RipBot264 v1.18.3 - Simple and easy to use GUI -> IPOD . PSP . CONSOLES . BLURAY

[chane2k1]

Where can i get sonic decoder?


can you send me a sample for testing? As always m2ts 50mb to www.mediafire.com Use DGSplit.

The decoder was discontinued after the death of hd dvd, this is the last known version http://www.mediafire.com/?l2evmyznqej

Here are the clips you asked for

Stargate DTS-HD HI-RES 6.1 http://www.mediafire.com/?ljimizfzoyw
X-Men The Last Stand DTS-HD MA 6.1 http://www.mediafire.com/?tmj2tyykujj

[pacaveli211]

Don't take this the wrong way pacaveli211, but I don't see how one persons opinions/test prove anything? Both DTS and Dolby tout being more transparent/better than the other. This proves nothing nothing. Perhaps under certain conditions, but there is never a true winner.

eh, it was about the only thing I could find other than people raging based solely upon their opinions

[jacksback]

Hi

Can anyone please tell me how to re-encode 1080i videos with RipBot?

I'm trying to re-encode my Fiance's Celine Dion BluRay but it keeps failing after demuxing has finished. I even tried using an external program to split the Audio and Video but I get the following error when loading the Video mkv in RipBot

"Can't open "C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\getinfo.avs"

Here is the gentinfo.avs log

DirectShowSource("F:\Celine\1_2_video.mkv",audio=false).ConvertToYV12()
WriteFile("C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\info.txt","Framecount")
WriteFile("C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\info.txt","Framerate")
WriteFile("C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\info.txt","AudioRate")
WriteFile("C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\info.txt","AudioChannels")
WriteFile("C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\info.txt","AudioLength")
WriteFile("C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\info.txt","Width")
WriteFile("C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\info.txt","Height ")
Trim(0,-1)

Any Ideas?

Thanks

[pacaveli211]

did you try demuxing and then adding the separate streams? I know you said you 'split the audio and video', I'm unsure if that means you actually demuxed it or not though
did you try aborting/removing the job and make sure the job6 folder disappears/is deleted? (every once in a while one of my job folders gets stuck and I'll have to close ripbot and delete the folder)
other than that I have no ideas, sorry

[jacksback]

did you try demuxing and then adding the separate streams? I know you said you 'split the audio and video', I'm unsure if that means you actually demuxed it or not though
did you try aborting/removing the job and make sure the job6 folder disappears/is deleted? (every once in a while one of my job folders gets stuck and I'll have to close ripbot and delete the folder)
other than that I have no ideas, sorry

Thanks for the reply. In answer to your question, I used HD-DVD/Blu-Ray extractor to demux the Video and Audio first. I then loaded the demuxed Video.mkv track into Ripbot which immediately displayed the avs error.

Just tried your suggestion and removed job 6 from my queue. I restarted and tried again but get the same error. This happens on all my 1080i concert Blu-rays for some reason. The other one is Justin Timberlake, also at 1080i.

Weird?

[nburgess]

I've searched this thread but can't find a definitive answer to this question.

I've ripped a blu-ray movie using MakeMKV, and this gives a 23Gb 1080p MKV file. I want to convert it to a 720p MKV so in Ripbot I set the mode to CQ 22, re-size it to 1280x720, and encode. The resulting MKV is 4Gb in size but the bitrate is only 2500kbps. The image quality still looks great but does this bitrate seem a bit low, espeically as the movie has a lot of fast action scenes?

If I'm using CQ 22, should I go into the HIGH 4.0 Profile settings and increase the max bitrate from default 25000 to something much higher like 50000, would this force CQ22 encodes to give a higher bitrate?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[jacksback]

I've searched this thread but can't find a definitive answer to this question.

I've ripped a blu-ray movie using MakeMKV, and this gives a 23Gb 1080p MKV file. I want to convert it to a 720p MKV so in Ripbot I set the mode to CQ 22, re-size it to 1280x720, and encode. The resulting MKV is 4Gb in size but the bitrate is only 2500kbps. The image quality still looks great but does this bitrate seem a bit low, espeically as the movie has a lot of fast action scenes?

If I'm using CQ 22, should I go into the HIGH 4.0 Profile settings and increase the max bitrate from default 25000 to something much higher like 50000, would this force CQ22 encodes to give a higher bitrate?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I personally try and get around the 5.5 - 6.5gb mark when converting an action movie to 720p. I use CQ 18 first and move up to 20 if the size gets too big. I sometimes use 16 to get the desired output size because some movies compress better than others.

