3 nice questions....

[snowbeach]

Hi Doom9 community!

I have 3 questions...

1.
As a Newbie I tested and spent a lot time on finding out the "best" way of ripping a movie from DVD to CD, at least for me ;)!
My conclusion, please correct me, if I'm wrong:
Video encoding - DivX, better than SVCD, haven't testet the other formats and I'm not going to test them...
Audio encoding - MP3 (VBR) created by vob2audio with I-Media MPEG2 To AVI filter and LAME 3.86beta MPEG Layer III - VOB directly to MP3 tool, better results than with Azid/Lame or DVD2AVI, must be the I-Media filter?!
AC3 and formats containing Dolby Digital are not interesting for me, since I have no opportunity to enjoy Dolby Digital - no Dolby Digital 5.1 Home Cinema receiver :rolleyes:.

Currently I'm ripping DVD movies with SmartRipper 2.41, decoding/resizing with an avs script (e.g. LoadPlugin("C:\WINDOWS\system32\MPEG2DEC.dll"), mpeg2source("E:\Movies\DivX\vts_01.d2v"), Crop(0,72,718,433), BicubicResize(640,272)) using avisynth.dll (1.05), mpeg2dec.dll and the d2v file created by SmartRipper as source for further encoding, encoding in DivX 5.0.1 2-pass mode (Use GMC and Use Bidirectional Encoding checked) with VirtualDub 1.4.10 (Fast recompress), extracting the sound with vob2audio 0.1.0 to mp3 (VBR) and at least putting movie and sound ((VBR) MP3 audio... checked in Nandub) together with Nandub 1.0 RC2 lumafix (Video and Audio are set to Direct stream copy, the Audio/Video Interleave Options are enabled with the default settings).

I know this is a stupid question, but I will ask it: :p
First of all, my goals are perfect video quality and perfect MP3-Audio quality (do not need Dolby Digital, since I do not have a Dolby Digital 5.1 Home Cinema receiver) and I'm open for any suggestions.
Do you have any suggestions to improve the above described ripping process - regarding video, sound quality or speed improvement (things like SSE, FPU, 3DNow, etc. - I'm using an AMD Athlon TB 900MHz with 384 MB SDRAM and the 2-pass encoding of a 141 Min movie takes about 8 hours)?

2.
I want to rip a DVD to HD with SmartRipper 2.41 in WinXP Prof.! After opening SmartRipper an error message occurs telling me that "no ASPI-Adapter available"! Even though I get this error message I'm able to go on and to rip the DVD with SmartRipper?!?

3.
What is the general difference between the d2v-file created by SmartRipper I use and the DVD2AVI d2v?


Thanks in advance for answering...sorry for my german english :D...

[aleksander]

Originally posted by snowbeach
Hi Doom9 community!
I know this is a stupid question, but I will ask it: :p
First of all, my goals are perfect video quality and perfect MP3-Audio quality (do not need Dolby Digital, since I do not have a Dolby Digital 5.1 Home Cinema receiver) and I'm open for any suggestions.
Do you have any suggestions to improve the above described ripping process - regarding video, sound quality or speed improvement (things like SSE, FPU, 3DNow, etc. - I'm using an AMD Athlon TB 900MHz with 384 MB SDRAM and the 2-pass encoding of a 141 Min movie takes about 8 hours)?

2.
I want to rip a DVD to HD with SmartRipper 2.41 in WinXP Prof.! After opening SmartRipper an error message occurs telling me that "no ASPI-Adapter available"! Even though I get this error message I'm able to go on and to rip the DVD with SmartRipper?!?

