The Definitive DVD Ripping Guide (56K get VHS)

[Dan]

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Foreword
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This is the definitive DVD Ripping Guide for bwhacks.com. This guide is going to be a bit complicated, but it is not hard to follow. It is meant for people who are somewhat computer literate. If you can't understand it, take your knuckle-dragging mouth-breathing mongoloid ass elsewhere.
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Now, on to the guide.

The purpose of this guide is to help the reader compress a DVD-9 (8.5 GB) to a DVD+/-R (4.7 GB). Using DVD Rebuilder with CCE will produce high quality results without getting as complicated as the Big 3 method. For a quality guideline I will use The 2004 DVDR Releasing Standards, specifically their video re-encoding standard since I think it sets a high but fair standard.

This guide will teach you how to rip a DVD, strip unwanted extras, remove unused buttons, compress to DVD+/-R size, create an image, and burn to disc.

Software used in this guide (version used):
AviSynth (2.5.5)
Cinema Craft Encoder SP (2.70) - other encoders may be used, but I will not deal with them in this guide. If you are using a version of CCE SP that does not support command line parameter passing or loading of ecl files, you'll also need EclCCE.
DVD Decrypter (3.5.2.0)
DVD Rebuilder (0.72)
DVD Shrink (3.2)
ImgTool Classic (0.91.4)
MenuEdit (2.3.0)
VobBlanker (1.6.0.4)

AviSynth Plugins used in this guide (version used):
Decomb (5.2.1) - not really used in this guide since no de-interlacing is necessary, but you may as well install it in case you need it for a DVD in the future.
DGDecode from DGMPGDec (1.0.12) - DVD Rebuilder doesn't work with the newest versions of DGDecode.dll, so make sure you use version 1.10 or earlier.

Steps
0: Install/Configure Software
1: Rip the DVD
2: Strip Unwanted Extras
3: Remove Buttons
4: Encode and Rebuild
5: Create Image/Burn

Step 0: Install/Configure Software

Install all the software listed above. If you already have AviSynth installed, make sure it is at least version 2.5. Extract DGDecode.dll from the DGMPGDec package and place it in your AviSynth plugins folder, typically C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins. Do the same for Decomb521.dll from the Decomb package. You do not need to do any type of configuration for AviSynth, CCE, DVD Shrink, ImgTool Classic, MenuEdit, or VobBlanker. DVD Decrypter does not necessarily require any configuration, but there are a couple options I like to use. Start up DVD Decrypter, click on "Tools", then "Settings...", select the "ISO Read Mode" tab. On this tab check all unchecked options. What this does is remove all PUOs (Prohibited User Options). A typical example of a PUO is being unable to skip past the FBI warning screens. You may want to check the same options under the "File Mode" tab, if you choose to use File Mode.



Now onto setting up DVD Rebuilder. Start up DVD Rebuilder, and click on "Options", then "Setup". Here we need to set the paths to the encoder and AviSynth plugins. If you are using a retail version of CCE SP greater than 2.5, or CCE SP 2.70 Trial, fill in the path to your CCE SP executable in the box next to "Path to CCE SP (new)". If you are using a trial version of CCE SP 2.6x, fill in this box with the path to EclCCE. If you are using CCE SP 2.50, fill in the "Path to CCE SP 2.50" box with the location of EclCCE. If you are using EclCCE, you'll have to run it once to point it to your CCE SP executable. Fill in the paths to Decoder and Decomb.dll with the locations of DGDecode.dll and Decomb521.dll respectively. Finally, check "Run Encoder(s) Minimized". You can also set which audio streams and subtitles you always want to remove, and if you want to always remove DTS audio, but I don't leave any of these checked because I like a lot of foreign films and I have a DTS system. You'll be able to select what audio streams and subtitles you want to remove later on in this guide. Click the "Ok" button to return to the main window.



Now we'll have to set some CCE related options in DVD Rebuilder. Under "Options" select "CCE Options" then select "CCE SP", "CCE SP Trial", or "CCE SP (v2.50)" depending on which version of CCE SP you are using. If you are using EclCCE with a trial version of CCE SP 2.6x, I think you can select either "CCE SP" or "CCE SP Trial", but I would suggest trying "CCE SP" first since EclCCE is designed to allow CCE trial version to handle ecl files in the same way as the retail version. Since I am using CCE SP 2.70 Trial, I have selected the appropriate option.