If Hard Disk space is an issue for you then try and get your output to between 4 and 5gb. The movies should still look very good

[nburgess]

Even when I try CQ20, although the filesize is bigger and the bitrate increases, the bitrate itself is still quite low.

I'm working on the basis of a previous post by Atak that stated that a 720p MKV at 6Mbps will generally look very good. When I encode to 720p even using CQ 20, the bitrate is still around the 2.5Mbps level.

Does anyone know of a way of forcing Ripbot to encode at a higher bitrate using Constant Quality mode, should I increase the High 4.0 Profile's Max Bitrate setting from its default 25000, or should I not touch this?

[Atak_Snajpera]

he image quality still looks great but does this bitrate seem a bit low, espeically as the movie has a lot of fast action scenes?
Oh my god! You should be very HAPPY that you get small file with very good quality! You should thank x264 developers! ALWAYS judge quality not bitrate/size! x264 encoder is not stupid. If scene contains more movement so it will get more bits. BTW. Don't touch anything.

[nburgess]

Oh my god! You should be very HAPPY that you get small file with very good quality! You should thank x264 developers! ALWAYS judge quality not bitrate/size! x264 encoder is not stupid. If scene contains more movement so it will get more bits. BTW. Don't touch anything.

Ha ha, believe me Atak, I'm very thankful for all your fantastic work on Ripbot, superb encoder!

So you don't think I should try 2-Pass mode then set the kbps to something higher like 6144? Is it best to just stick with Constant Quality?

[Atak_Snajpera]

So you don't think I should try 2-Pass mode then set the kbps to something higher like 6144? Is it best to just stick with Constant Quality?
If you like waste time and space use 2-pass. Your choice.

People behind x264 encoder do a excellent work. BTW. I'm just a gui maker.

[nburgess]

OK, I'll stick with CQ from now on. Thanks for the advice Atak, much appreciated.

[xaero]

Hi

Can anyone please tell me how to re-encode 1080i videos with RipBot?

I'm trying to re-encode my Fiance's Celine Dion BluRay but it keeps failing after demuxing has finished. I even tried using an external program to split the Audio and Video but I get the following error when loading the Video mkv in RipBot

"Can't open "C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\getinfo.avs"

Here is the gentinfo.avs log

DirectShowSource("F:\Celine\1_2_video.mkv",audio=false).ConvertToYV12()
WriteFile("C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\info.txt","Framecount")
WriteFile("C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\info.txt","Framerate")
WriteFile("C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\info.txt","AudioRate")
WriteFile("C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\info.txt","AudioChannels")
WriteFile("C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\info.txt","AudioLength")
WriteFile("C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\info.txt","Width")
WriteFile("C:\Temp\RipBot264temp\job6\info.txt","Height ")
Trim(0,-1)

Any Ideas?

Thanks

reinstall ffdshow, haali, avisynth.
config ffdshow video decoder as such:
http://img525.imageshack.us/i/new1sr2.png/
http://img501.imageshack.us/i/new1qq1.png/

[pacaveli211]

Thanks for the reply. In answer to your question, I used HD-DVD/Blu-Ray extractor to demux the Video and Audio first. I then loaded the demuxed Video.mkv track into Ripbot which immediately displayed the avs error.

Just tried your suggestion and removed job 6 from my queue. I restarted and tried again but get the same error. This happens on all my 1080i concert Blu-rays for some reason. The other one is Justin Timberlake, also at 1080i.

Weird?

if your video is truly demuxed it's not going to be in an mkv container. your software has just remuxed it into an mkv file. if it's vc-1 it'll have to stay in mkv for ripbot. if it's h.264 ripbot can accept the raw stream though (which would be a .264 file, not an mkv).


nburgess:
the latest version of x264 made some changes / updates so when processing something at CQ20 or such you'll end up with lower bitrate files than you would've with the previous version

[jacksback]

reinstall ffdshow, haali, avisynth.
config ffdshow video decoder as such:
http://img525.imageshack.us/i/new1sr2.png/
http://img501.imageshack.us/i/new1qq1.png/

Thanks, will give that a try

[ErsatZ]

alright, first of all thanks for this excellent program.
Basically I have two questions that would make things even better to me :p

1. How to change to location of the 'Temp' folder?
I guess it can be done in 'RipBot264.ini', but I'm scared to use it and don't really how to.

