Ripping for Vidding
Most of the time, ripping is going to have two steps. I tried an 'on the fly' ripper that's supposed to do both in one program, but it just crashed every time I tried it. Grr. My father was using another that decrypts, then converts immediately in the same program, but the colors went all wonky sometimes. So I settled myself into trying DVD Decrypter with a second program. Here are the results of my dicking around with these programs.
Step One: DVD Decrypter
http://www.mrbass.org/dvdrip/
This is fairly easy to use, but you'll need a little space on your drive to get it done. Just open it up, select the files from the list (I'd recommend, while you're learning, to just grab them all and delete them when you've converted them properly into usable formats), and decrypt. Took an hour or two to grab an entire DVD of Smallville, and I'd guess the time would be shorter if you selected a few files and went with it.
This transfers the data on the DVD to video object files (VOB!), which you'll be picking up from the second program. You don't have to worry about identifying them, though. The next program will do that for you.
Step Two: Handbrake
http://handbrake.fr/?article=download
Handbrake has a lot of doodads, but for my purposes, the big thing is getting the vid into the format that I need. For MovieMaker (until I upgrade from this picky, buggy program) I need a high quality .avi. It took some fiddling, but in the end, I got a reasonable sized file that would load into the program. :D
The big problem with Handbrake, so far, has been learning to use the interface. There are a lot of options, and the help on the website isn't very helpful, so I spent several days making various copies of "Kara" to see what looks good and will actually transfer. Let me run through the major features you need to get started ripping.
Source: Next to the little director's clip on the top bar, there is the word Source. This is the first thing that you want to click. Now you have the choice of Video File, DVD/Video_TS Folder, or it will give you the option of selecting the Video_TS folder from the DVD itself. If you're just converting one file to another format, click Video File. If you're ripping like we are, then the second or third option is what you want to do, but you won't be able to use the Video_TS file from the DVD if the DVD is encrypted, so let's go to the DVD/Video_TS file.
Click on that, and go to where you saved your decrypted files from Step One. This will set the path.
Title: Another slight problem with Handbreak is that there's no real way to distinguish between titles at this point, save by runtime. Actually, it's pretty easy to figure out that there if you're ripping a movie that the longest runtime is going to be the feature film and the shorter ones will be extras. On a DVD with episodes, find out how long the episodes are, and they'll be in order under the Title dropdown menu. Usually these days with commercials, it'll run somewhere around 40ish minutes.
So pick your Title, and the Chapters (right next to it) will give you the range that you want to convert into a file. If you want them all, then just leave as is. It'll copy them all. If you just want a shorter clip, you can choose to do say from 1-3. Maybe you could use this to test quality or get shorter clips of the movie/show to upload. You also have the option to copy all four of the episodes at once into one ginormous file. Um, if you want to. I'm straining to think of a use.
Destination: Once you've set up the Source, you'll need to set the destination. Easily done, click on Browse next to the blank field and chose where you want it saved on your harddrive and give it a name.
Output Settings: You have several file formats to choose from, and if you want help, the side bar will guide you with presets such as iPod, Television. For our purposes, leave it at normal, and click on the dropdown. You have a choice of MP4, M4V, MKV, AVI, and OGM. For iPod you want M4V. For what we're doing, you want AVI. Click it.
Output Settings- Tabs: The tabs below the Output Settings dropdown are the trickiest part, because you can customize quite a lot. You can mess with the size and the aspect ratio, choose codecs and add in a second line of sound. Ignore most of those your first time through, and click on the second tab, which reads "Video."
From here you can choose a specific file size, set quality, or set the bitrate. You can also choose from three codecs. Xvid didn't work in MovieMaker for some reason, so I went with Mpeg-4 (FFmpeg). Overall, I'd probably choose Xvid if my program weren't insane, but the two look similar. The third option, H.246, is high quality but annoyingly large.
So select your codec and go to the information on the left. My suggestion is to leave the file size and bitrate, because this isn't that helpful to getting the best file. Instead, use the "quality" bar. You can slide it up as much as you want; however you shouldn't be fooled into thinking you want 100% quality, because that just means a bigger file. Especially, do not do 100% quality with H.246. At 70% a H.264 file is over a gig. Get it? So for what we're looking at, here's my suggestion:
AVI- Mpeg 4 (FFmpeg)- 85%
This will give you a decent quality file at 355MB. It takes half an hour to an hour to process.