Select "Advanced (Expert) Settings" from the "CCE Options" menu. Here we can set a few CCE parameters. Doom9's DVD Rebuilder guide explains these parameters better than I ever could, so here is what is said in their guide:

VBR_Bias controls how CCE distributes the bitrate. During the first CCE pass, the bitrate is distributed to achieve constant quality. The bias determines how much weight is given towards keeping that allocation. High values prevent high bitrate fluctuations in between GOPs, and low values give CCE more freedom to use bits in highly demanding areas.

VBR_Passes indicates the number of CCE passes. This has to be 2 for CCE Basic. For all other CCE versions, note that if you use X passes when setting up CCE manually, enter X+1 here as CCE SP does not count the creation of the vaf file as one pass.

Quality Prec corresponds to Image Quality Priority in CCE 2.50, and Quantizer characteristics in CCE 2.66/2.67. The value ranges from 0 - 64 (as in CCE 2.66+), but is scaled to 0-100 when using CCE 2.50 (so if you're a CCE 2.50 user and have set this parameter to X, you have to enter X*64/100 in DVD-RB). This setting determines if CCE gives priority to image details, or evenly colored areas. The lower the value, the more priority will be given to details, which could result in blockyness or banding in other areas. A high value will result in good looking evenly colored areas, but could result in edge artifacts.

The higher the number for VBR_Bias, the closer you get to CBR, so we'll set this to something low, like 10. For Quality Prec, we'll set this to 24 since it is near the middle of the range, but gives a little edge to image detail. As for the number of VBR passes, I'll refer to the 2004 DVDR Releasing Standards, specifically the standard regarding passes. Since most every movie I compress is over 100 minutes, we'll use six passes, not including the vaf pass. So set VBR_Passes to 7. You are certainly welcome to play around with these numbers. The higher the number of VBR passes, the longer the encoding job will take. You may read some opinions that running more than four VBR passes is overkill and a waste of time, but since I want to ensure the highest quality, I'll stick with six or more passes. Also, since I usually do the compression overnight, by the time I wake up, DVD Rebuilder is done no matter how many VBR passes I've set, and thus I leave the number of passes high.



Finally, under "Mode" select the options pictured below. One option I haven't chosen to use, but you may want to use is the "Steal Space from Extras:" option, which will allow you to reduce the quality of the DVD extras to allow for higher quality on the movie. I don't use this option because I rarely include any extras like trailers and making-of features, unless it is something really special, and in that case I want it in as high quality as the movie.



There are many other options in DVD Rebuilder which you can explore, but they fall outside of the scope of this guide. Once setup, you shouldn't need to revisit this step again.

Step 1: Rip the DVD

For the purpose of this guide I'll be ripping and compressing The Manchurian Candidate since it offers multiple audio tracks and a fair amount of extras. Put a DVD in your DVD drive and start up DVD Decrypter. Under "Mode" select "ISO > Read"



Under "Destination" select where you want to put the ISO, and then click the big decrypt button. This will take some time.



Once this completes, you can close DVD Decrypter and mount the image as virtual drive using Daemon Tools. You could rip the DVD in File mode, but I like to rip it in ISO mode so I have the entire DVD on the hard drive in one file.

Step 2: Strip Unwanted Extras

Now we will look at what is on the DVD and decide which titles we want to keep. Start up DVD Shrink and click on the "Open Disc" button and select the virtual drive and click the "OK" button.



DVD Shrink will take a minute to analyze your DVD, and you'll be presented with a window like this:



Expand the main movie and extras so you can see each title. I also like to change the compression for the whole disc from "Automatic" to "No Compression", so I can see exactly how big each title is.



As you can see title 1 is the main movie. If there were two titles under Main Movie, one is most likely widescreen and the other fullscreen, and in this case you'd have to decide which version you want to keep (widescreen!). Use DVD Shrink to preview each title, and make note of those which you want to remove. In most cases I'm not interested in keeping any extra features, but for this case I'll keep one extra feature, title 11. So I'll be blanking titles 2-10, 12, 14-17. Since titles 13 and 18 are so small, there is no need to blank them. You can close DVD Shrink now and open VobBlanker.

In VobBlanker, under "Input Folder" browse to your virtual drive and open the VIDEO_TS.IFO file inside the VIDEO_TS folder. Set an output folder as well. I suggest that this output folder be on a different physical hard drive than the disc image you have mounted as a virtual drive to hasten things a little.