2. Is it possible for RipBot264 to automatically set the audio profile bitrate to the source bitrate?
By default I have 128kb/s, so currently I have to check manually each the bitrate of the source file because I wouldn't want to transcode an audio stream into a higher bitrate, which is non-sens (.ie 96kbs (original) > 128kbs (output). So I cannot use queueing option because I do this verification all the time, but if it adapts it would be perferct.

[Atak_Snajpera]

1. How to change to location of the 'Temp' folder?
I guess it can be done in 'RipBot264.ini', but I'm scared to use it and don't really how to.
Find a guide called "How to use notepad"

[ErsatZ]

Ok.
And for question 2. ?

[consultant]

I tried encoding a couple movies with TrueHD audio using the FLAC option and even though Ripbot seems to do the conversion there's no audio. I tried using EAC3To to Demux my MKV and convert the audio and then just play the FLAC file using VLC Media Player but it won't play the FLAC file. So I'm guessing EAC3To can't turn TrueHD into FLAC?

[Sephiroth0000]

If you like waste time and space use 2-pass. Your choice.

People behind x264 encoder do a excellent work. BTW. I'm just a gui maker.

So are you saying ONE pass constant quality is better then 2 pass? I was always under the impression a 2 pass was the best way to get quality.... will one pass constant give me the same results? If so then why have a 2 pass option?... what are the advantages of doing a 2 pass VBR rather then a 1 pass CBR

[pacaveli211]

Sephiroth0000 - you missed the important points. neither 2pass nor CQ are necessarily better. 2pass is essential for hitting a target size, CQ is for hitting a target quality which results in an unpredictable size
he was making the point that you could use 2pass to hit a higher bitrate but would be wasting space (as the higher bitrate wasn't necessary per the CQ processing) and wasting time (as 2pass will take longer than CQ)

consultant: Eac3To should be able to transcode to flac just fine, possibly you have a codec / player / etc issue

[nurbs]

@Sephiroth0000:
Both have some benefits and drawbacks. Dark Shikari listed them here (http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=1362942&postcount=16). Basically you need to use --slow-firstpass to get all the benefits and even then you don't completely eliminate the drawbacks.

[laoping]

There is major problem with this plugin. It does not resample subtitles!
SupTitle plugin
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/5267/snapshot20100205214736.png

VSFilter plugin
http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/2873/snapshot20100205214914.png



I see your point. How I have used it in the past is I overlaid the subtitles before using Ripbot to re size the video. So could you overlay the subtitle first, like a 1st pass. Then recode the entire video like normal? Sorry, I keep bringing this up, but it makes subtitles look very nice.

[ErsatZ]

With 'StoreTempFilesin=', you can only select a partition (c, d..) but not a specific folder right?

[tulip001]

Hi,

is the audio bitrate i can select per channel, or the sum of all channels?

eg. 2.0 @ 128kb = 2x 64kbit?
or 5.1 @ 320 = 5x 64kbit? (why 5x? 5.1 has 6 channels!)
or 5.1 @ 192 = 6x 32kbit?

[gohamstergo]

With 'StoreTempFilesin=', you can only select a partition (c, d..) but not a specific folder right?

correct

[nurbs]

is the audio bitrate i can select per channel, or the sum of all channels?

It is the sum.

[rmd3003]

I have a quick question about Ripbot temp storage. When Ripbot starts "Demuxing... please wait" it writes somewhere and it looks like it ignores wht's in ripbot.ini and writes to C drive which is SSD in my case and i don't want to use it.

Is there any way to force to use another drive?

Beloww is my INI file:

[settings]
// TEMP=uses System temp ; AUTO = selects the biggest partition ; C , D ... uses specific partition
StoreTempFilesin=E
KeepJobsQueue=1
---------------------
DefaultProfile=[HIGH 4.0] HD . BluRay . Consoles
DefaultEncodingMode=CQ
DefaultModeValue=22
---------------------
//Directory must exists!!! D:\movies\ is correct but D:\movies is incorrect!
DefaultOutputPath=G:\movies\
---------------------
// allowed values are mp4, mkv or bluray
DefaultContainer=mkv
---------------------
// in GiB (1GiB=1024 MiB) , 0 = no splitting
SplitM2TS=0
---------------------
FastFirstPassin2passMode=1
---------------------
//AnyDVD DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray decryptor will be automatically activated with RipBot264
ExecuteAnyDVD=0
---------------------
x264LowPriority=0
---------------------
// it will use 64bit version of x264 on 64bit Windows. up to 10% faster encoding speed.
Usex264x64=1

[juramirez]

It would be nice to have an option to remove jobs / temporary files as the jobs are finished. The "Keep Jobs Queue" option, when unchecked, currently removes all the jobs in the queue, whether they're finished or not, upon program exit.

