Tutorial: Beginner’s Guide to Ripping Movies
There are 2 main sections to this tut. They are:
• Section One: Ripping a DVD to your harddrive
• Section Two: Encoding it to avi format
If you use this tut, you will need the following programs (all latest versions). 3-4 mirrors are provided for each program:
DVDDecrypter 3.5.4.0 (859KB)
http://rapidshare.com/files/11335989/SetupDVDDecrypter_3.5.4.0.rar
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9TMNYH6B
http://d01.megashares.com/?d01=581e306
Auto Gordian Knot (AutoGK) 2.40 (9MB)
http://rapidshare.com/files/11339275/AutoGordianKnot.2.40.Setup.rar
After you have downloaded the above and installed them, you can proceed.
Note: When installing, there are no special options or anything you need to worry about, just keeping clicking Next.
Section One: Ripping a DVD to your harddrive
• First step is to insert the DVD into the DVD drive. For this tut, the example I will be doing is the movie Con Air (1994) with Nicolas Cage.
• After a while, the autorun Windows box will appear asking what action you wish to take. Select Decrypt DVD Video and click OK.
• If the box doesn’t appear, simply open DVDDecrypter and it will automatically select the dvd drive with the dvd in it.
• You will see a list of all the dvd files, made up of .ifo .vob and .bup files, on the right side of the program. Since we are only interested in the movie and not the menu’s or extra’s etc, select Edit along the top menu and click Select Main Movie Files.
• Only the files related to the main movie will be highlighted. DVDDecryptor will automatically select the destination of the rip based on which harddrive has the most remaining space left. You can of course click the little folder and choose your own destination, keeping in mind there should be at least 7GB of space available.
• Click the large button in the bottom left (the one with a pic of a CD, a green arrow and a harddrive) to begin the rip.
• The program will now begin ripping the movie onto your harddrive.
• It depends on the movie but for Con Air, it took about 13 minutes. When it is done, it will display a message box stating the Operation was Successfully Completed and that’s the end of the first section.
Section Two: Encoding it to avi format
• First, open up AutoGK.
• Click the folder icon next to Input file and locate the folder DVDDecryptor ripped the movie to.
• Now select the file that ends with the .IFO extension and click Open.
• Now specify an output file (by clicking the little folder and clicking Save).
• Under Audio tracks you can choose which to include and which to exclude. I only want the English 6 channel track so I don’t have to do anything. You can also include subtitles but again this doesn’t interest me.
• As you can see in the screen shot, just below the Output file, the movie goes for ~1 Hour 50 Minutes. As a general rule I like to use, if the movie is shorter than 1:50, I rip to 1 CD (700MB) size and if the movie is 1:50 and greater I rip to 2CD (1400MB) size.
• So for Con Air I will be ripping to 2 CD’s. As this is the default setting in the Predefined size, I don’t have to change it.
Side Note
For a 2 CD encode such as this one, the default setting will be that the audio will remain original from the DVD, in this case 5.1 Channel AC3 surround sound, and not converted. For a 1 CD encode, the audio will automatically be converted to 2 channel MP3 at 128 kbps.
• If you click Advanced Settings you can see some…well…advanced settings. This doesn’t concern us, as long as the Auto width, Auto and XviD settings are checked.
Side Note
You could of course rip in DivX instead of XviD but I personally prefer XviD. Why? Three main reasons:
• It arguably gives better quality and encodes faster than DivX
• It’s free, unlike DivX
• It is the scene standard
• It is now time to start the encode. To do this, click Add Job then Start.
• How long it takes greatly depends on your computer specs. I have a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ and it took 2 Hours 20 Mins to rip Con Air and this is about typical for my PC.
• Various things will pop up (but in minimised state) during the encoding. You can just ignore these, but do not close them. You can check the progress of the rip by browsing through the log window. Once it is finished it will say Job finished along with the total time it took at the bottom of the log.
• AutoGK will automatically split the 1400MB movie into two 700MB files.
• Before continuing, I would recommend you open the movie and watch a few random parts for a couple of minutes, just to ensure the rip went according to plan and that no audio is out of sync. Testing it now could save a lot of time later down the track.