In the "TitleSet" part of the window, you can click on each title set, and the PGCs in each title will be displayed the the bottom third of the window.



Now go through each title set, and when you click on the title set, look at the numbers in the "T in VMG" column in the PGCs part of the window. These numbers correspond to the title numbers in DVD Shrink. So for each title set, check the "T in VMG" number, and if it is a number you made note of earlier for removal, click on the PGC, then click "Blank".



Once you've gone through all the title sets and blanked the appropriate titles, take a look at the information in the top right. As you can see, I've knocked off 1.7 gigs.


If blanking the extras gets you under DVDr size, you can completely skip the encode/rebuild step since no compression is necessary. Now click "PROCESS!!" and VobBlanker will replace the titles you selected with a blank movie less than one second long. In this way the structure of the DVD is preserved. Once it is complete, we can close VobBlanker and move onto the next step.

Step 3: Remove Buttons

In this step we will remove the buttons for parts of the disc we removed, or will remove, in the case of audio streams or subtitles. This step can be done after the encode/rebuild step if you don't already know what audio streams you are going to remove. In this case I already know I'll be keeping the English 5.1 audio stream, the director's commentary, all subtitles, and be removing the French audio.

Open MenuEdit, and click the "Open" button. Browse to the output folder from VobBlanker, and open the first VOB file of the largest title set, in this case VTS_07_0.VOB. I don't think I've ever come across a DVD where the menu was not contained in the first VOB of the largest title set, but if it is not, open all the other VTS_xx_0.VOB files until you find the appropriate one.



Now for expand each Vob ID and click on each Cell ID, and click the "Edit/Preview" button.


You will be given a preview of each menu.



On this menu, the button for the French audio track will be deleted since that audio stream will be removed. Click on the buttons you want to remove and click the "Delete" button and you'll be presented with a window asking you what you want to do with the deleted button. Select "Keep old" and click the ">>" button.



Click the "OK" button.



Do this for each cell, removing the buttons for extras you removed. Once done, you can close down MenuEdit.

[Dan]

Step 4: Encode and Rebuild

The encoding process is going to take a fair amount of time and will hog your CPU, so I suggest letting DVD Rebuilder run overnight. On my computer, doing seven VBR passes usually takes between five and six hours, so plan accordingly.

Open DVD Rebuilder and under "Source Path" browse to your output folder from VobBlanker. Under "Working Path" browse to a folder that will hold temporary files for this project. Finally, under "Output Path" select a folder for the output. I recommend that your working path be on a different physical hard drive than the source and output to speed up the process.



In the "Video Title Sets" part of the window you can click on each title set and see what audio streams and subtitles are present. In this case I am looking at the title set that contains the one special feature I chose not to blank. I want to keep all audio track and subtitles on this title set, so I'll leave them all checked.



The other title set contains the movie. I only want to remove the French audio, so I uncheck the box next to it.



When deciding what audio streams you want to keep on the main movie, I suggest leaving only the original language audio stream, and whatever commentaries you want to keep. Having more than one audio stream (aside from commentaries) for the main movie is unnecessary, and only serves to take away bits from the video. As for subtitles, I leave them all intact since they are so small.

Now click the "Prepare" button and DVD Rebuilder will do a bunch of stuff you don't need to worry about (create project files, create AviSynth scripts, create an ecl file, copy MPEG-2 flags, and create a file telling DVD Rebuilder how to put everything together again). This process isn't completely necessary, but I like to do it so I can check out what the bitrate for the DVD is going to be. When this process is complete, you'll have some useful information in the status window.



Well, we do have useful information, but we can't see it because the skin is cutting it off. If your skin is cutting off information about bitrates, briefly switch to another skin, via the "Skin" menu at the top. The information we want is the average bitrate. The 2004 DVDR Releasing Standards call for a minimum bitrate of 3,000K/s. Anything lower than 3,000K/s and the video is not going to look good. In my experience, I think an average bitrate of at least 3,300K/s is ideal. If you need to, you can go back and remove more extras and audio streams. If you have removed all extras and all audio streams except one, and the average bitrate still is under 3,000K/s, I suggest you just abandon this guide and split the movie over two discs with DVDFab. In my example the calculated average bitrate is 3,409K/s, which is good. If I had removed all special features, the bitrate would have been about 4,000K/s.

