Dvd------->wmv

[maiki]

I would like suggestions on the best and simplest way to convert a DVD movie (in this case a movie I own, that I bought)to a small .wmv that I can watch on my Pocket PC.

The second part (creating a .wmv in that format) is easy, if one has the movie in another movie file format, such as .avi or .mpg. With Windows Movie Maker or Windows Media Encoder, or even Windows Media Player ("copy to portable device"), one can easily create such a small .wmv file, using a preset for a format optimized for it.

What I would like to know is, the best way to create the .avi or .mpg file from the DVD? What programs would people recommend for this, and which settings, etc.?

I would assume that, provided one has the space (and I have a large external Firewire hard drive, 180 GB), that it would be best to save the movie file extracted from the DVD completely uncompressed, or at least keeping the same compression that is already on the DVD, without re-compressing. (I don't know if the latter is possible.) From what I understand, the more times re-compressed (with lossy compression), the lower the quality. (Although I don't know if that would really be noticeable though.) The final step of converting to the small .WMV would involve heavy compression, no need to re-compress on extracting from the DVD drive, which (recompressing)might lower the quality, without any file size improvement.

In looking at software described on this web site, I tried doing this with two programs already. I used DVDShrink to rip the DVD to the large hard drive. (I used the non-compressed setting for that.) It left several VOB, BUP, and IFO files, which I didn't know what to do with.

Finally I tried the program DVDX to create an AVI file from those VOPs, BUPs, and IFOs. I didn't really know how to save to an uncompressed AVI though. ALthough the default file type to save to seems to be .MPG, it is possible to save to .AVI as well. Then one chooses which codec to use, of which I have several available. But I didn't see any which offered the option of uncompressed. So all the .AVI options seemed to be recompressing, just as the .mpg would.

Same with the audio. Probably best to leave it uncompressed, or keep the same compression already on the DVD, and let the re-compression happen only once, in making the .WMV. Well, the default was a LAME encoding to MP3. I did see an option to save the audio as .WAV, but I wondered whether that meant it would save the audio as a separate .wav file, not as part of the movie.

I at random chose a codec (can't even recall which now), got a lot of error messages, changed settings, etc. I finally got an .avi file, but it only was the first five minutes of the video, which is otherwise about 45 minutes.

Therefore, I would appreciate it if someone could give suggestions--what is the best and simplest way to do this? Which software, settings, etc.?

Thank you very much.

[Hiro2k]

Wow, so much work and nothing to show for it. :) j/k

First of all if you want to know how to create MPEGS, then read the VCD guides on Doom9
http://www.doom9.org/mpg/dvd2svcd.htm

If you want to make an AVI file, then I suggest you try an MPEG4 codec. You have your choice of DivX or Xvid.
http://www.doom9.org/divx-encoding.htm

Now if you want to create a WMV, then WindowsMedia Encoder9 can read .m2v files. You just have to encode the video and audio separately and mux them together with Windows Media Stream Editor. To get .m2v files, rip the DVD with DVD Decrypter. That way you don't have to bother recompressing them. ;)

[maiki]

Originally posted by Hiro2k
Wow, so much work and nothing to show for it. :) j/k

Actually, much more than that. I wasted most of today, trying to figure out how to do that, with various software from this site, including DVD2AVi and others. All failed.

First of all if you want to know how to create MPEGS, then read the VCD guides on Doom9
http://www.doom9.org/mpg/dvd2svcd.htm

If you want to make an AVI file, then I suggest you try an MPEG4 codec. You have your choice of DivX or Xvid.
http://www.doom9.org/divx-encoding.htm

I think I made it pretty clear what I was trying to do, neither of the above. Yes, an AVI file, but not a compressed one like DIVX, an uncompressed file to convert to a small .WMV.