[gohamstergo]

It would be nice to have an option to remove jobs / temporary files as the jobs are finished. The "Keep Jobs Queue" option, when unchecked, currently removes all the jobs in the queue, whether they're finished or not, upon program exit.

sounds like a good ini option to have since not everyone would want a forced change. +1

just remember: if you automatically delete the temp files and your conversion comes out with any glitches, you wont be able to simply start another conversion with 1 click, youd have to start from scratch. happened to me once, so now i always check my mkvs before deleting the temp files.

[gohamstergo]

Atak: Bug Report:

When adding an mkv into ripbot, it demuxes the audio from the file but after demux there is no audio in the list. In the temp folder, there is a file called "2_Audio_English" but it has no extention (for ex: .ac3). When I try to manually add that file into ripbot, Haali reports and error.

The audio contained in the mkv is 7.1 FLAC.

[TRONDROM]

Does anybody have high-quality profiles for 720 and 1080 for BD5 and BD9 output? I don't care if if takes 16 hours to encode with a quad-core. I'm just looking for some custom profiles that will result in pristine video quality. Thanks.

[Adub]

Why not make them yourself? Creating custom profiles in RipBot really isn't that hard, and you can pick and choose your settings with ease.

Simply through all of your available settings on max if you wanted everything to get stupid slow.

[stryker412]

I have an odd issue. I installed a new HDD with a clean format and install of the OS.

I am having issues with converting a BD. It usually took about 6-7 hrs for a rip (resizing to 720p), now it's taking 16+. Any idea why this might be?

[jacksback]

reinstall ffdshow, haali, avisynth.
config ffdshow video decoder as such:
http://img525.imageshack.us/i/new1sr2.png/
http://img501.imageshack.us/i/new1qq1.png/

PROBLEM SOLVED!!! :)

Downloaded "Windows Media Encoder 9" and set VC-1 to be decoded with wmv9 in ffdshow

Thanks for the instructions.

[Shadow5606]

Hey there guys, this is most likely NOT a Ripbot problem but I'm stumped....

I've been running a HTPC with Vista Business, Ripbot264, DVDShrink, XBMC & Fastcopy for about 6 months. No problems. virtually no other apps.

This machine has 3 hard drives, 1 300GB drive for the OS which is the boot drive and 2 dedicated media drives, 1TB & 1.5TB respectively.

Lately I've noticed movies go missing and I've narrowed it down to the 2nd media drive, the 1.5TB drive. I uesd an application called Recuva to find parts of some of these missing movies that appear to have been deleted and some already partially overwritten... Many of the missing files were not found by Recuva at all so some must be long gone. This is widespread, I've found about 40 missing movies but I have no idea why or by what program they're being overwritten!

I'm wondering if you've run into anything like this? Is is possible for Ripbot to be overwriting files that have not already been deleted or marked for deletion?

Does it sound like a bad hard drive or poorly formatted hard drive? Any clues?

FYI, the only way I could possibly think to blame Ripbot would be based on where it stores it's temp file which for me is in my C (boot drive) and should effect these dedicated media drives...

I'm throwing this out here in hopes that someone has seen something similar...

[weaver4]

I'm sorry if this has been answered before, but I did look.

Right now I use Ripbot264 for all of my videos unless I need subtitles, then I use Handbrake.

For standard (not blueray) dvds what is the best tool to use to rip subtitles from the VOBs to then add to Ripbot264.

[8ternity]

Hey there guys, this is most likely NOT a Ripbot problem but I'm stumped....

I've been running a HTPC with Vista Business, Ripbot264, DVDShrink, XBMC & Fastcopy for about 6 months. No problems. virtually no other apps.

This machine has 3 hard drives, 1 300GB drive for the OS which is the boot drive and 2 dedicated media drives, 1TB & 1.5TB respectively.

Lately I've noticed movies go missing and I've narrowed it down to the 2nd media drive, the 1.5TB drive. I uesd an application called Recuva to find parts of some of these missing movies that appear to have been deleted and some already partially overwritten... Many of the missing files were not found by Recuva at all so some must be long gone. This is widespread, I've found about 40 missing movies but I have no idea why or by what program they're being overwritten!

