Tropican
16th April 2005, 15:53
Hello all,
While not being new to backing up DVDs, I still have many questions. I read this forum frequently, but this is my first post. I apologize if any of these questions are answered somewhere else, but I have not been able to find them. Anyone who reads this, also, thank you for your time. This really is a great board.
Ok, so I would like to relocate my large DVD collection to a new hard drive I have purchased. I have no use for 5.1 sound, subtititles, or extra features, nor would I like to invest in the small amount of space to keep them. My plan is to Demux the streams of the VOB files with DVDdecrypter and remux them into a normal MPEG following this guide. http://forum.dvddecrypter.com/index.php?showtopic=18424 (note you have to be a member to view the post I think.) I also should then be able to view them with any MPEG-2 player. Is there any risk involved in using those programs? If so, what should I use intead? I noticed they are not mentioned on this site, which makes me worry.
Now I also have some MPEG-4 ripping questions (I may also be encoding to XviD, should my hard drive get crowded.):
For decoding AC3's to wav, does azid give better quality than the WinDVD AC3 decoder? Also should I downsample before encoding to MP3? What are the advantages of downsampling?
I don't really feel like I have a great need to use gordian knot, the programs it is a frontend to I can already use inside and out without it. Do I need to use it? Also, however, I can't find a way to automate compressability tests using anything else. I would like to start doing them to ensure I pick the proper resolution. I have been using this to get the resolution in prior encodes. http://www.divx-digest.com/software/xvid_bitcalc.html It does a very good job, but I would like to get even better results if possibile. It also cannot handle sizes above 3 cds worth, a feature I would like to use.
Clipping in DGindex, when I resize later in my avisynth script will the aspect ratio be slightly off?
On DAR and PAR encodes, should I make them? is there a large quality advantage? Note that I must preserve compatibilty with a philips DVP-642 (Ess chipset, the best $70 I have ever spent) I know it has some issues with them. Also can that player read xvids off of DVD+Rs too?
In Avisynth I have been doing a two-step bilinear resize for small encodes (>700mb) Is it worth the time?
In XviD 1.1, there are new DXN profiles. Other than disabling options such as qpel and 3-warp GMC, and changeing the VBV settings, does it do anything else? I heard they added more compatibilty settings in beta2, how do those new ones affect quality?
I have heard that vfw has many limitations. So get around some, developers make features such as packed bitstream. If I was encoding a video to an mp4 container, is there any way around vfw and maybe even directshow, like by using mencoder and mplayer? Are their any advantages in that? (minus the obvious advantages of putting multimedia in an mp4 container) I read a thread about it here but it began to go over my head. I really know nothing about this aspect of encoding. Right now what I do is encode packed, to edit with vdub, and then unpack when done.
Oh and I can't find sse2 daily builds of ffdshow, but the daily sse ones on the site seem to have sse2 support. Is it a typo?
Since I'm asking so many questions I'll go ahead and post my XviD encoding process for general 1-cd rips:
1. Decrypt the DVD in IFO mode using DVDdecrypter
2. Calculate the resolution using the calc I want to move away from
3. DGindex the movie, demuxing the stereo Ac3
4. Transcode the audio using LAME preset-cbr 128(I have not been resampling)
5. Create an avisynth script for the video, using it to do a 2-tap resize which may be overkill
6. Frameserve into VirtualDub
7. Encode the video to XviD
8. Use AVImux gui to multiplex the video AVI with the audio
Ok, well if anyone could answer a fraction of those questions, it would be a tremendous help. (Maybe a few can be added to the faq?)
Thanks in advance,
Tropican (look for me on BZflag)
While not being new to backing up DVDs, I still have many questions. I read this forum frequently, but this is my first post. I apologize if any of these questions are answered somewhere else, but I have not been able to find them. Anyone who reads this, also, thank you for your time. This really is a great board.
Ok, so I would like to relocate my large DVD collection to a new hard drive I have purchased. I have no use for 5.1 sound, subtititles, or extra features, nor would I like to invest in the small amount of space to keep them. My plan is to Demux the streams of the VOB files with DVDdecrypter and remux them into a normal MPEG following this guide. http://forum.dvddecrypter.com/index.php?showtopic=18424 (note you have to be a member to view the post I think.) I also should then be able to view them with any MPEG-2 player. Is there any risk involved in using those programs? If so, what should I use intead? I noticed they are not mentioned on this site, which makes me worry.
Now I also have some MPEG-4 ripping questions (I may also be encoding to XviD, should my hard drive get crowded.):
For decoding AC3's to wav, does azid give better quality than the WinDVD AC3 decoder? Also should I downsample before encoding to MP3? What are the advantages of downsampling?
I don't really feel like I have a great need to use gordian knot, the programs it is a frontend to I can already use inside and out without it. Do I need to use it? Also, however, I can't find a way to automate compressability tests using anything else. I would like to start doing them to ensure I pick the proper resolution. I have been using this to get the resolution in prior encodes. http://www.divx-digest.com/software/xvid_bitcalc.html It does a very good job, but I would like to get even better results if possibile. It also cannot handle sizes above 3 cds worth, a feature I would like to use.
Clipping in DGindex, when I resize later in my avisynth script will the aspect ratio be slightly off?
On DAR and PAR encodes, should I make them? is there a large quality advantage? Note that I must preserve compatibilty with a philips DVP-642 (Ess chipset, the best $70 I have ever spent) I know it has some issues with them. Also can that player read xvids off of DVD+Rs too?
In Avisynth I have been doing a two-step bilinear resize for small encodes (>700mb) Is it worth the time?
In XviD 1.1, there are new DXN profiles. Other than disabling options such as qpel and 3-warp GMC, and changeing the VBV settings, does it do anything else? I heard they added more compatibilty settings in beta2, how do those new ones affect quality?
I have heard that vfw has many limitations. So get around some, developers make features such as packed bitstream. If I was encoding a video to an mp4 container, is there any way around vfw and maybe even directshow, like by using mencoder and mplayer? Are their any advantages in that? (minus the obvious advantages of putting multimedia in an mp4 container) I read a thread about it here but it began to go over my head. I really know nothing about this aspect of encoding. Right now what I do is encode packed, to edit with vdub, and then unpack when done.
Oh and I can't find sse2 daily builds of ffdshow, but the daily sse ones on the site seem to have sse2 support. Is it a typo?
Since I'm asking so many questions I'll go ahead and post my XviD encoding process for general 1-cd rips:
1. Decrypt the DVD in IFO mode using DVDdecrypter
2. Calculate the resolution using the calc I want to move away from
3. DGindex the movie, demuxing the stereo Ac3
4. Transcode the audio using LAME preset-cbr 128(I have not been resampling)
5. Create an avisynth script for the video, using it to do a 2-tap resize which may be overkill
6. Frameserve into VirtualDub
7. Encode the video to XviD
8. Use AVImux gui to multiplex the video AVI with the audio
Ok, well if anyone could answer a fraction of those questions, it would be a tremendous help. (Maybe a few can be added to the faq?)
Thanks in advance,
Tropican (look for me on BZflag)