3.
What is the general difference between the d2v-file created by SmartRipper I use and the DVD2AVI d2v?

Thanks in advance for answering...sorry for my german english :D...
First of all - welcome to the community! Hope you will enjoy it as much as we all do!
About your questions...
1. Regarding video quality - well...it's not that easy... First of all if you really looking for a good rip, you should give Nandub a try. But I mean not just use it as muxing tool, but using it a complete tool for video encoding. Read Koepi's Nandub Options Explained and try for yourself. Although it will take you some time (and I mean a lot of time) to learn all those settings and control them. The other way is Xvid - constantly developing... Soon it will replace Nandub as right now it has some of the options that Nandub has. Everything is trial & error. There is no Perfect Solution. For some this may work/look better, for others this... I would give a SVCD a try (of course if you have standalone, cause I don't see a point of doing SVCD to watch it on a PC). There are cool tools (like DVD2SVCD) that will help you create one. And you will be amazed with the quality as I was...Trust me :)
Regarding audio - there are cool and very good direct ac3-mp3 transcoding tools - BeSweet and HeadAc3he - try any of them. And use any of the "alt preset" settings for the best quality (like "alt preset 128"). VBR is the way to go, but switch to any of the above mentioned proggies since they use new azid and new lame dll's and have other cool features. Read Doom9 guides on this topic...

2. You get that error since you don't have properly installed ASPI layer. Go to download section and get ASPI checker and ForceAspi 1.7. Check your Aspi version and use ForceAspi to install it. That will help. (if you won't see some of the proggie, just click to Show Me More).

3. Well...As far as I know there shoudn't be any. Haven't compared them but they should be the same. For some reasons the one created with SmartRipper is not recommended / not always working. Dunno...

Wow....Long post...:D
Hope any of this helps.
Take care dude...

[AndyP]

One thing I would say re: divx v. xvid is I think the playback with divx 5.0.1 looks better as the vfw filter has postprocessing, the xvid one doesn't. You can change the fourcc code for xvid files to divx but I believe I am correct in saying it won't always look good because the divx filter does not support one of the quantizers used in xvid (I am not that experienced with xvid so correct me if I am wrong).

I also have heard that the d2v file created by smartripper is not as good as the one created by dvd2avi, so I always use dvd2avi (and it also gives me the .ac3 file)

Make sure you don't use the adaptec aspi 4.7 for winxp as no programs seem to like that. If you use nero then you can use the wnaspi32.dll file into the program's directory or you can install adaptec aspi 4.6.

Hope this helps :)

Andy

[snowbeach]

Thank you guys for the help, I will check it out! :D

[N_F]

Originally posted by snowbeach

3. What is the general difference between the d2v-file created by SmartRipper I use and the DVD2AVI d2v?


As I understand it, when the Smartripper d2v file is used with Gordian Knot it will sometimes cause problems with the encoding. Don't ask me why...

[Asmodian]

Xvid does have post-processing!, it looks great too (use the newest build from Koepi) also the ffdshow filter is a great post-processing filter for xvid, divx3, divx4, and some other divx codecs (I had problems with it and divx5.01, i.e. choppiness like it was playing B frames in the order it got them or something)
There is nothing good (that I know of - please correct me if I am wrong) about installing an aspi layer in winXP, unless that error message really annoys you. ASPI is very slow and smartripper will not use it even if it has it installed unless you force it.
Hope everything is going well.

ps. The d2v created by smartripper should never be used.

[snowbeach]

I used ForceASPI 1.7 and do not have any problems regarding SmartRipper anymore!

@Asmodian and the rest...
Why most people say not to use d2v files created by SmartRipper? I have compared the d2v file created by DVD2AVI with the one created by SmartRipper and there are only minor differences. The DivX501 encoding was always successfull and I have not experienced any problems or quality loss with the SmartRipper d2v file (in comparisson with the DVD2AVI file)!? :confused:
Ok, you can say then use the file you want to use :D, but I'm interested in why you say not to use it. Please explain it to me more detailed. I want to understand the problematic situation about d2v files created by SmartRipper. I've attached 4 d2v files of 2 different movies for comparison. Please explain the differences to me, since I do not understand what they mean. :( Thanks!

[snowbeach]

Forgot to attach the files! Oooops... :rolleyes:

[snowbeach]

Sorry for my confusion :p, but one more info: I use the d2v file only in VirtualDub and not in GordianKnot! Maybe this is of any importance. Hopefully I will see many posts here, explainig what the mystery of the SmartRipper d2v file vs. DVD2AVI d2v file is! :D