I'm wondering if you've run into anything like this? Is is possible for Ripbot to be overwriting files that have not already been deleted or marked for deletion?

Does it sound like a bad hard drive or poorly formatted hard drive? Any clues?

FYI, the only way I could possibly think to blame Ripbot would be based on where it stores it's temp file which for me is in my C (boot drive) and should effect these dedicated media drives...

I'm throwing this out here in hopes that someone has seen something similar...

Personnally last month, i was starting to have similar problem. It was a hard disc that i use for only converted movies with ripbot. I'm having many movies informations missing (videos filesize ok, but during conversion again, or burning, it has crashed all the time). I have over 10 movies that i can't burn 100% or convert my original file source (on this drive) from my bluray. It's when i convert again a backup and ripbot has completed the conversion, try to burn again that the burn crashed. I spent over some medias, hours and days before founding this problem.

I dont know if it's a similar trouble that you have but i have download a Western Digital Diagnostics software and make just some fast test, and my hard drive has starting to crashed, can't erase (erase folders with contents, but after rebooting, folder still there) etc. Stranges issue, but i was transfert all my other data (movie collectorz collection) to another drive for backup and 1 week later, drive dead.

Try to download a diagnostic tool from the drive manufacturer. Try this....

Finnally, last week i received my exchanged drive from Western Digital. It's my 5th drive dead in the last 3 years. 3 raptor on 3 (not recertified), two sata1 and one sata2 last month.... so it goes to 6 right now. I purchass an seagate 1.0 TB to exchange my 500B, but i readd my 500GB exchanged for an Recertied. Verry desapointed that WD exchange for a recertified!

Good luck!
Give me some news in pm... :thanks: and sorry for my english, i do my best... i know i make some bad sentense etc.

[cwerdna]

I've been using kmttg (http://code.google.com/p/kmttg/) to transfer TV shows from my TiVoHD to my PC and then decrypt the .tivo file into an .mpeg.

I'm trying to archive these shows and my target is to get 1 or 2 hours of 720p or 1080i video to fit w/reasonable quality on a single layer DVD +/- R.

Someone at my work (who I don't know personally ) has led me down the path of Ripbot264 since he uses it to make AVCHDs that he can play on his BD player.

I'm using the [HIGH 4.0] profile, 2-pass encoding and locking size to 2230 MB or 4460 MB (doesn't make a difference) and leaving everything else alone. I want the audio stream copied too (sometimes is AC3 5.1). My saga and latest results are at http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7775887#post7775887.

I'm guessing I should stick w/TFF 29.97 fps for de-interlacing but I'm having some judder problems. The picture quality is otherwise ok.

Question: What settings should I change from the defaults to try to reduce the judder? Might I have to step outside what the Ripbot264 GUI provides and add/alter my own command-line switches?

(I'm happy that the audio is in sync, even 45 minutes into a show, unlike the results I got from Handbrake to .mkv, then .mkv to .m2ts via tsMuxeR.)

[Atak_Snajpera]

Use Inverse Telecine (deinterlace section)

[cwerdna]

Use Inverse Telecine (deinterlace section)
I can try that but I seriously doubt the content I'm transcoding (below) was originally put on film.
http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/site/smithsonian/show_white_house_reveal.do recorded from Smithsonian Channel HD
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/In_a_Mirror,_Darkly_%28episode%29 recorded from HDNet

[cybersharky]

How can I denoise using only hqdn3d? I've tried a few times but it gives an Avisynth error:
Script error: Invalid arguments to function "hqdn3d"

[Remicade]

How can i choose between multiple profiles like in MeGUI, if exist of course...i want a high quality profile not balanced.

[Atak_Snajpera]

Use mouse and left button. BTW Who says that default profile is not high quality?

[illestdomer2005]

Personally, I don't deviate from Atak's default high profile for BD. The quality is outstanding, and I trust that the guy who developed this knows a little bit more about the ins and outs of the settings than I do ;)

As to my question, though, RipBot is such a key component of my computer experience that I am ready to make the jump into the new X58 or P55 chipsets. I currently have a C2Q 6700 on a 780i mobo, and it just isn't cutting it for me. 7 hours to encode a 1080p movie is just too long for me. Cutting it down to something like 4-5 hours would be outstanding. SO, I am looking to spec out a new i7 build but am still a bit torn between the 9xx series and 8xx series. I am leaning towards the i7 920 just because a 1366 board is considered the high end and will support the Gulftown CPUs...when the price goes down.