Now if you want to create a WMV, then WindowsMedia Encoder9 can read .m2v files. You just have to encode the video and audio separately and mux them together with Windows Media Stream Editor. To get .m2v files, rip the DVD with DVD Decrypter. That way you don't have to bother recompressing them. ;) [QUOTE][COLOR=red][COLOR=red]

Of course that would be good, not having to make the intermediary .AVI or .mpg file. I just opened DVD Decrypter, and I see no way to create a file wih the extension .m2v. Could you be confusing programs. That program will save ripped video as .VOB, .BUP,and .IFO, or into one .ISO or .IFO file. I didn't see anything there about .m2v. Tell me more about it.

[killingspree]

Originally posted by maiki

Of course that would be good, not having to make the intermediary .AVI or .mpg file. I just opened DVD Decrypter, and I see no way to create a file wih the extension .m2v. Could you be confusing programs. That program will save ripped video as .VOB, .BUP,and .IFO, or into one .ISO or .IFO file. I didn't see anything there about .m2v. Tell me more about it.

lol, no he isn't wrong :)

when you are in ifo mode, just click on the second tab, next to 'Input' which says 'Stream Processing'. check the box that says 'Enable Stream Processing' and then on the bottom, choose Demux.
this way you'll get the m2v file you'll want, along with a seperate file for the audio and if you didn't deselect them, also the subs! :)

hth
steVe

[bond]

doesnt windows media encoder support .avs input?

[killingspree]

iirc it doesn't, but i think Nic has written a little encoder himself which does accept them... I once tried it in it's early stages but didn't see a reason why to use wmv, so didn't persue the subject any further.

after some searching: here's (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33719&highlight=wmv) the thread where he presents the proggy!

steVe

edit: be aware though, the thread is more than a year old (started sept 2002)

[bond]

hm, nic's encoder doesnt support "all" features wmv9 offers

but i am sure that it should be possible to create a fake avi with avisynth, which can be used as input in wmencoder (try to search the forum for that!)
perhaps its even possible to just rename avs to avi?

[Hiro2k]

Originally posted by maiki

I think I made it pretty clear what I was trying to do, neither of the above. Yes, an AVI file, but not a compressed one like DIVX, an uncompressed file to convert to a small .WMV.


I'm sorry I guess I misunderstood that part of your post. If you wanted an uncompressed avi, it would be best to use HuffyYUV. It creates HUGE avi files, that are bigger than the DVD itself. lol so that's not a good idea, even for a 180 GB HD.


Of course that would be good, not having to make the intermediary .AVI or .mpg file. I just opened DVD Decrypter, and I see no way to create a file wih the extension .m2v. Could you be confusing programs. That program will save ripped video as .VOB, .BUP,and .IFO, or into one .ISO or .IFO file. I didn't see anything there about .m2v. Tell me more about it.

Well bond cleared that up pretty nicely. I guess I should have given you some instructions, but I just thought you would figure out the option for that. Sorry again.

[maiki]

Originally posted by killingspree
lol, no he isn't wrong :)

when you are in ifo mode, just click on the second tab, next to 'Input' which says 'Stream Processing'. check the box that says 'Enable Stream Processing' and then on the bottom, choose Demux.
this way you'll get the m2v file you'll want, along with a seperate file for the audio and if you didn't deselect them, also the subs! :)

hth
steVe

Thank you Steve!

I did this, and ran into a few problems. I'll go over what I did.

I ripped the CD with DVD Decrypter, using the IFO mode, with all the settings you mention above, "stream processing", "demux", and I chose the audio track and subtitle track(there were multiple languages)I wished to be included.

The resulting files were--a large m2v file, and a small .IFO file, and a small .VOB file. Also a text file with stream information.

Windows Media Stream Editor wouldn't open any of these files-it will only open .wmv, .wma, and .asf. I was able to load the .m2v into Windows Media Encoder. (although it didn't list m2v as a type it could open, if I chose "all files", then selected that file, I could load it. I then encoded it to a .wmv file for Pocket PC. It did not have any sound.

So, I opened it (the .wmv file) in Windows Media Stream Editor. It only showed the video stream, no audio stream. You mention above about "separate file for the audio", but I couldn't find any. I ripped with DVD Decrypter using all your settings above, I had the audio stream selected that I wanted to include, and the subs that I wanted to include, I made a separate folder for the resulting files (from DVD decrypter), so that I could easily see what the files were, and the only files in that folder were the four I mention above, no audio files.