This is how it worked for me, at least, barring any problems.
Step One: DVD Decrypter
http://www.mrbass.org/dvdrip/
This is fairly easy to use, but you'll need a little space on your drive to get it done. Just open it up, select the files from the list (I'd recommend, while you're learning, to just grab them all and delete them when you've converted them properly into usable formats), and decrypt. Took an hour or two to grab an entire DVD of Smallville, and I'd guess the time would be shorter if you selected a few files and went with it.
This transfers the data on the DVD to video object files (VOB!), which you'll be picking up from the second program. You don't have to worry about identifying them, though. The next program will do that for you.
Step Two: Handbrake
http://handbrake.fr/?article=download
Handbrake has a lot of doodads, but for my purposes, the big thing is getting the vid into the format that I need. For MovieMaker (until I upgrade from this picky, buggy program) I need a high quality .avi. It took some fiddling, but in the end, I got a reasonable sized file that would load into the program. :D
The big problem with Handbrake, so far, has been learning to use the interface. There are a lot of options, and the help on the website isn't very helpful, so I spent several days making various copies of "Kara" to see what looks good and will actually transfer. Let me run through the major features you need to get started ripping.
Source: Next to the little director's clip on the top bar, there is the word Source. This is the first thing that you want to click. Now you have the choice of Video File, DVD/Video_TS Folder, or it will give you the option of selecting the Video_TS folder from the DVD itself. If you're just converting one file to another format, click Video File. If you're ripping like we are, then the second or third option is what you want to do, but you won't be able to use the Video_TS file from the DVD if the DVD is encrypted, so let's go to the DVD/Video_TS file.
Click on that, and go to where you saved your decrypted files from Step One. This will set the path.
Title: Another slight problem with Handbreak is that there's no real way to distinguish between titles at this point, save by runtime. Actually, it's pretty easy to figure out that there if you're ripping a movie that the longest runtime is going to be the feature film and the shorter ones will be extras. On a DVD with episodes, find out how long the episodes are, and they'll be in order under the Title dropdown menu. Usually these days with commercials, it'll run somewhere around 40ish minutes.
So pick your Title, and the Chapters (right next to it) will give you the range that you want to convert into a file. If you want them all, then just leave as is. It'll copy them all. If you just want a shorter clip, you can choose to do say from 1-3. Maybe you could use this to test quality or get shorter clips of the movie/show to upload. You also have the option to copy all four of the episodes at once into one ginormous file. Um, if you want to. I'm straining to think of a use.
Destination: Once you've set up the Source, you'll need to set the destination. Easily done, click on Browse next to the blank field and chose where you want it saved on your harddrive and give it a name.
Output Settings: You have several file formats to choose from, and if you want help, the side bar will guide you with presets such as iPod, Television. For our purposes, leave it at normal, and click on the dropdown. You have a choice of MP4, M4V, MKV, AVI, and OGM. For iPod you want M4V. For what we're doing, you want AVI. Click it.
Output Settings- Tabs: The tabs below the Output Settings dropdown are the trickiest part, because you can customize quite a lot. You can mess with the size and the aspect ratio, choose codecs and add in a second line of sound. Ignore most of those your first time through, and click on the second tab, which reads "Video."
From here you can choose a specific file size, set quality, or set the bitrate. You can also choose from three codecs. Xvid didn't work in MovieMaker for some reason, so I went with Mpeg-4 (FFmpeg). Overall, I'd probably choose Xvid if my program weren't insane, but the two look similar. The third option, H.246, is high quality but annoyingly large.
So select your codec and go to the information on the left. My suggestion is to leave the file size and bitrate, because this isn't that helpful to getting the best file. Instead, use the "quality" bar. You can slide it up as much as you want; however you shouldn't be fooled into thinking you want 100% quality, because that just means a bigger file. Especially, do not do 100% quality with H.246. At 70% a H.264 file is over a gig. Get it? So for what we're looking at, here's my suggestion:
AVI- Mpeg 4 (FFmpeg)- 85%
This will give you a decent quality file at 355MB. It takes half an hour to an hour to process.
This is how it worked for me, at least, barring any problems.