I am just curious if anyone is running an i7 rig right now and has any recommendations...? I have gone from a mid-level gamer to an almost exclusive video encoder and need more power! :)

[illestdomer2005]

I have a quick question about Ripbot temp storage. When Ripbot starts "Demuxing... please wait" it writes somewhere and it looks like it ignores wht's in ripbot.ini and writes to C drive which is SSD in my case and i don't want to use it.

Is there any way to force to use another drive?

Beloww is my INI file:

[settings]
// TEMP=uses System temp ; AUTO = selects the biggest partition ; C , D ... uses specific partition
StoreTempFilesin=E
KeepJobsQueue=1
---------------------
DefaultProfile=[HIGH 4.0] HD . BluRay . Consoles
DefaultEncodingMode=CQ
DefaultModeValue=22
---------------------
//Directory must exists!!! D:\movies\ is correct but D:\movies is incorrect!
DefaultOutputPath=G:\movies\
---------------------
// allowed values are mp4, mkv or bluray
DefaultContainer=mkv
---------------------
// in GiB (1GiB=1024 MiB) , 0 = no splitting
SplitM2TS=0
---------------------
FastFirstPassin2passMode=1
---------------------
//AnyDVD DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray decryptor will be automatically activated with RipBot264
ExecuteAnyDVD=0
---------------------
x264LowPriority=0
---------------------
// it will use 64bit version of x264 on 64bit Windows. up to 10% faster encoding speed.
Usex264x64=1

I assume "E" is the drive letter where you want RipBot to store the temp files; so, I don't know why it would be storing them on your SSD if it's your C drive. Assuming your SSD is smaller than your other drives, I wonder if selecting "Auto" might fix the problem...or changing the drive letter for that drive?

[bubbers214]

Personally, I don't deviate from Atak's default high profile for BD. The quality is outstanding, and I trust that the guy who developed this knows a little bit more about the ins and outs of the settings than I do ;)

As to my question, though, RipBot is such a key component of my computer experience that I am ready to make the jump into the new X58 or P55 chipsets. I currently have a C2Q 6700 on a 780i mobo, and it just isn't cutting it for me. 7 hours to encode a 1080p movie is just too long for me. Cutting it down to something like 4-5 hours would be outstanding. SO, I am looking to spec out a new i7 build but am still a bit torn between the 9xx series and 8xx series. I am leaning towards the i7 920 just because a 1366 board is considered the high end and will support the Gulftown CPUs...when the price goes down.

I am just curious if anyone is running an i7 rig right now and has any recommendations...? I have gone from a mid-level gamer to an almost exclusive video encoder and need more power! :)

I was in your same boat recently, I had been using a C2Q 6600 and eventually decided I wanted to encode all my movies instead of keeping the raw streams, just for storage considerations. Raw streams were just taking up too much space. So I did a considerable amount of research and decided to go with an i7 860. That chip will easily overclock to 3.6+ and I currently have mine at 3.9 will relatively little effort.

Anyway, my encode times dropped from around 7-8 hours on my C2Q to about 3.5 using High Profile settings and a CF of 18. I definitely recommend the 860 chip, great bang for your buck. I would venture to guess that the X58 series won't bring you much more in terms of encoding, until at least the new chips come out, most people say the purpose of going X58 is for SLI and gaming. So I decided to save myself some money, and I've been considerably happy with my decision.

[RandomEngy]

Am I just missing something? I've got RipBot264 v1.15.0 but I can't seem to find this preview dialog everyone's talking about. Running on Win7 x64.

[cwerdna]

Use Inverse Telecine (deinterlace section)
Amazingly, you were right, at least for one show so far! I can't believe it!

I can try that but I seriously doubt the content I'm transcoding (below) was originally put on film.
http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/site/smithsonian/show_white_house_reveal.do recorded from Smithsonian Channel HD
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/In_a_Mirror,_Darkly_%28episode%29 recorded from HDNet
I have no judder problems now that I switched to Inverse Telecine w/the Enterprise ep. I'm going try the other show tonight.

Is it common for US 1080i broadcasts to use film (~24 fps) frame rates over cable or in my case, Verizon FiOS?

[Atak_Snajpera]

Is it common for US 1080i broadcasts to use film (~24 fps) frame rates over cable or in my case, Verizon FiOS?
Movies are always recorded at 24 fps. In order to put 24fps into 30fps (60i) they use mix of 3 progressive frames + 2 interlaced (Telecine). This a common method. Nothing special.