My noob procedure: is this O.K.?

[ungawa]

If starting with..........Step........ Action............................Action
DVD..........................1..............n/a............................RipIt4Me
..................................1a..........n/a..............................DVD Decrypter
..................................1b..........n/a..............................FixVTS: in place, no backup, entire DVD

Legal torrent..............2.............VirusScan the
................................................download.
...............................3.............Convert from .avi or
................................................other format
................................................to DVD format
................................................using WinAVI.
...............................4..............n/a...........................DVD Shrink
..................................4a..........n/a..............................Reauthor endpoints
..................................4b..........n/a..............................Unselect foreign languages
..................................4c..........n/a..............................Run detailed analysis
..................................4d..........n/a..............................Backup to hard drive
...............................5...............n/a..............................Burn manually with Nero
....................................................................................Burning ROM at 4X speed
...............................6...............................................Test disk

Questions:
1) Does the above procedure look O.K.? Any suggestions for improvement?

2) Would AnyDVD be more effective than the combination of RipIt4Me + DVD Decrypter?

3) Does it look like new revisions of RipIt4Me will keep updating its unlocking capabilities beyond where DVD Decrypter development stopped, so that I don't have to pay for AnyDVD tp keep current?

4) Do I have to convert files to DVD format for the disk I burn to play in the DVD player at the television? Or is there a better format for that? Clearly .avi does not work.

5) With Nero 6.6 is there a way to pretest if the DVD burn will be successful before I ruin yet another disk with an error message? I haven't been able to get Nero's pre-burn "simulation" feature to work for DVDs. Is there a trick to make simulation work, or some other preburn test?

Thank you.

[Awatef]

AVI could work if you have the right DVD player... prices start at 50$...

Your plan doesn't make any sense.
If you want to backup a DVD to DVD-R, you use DVD-Shrink directly. No need for any other programs.
If you want to convert AVI to DVD-Video, it gets a little bit more complicated. Look at the Doom9 guides for more details.

[jdrumstik]

AVI could work if you have the right DVD player... prices start at 50$...

Your plan doesn't make any sense.
If you want to backup a DVD to DVD-R, you use DVD-Shrink directly. No need for any other programs.
If you want to convert AVI to DVD-Video, it gets a little bit more complicated. Look at the Doom9 guides for more details.


I got a DVD player from Wal-Mart for $36 that plays DivX files and XviD files. And probably any other AVI for that matter

Additionally, You might need ripit4me, dvd shrink, and FixVTS if its a newer DVD with the ARCOS protection or whatever it is called, considering that DVD shrink does not read this.

And the easiest way to convert AVI to DVD is with Nero Vision. Otherwise its a fairly complicated procedure.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Actually, VSO makes a fantastic all in one app called ConvertXtoDVD. It's so mindbogglingly simple its great :)

You just open it up, drop essentially any media onto it (it even works with MKV containing H.264 and AAC!!), make a simple menu in ~ 10 seconds, and then encode. It takes all of about 5 clicks, and it will encode a full DVD in ~ 1 hour on the medium quality/speed setting on my system. Then it asks for a blank DVD, and it burns it. No other programs needed. It's VERY nice. It even has an AC3 encoder.

The quality is surprisingly good. I can take captured TV shows and make DVDs that look great on my 34" NTSC TV. If I really have a bad attitude and look closely for artifacts I can see some blocks here and there, but its really quite acceptable for casual viewing. If you need really good results, using a manual workflow with CCE / HC/ QuEnc will surely give results. But then you have to configure everything, make menus, author etc... It's just so much faster this way, especially when the housemates are clamoring to see the new episode of Heroes that they missed while they were gone and I captured :D

Also, RipIt4Me seems to do a great job. I used to muck around with AnyDVD, and it works great, but honestly I haven't run into anything that RipIt4M3 can't handle! <3 free.

~MiSfit