Now we want to encode. Under "Mode" click on "One Click Mode", which will replace the "Prepare", "Encode", and "Rebuild" buttons with a "Transcode" button.



Click the "Transcode" button, and let DVD Rebuilder/CCE do its thing. Again, this is going to take a long time. Once it is done, you can close DVD Rebuilder and move onto the next step.

Step 5: Create Image/Burn

Now we will create a disc image from the files output by DVD Rebuilder, and then burn the image to disc.

Open ImgTool Classic. Under "Source Directory" browse to the output folder from DVD Rebuilder. The volume ID will be filled in with the name of the folder you selected. You can change the volume ID if you want to.



Under "Output File" select where you want your disc image created. Again, putting the output file on a different physical hard drive than the source folder will speed things up a little.


If you want to immediately burn this image to disc, open the "Program Settings" window, and check the "Burn generated image using DVD Decrypter" option. Fill in the path to DVD Decrypter, and select you DVD recorder's drive letter, and click "Save". You can then set the recording speed in the main window. If you just want to create an image without immediately burning it to disc, then ignore these options.



Click "Image" and and in a few minutes you have a 4.3 gigabyte disc image. If you selected the option to burn with DVD Decrypter, it will open, and in a while you'll have your final disc. You can then ignore the rest of this guide.

If you have created an image and want to burn it, open DVD Decrypter. Under "Mode", select "ISO > Write".



Under "Source" select the image you have created.



Select your desired write speed in the bottom right, then click the big "Write" button. When this process completes, you're done.



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If you still can't rip a DVD properly, use DVDShrink to transcode, you illiterate sh*t. But keep in mind, there have been blind tests on doom9.org.

Blind Test - DVD-RB vs other one clicks.

[rum]

I found myself pondering if I had to sleep with one man, who would it be. Then I saw this thread.

[Dan]

I will open this thread up for questions, but be warned: IF YOU ASK SPECIFIC QUESTIONS ABOUT RIPPING A SPECIFIC DVD I WILL DELETE YOUR POST.

This thread is for general questions only. Also, you can suck my e-dick in this thread.

[BloodyBlade]

What would the process be for, say, backing up a ps2 game? Just rip and burn it with DVDDecrypter in ISO mode? I have a magic swap, and I'd like to put it to use.

I've been trying to backup a game (lets just say that this game IS NOT God of War), but it is not working and I have already made two very shiny drink coasters. I am 100% sure I am doing the magic slide **** right.

EDIT: Oops, forgot to suck your e-dick.

[howardmeis]

I don't know if this tutorial mentions a way to unprotect DVD's but a good progra for that is AnyDVD.

*SUCKY SUCKY!!!*

[BloodyBlade]

I believe many (good) DVD ripping/burning programs automatically remove the protection.

[Devistated-Soul]

Uh.........why go thrue all that work ....just use "AnyDVD" And "CloneDVD" thay will both do the work for you ....takes about 30 min to copy and burn the disk less if you have a computer like mine 15 min Sexy!

[dreaded]

There is more to bypasing/breaking copy protection to make backups/copies. It is your hardware. Liteon can break most. Other burners suck and cant hardly break any. Here is a site you can look at that to see what burners can do the different protections http://club.cdfreaks.com/

[rum]

Originally Posted by Devistated-Soul

Uh.........why go thrue all that work ....just use "AnyDVD" And "CloneDVD" thay will both do the work for you ....takes about 30 min to copy and burn the disk less if you have a computer like mine 15 min Sexy!

Originally Posted by Sexiest mother ****er to post in this thread

The purpose of this guide is to help the reader compress a DVD-9 (8.5 GB) to a DVD+/-R (4.7 GB)... This guide will teach you how to rip a DVD, strip unwanted extras, remove unused buttons, compress to DVD+/-R size, create an image, and burn to disc.

[Dan]

Originally Posted by Devistated-Soul

Uh.........why go thrue all that work ....just use "AnyDVD" And "CloneDVD" thay will both do the work for you ....takes about 30 min to copy and burn the disk less if you have a computer like mine 15 min Sexy!

Well, I might be going out on a limb here, but maybe, just maybe, some people don't want their releases to look like absolute sh*t?

BloodyBlade, I've never ripped PS2 or XBOX before, so I don't really know how to help you out there.