as I've filled in Input Directory and Output File Name in step 1, the Add Job button lights up for me. Do you have everything installed-AutoGK, the Update, AviSynth, XviD or the DivX codec, VobSub for subtitles?

[ajbauman]

I found out that the problem was that I was selecting the "DTS 6 channel" audio track. This was the track that I wanted, however the program I guess couldn't handle it because as I selected the AC3 6 channel the buttons lit up and I ripped my first copy. Then however I got a major playback error: my players couldn't play the audio track because my dumb@$$ didn't download the AC3 filter! So I guess I will just stick with the AC3 format for sound.

I have been setting the "target quality" at 80% and I see no visible loss of data, and the file sizes are acceptable: about 1.3 GB from 5 GB. Just a good thing that I get my other two 200 GB drives this week, so I'll have a total of 600 GB (approximately) ;)

I do have one other question though, in the future do you think that AutoGK will be able to handle the DTS track? Also since I am going to be getting a DLP Rear Projection 50' HDTV, do you think that I will see any loss of quality at these same settings (80%) on that TV? It is understandable why I wouldn't see any loss on my TV now, cause it sucks! Well thanks all for your help!

Andy

[ajbauman]

In using AutoGK I am looking for the best quality encodes that I can get. I have been using the quality settings between 80% and 100% with the XviD codec because I am trying to get the best quality. An example I encoded "The Count of Monte Christo" at 90% quality using the XviD codec and in specific areas the artificats are really bad.

On certain movies I get a lot of artifacts in black areas?

Do you know why this would happen?

How would I fix this?

I'm not even sure if I'm using the word artifacts correctly (lets say for example that during the movie there is a dark portion, shadows, or foggy area. During playback there are fairly large blocks that show up in that area that are of different colors than the shadow, dark, or foggy area.)

Please help! Thanks!

Andy

[manono]

Hi-

Sorry-I missed your earlier post.

I have a 43" DLP and my encodes look fine on it, and they aren't even 80%.

As for DTS, there's no reason you can't demux the DTS yourself, make your .avi without audio, and then mux in the DTS later. I don't mess with it, as my receiver can't decode it. If you need one, there's a DTS Filter in the Downloads section here at Doom9.

The so-called "black blocks" are a common problem with MPEG-4 compression. A search will turn up many discussions about it, and what you can do about it. Here's (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=79499) one current discussion. Evidently, help is on the way with soon-to-be-released updates to the XviD codec. They can be more or less obvious, depending on what display you're using to watch the movie. Evidently they're much worse when viewed on an LCD monitor.