(I guess if I did find the audio file I would have to convert it first to .WMA, as the Stream Editor only opens that audio file format. What format would the audio file be in?)

Now--another problem--I looked at the .wmv file that was created, as I wrote--no audio on it. But another strange thing. The original video was about 45 minutes long. This .wmv is about 1:45 minutes long! There is an hour of just showing the first frame of the movie, no movement at all, and the movie really starts after an hour of showing the first frame!!! Well, I can edit it and cut off that first hour, but I wonder why that happened?? And if I get the audio file, isn't that going to create problems with audio-video synchronization?

Thanks for all your help,
Mike

[maiki]

An update since the last post:

I figured out how to get the audio. It is in the VOB file. I was able to get Windows Media Encoder to open the VOB file (although it's also not listed as a file type, I again had to select "show all files"), and was able to convert that to a WMA.

I looked at the resulting WMA file, and it was the correct length, without that extra hour added on to the video file. So, I decided to cut the video file before trying to stream them together.

Easy to cut off that extra hour at the beginning, in Windows Moviemaker. But then when I wanted to save it, it looked like it wanted to re-encode the whole file. I didn't want to do that, both for time and quality reasons. It seemed that there should be a way to save the file, already encoded as .wmv, just with the beginning trimmed off, without re-encoding. But I couldn't see how to do that. Anyone know?

I decided to go ahead and try the Stream Editor to put the video and audio together, and see what happened, that perhaps the program would realize there was an extra hour of nothing added to the front of the video, and take it off. It froze up somewhere in the middle, so that operation hasn't been completed. Perhaps I do need to cut off the superluous hour of nothing from the start of the video file first. There may be no other way than to re-encode it. If anyone knows of another solution, please let me know.

The other problem is that of subtitles. The Stream Editor didn't show any files with subtitles. I decided to Decrypt again, but this time only select the subtitle stream, nothing else. That worked, it resulted in a file with the extension .SUB, as well as an .IFO and a .VOB.

Then however, how to put that .SUB file subtitle stream together with the picture? I couldn't find any way to do that with the WME or WSE. In Windows Media Encoder, I tried to force it to open the .sub file, as I had with the .m2v (video) and the .vob (audio) file. It wouldn't do it, no way I could get it to open that file. The stream editor will absolutely (as far as I can see, anyhow) not open anything other than .wmv, .wma, or .asf. So, how to put the subs into the .wmv file?

Thanks again for your input.

[maiki]

Originally posted by bond
doesnt windows media encoder support .avs input?

Why though? I don't see that Decrypter outputs any .avs files. Or is there a way to get it to do that?

[nFury8]

I'm encoding using WME9 via avisynth input (avs) with no problems. If I wanted subs I just burn them in using gabest's vsfilter. Although I'm not sure if you want to burn in your subs with the video.

Cheers

[bond]

Originally posted by maiki
Why though? I don't see that Decrypter outputs any .avs files. Or is there a way to get it to do that?avisynth scripts are great if you want to crop the black borders, resize, put subtitles into the video, use filters (great for 1CD rips)

you'll have to use dvd2avi (http://www.doom9.org/mpg/dvd2avi.htm) to create a .d2v project file, which you than can load in a avs script (by using mpec2dec3), read the doom9 guides or the forum on how to create a nice script, adopted to your needs. a basic avs script can be produced easily with gknot (cropping, resize...)

[dragongodz]

or with DVDx you can find the video server(avi wrapper) from videotools.net. this makes a fake avi(few hundred kb) that you load in to whatever program for conversion and then DVDx serves the frames to the server which passes them to the encoding program. though version 1.0 of the frameserver is only good for 1 pass as it reports the total frames short by 2 but 0.93 works fine.

the guide that comes with DVDx explains how to use it. the example given is frameserving to tmpgenc but it works the same with any program that accepts avi's.