Good God..I can rip a DVD in real time:)

[GL]

First off...system specs:

Celeron 433 o/c to 541
Asus P2L97 (circa 1997)
128 MB RAM
Quantum LM 30 GB
Hollywood+
el-cheapo AimsLab VHXtreme capture card
Win2K
WinVCR 2.0 Pro

I plugged the s-video out from the H+ to the s-video in of the Aimslab card. I then used WinVCR 2.0 to capture in real-time either MPEG1, MPEG2, or ASF files...as easy as that. I also am managing to watch video through the H+ on the monitor without a passthru because I have the capture card. Damn this is gonna be sweet I'll be able to backup entire DVDs onto a single CD

Anybody else try this? The quality of MPEG2 is the best - 352x240 and 256Kbps audio. So there is a degradation of the DVD video, but it's still pretty good (equivalent to VHS, although the audio is much better).

Damn I'm happy Course, I'm not doing anything illegal...I've only been ripping my own DVDs (serious...no sarcasm here).

-GL

 

[NFS4]

"This is Bobby from Blockbuster, uhhhh what are you doing with our DVD?"

 

[toph99]

MPEG4 is coming out, or is already out(not sure) compresses the video enough so that you can burn it onto a normal cd-r

 

[Soybomb]

Now lets see you make it into a divx movie in real time

 

[GL]

I spend CDN$50 on this TV-tuner card 2 years ago...it doesn't even have Win2K support...I'm using these haxored-up generic Brooktree drivers that seem to work better than the real ones (Aimslab...the mfr. went out of business). Man if I get a good capture card that can do 640x480, the quality will be so much better. I wonder if anybody's done this before...I had been thinking of doing it for a while but couldn't get the tuner card to work in win2k. Now that I had it working I thought I'd use this rainy-afternoon to experiment.

The only downside is that I'll have to rip in MPEG1 or ASF to get the DVD onto a single or double CD. MPEG2 will still be a couple of gigs I think (I've only ripped the trailers off of Terminator 2).

BTW, WinVCR has great functionality but it tends to be quite buggy.

-GL

 

[JPT]

MPEG4 is MUCH better than that. Of course it takes a little longer to do, but the quality is well worth it. If you compress to about the size of two cds you get near dvd quality!

 

[GL]

Isn't MPEG4 merely the MS ASF codec...or the ASF codec some molested version of MPEG4? WinVCR does realtime ASF encoding too....maybe I could make a pseudo-MPEG4.

MPEG2 is better quality than MPEG4 btw. Don't let anyone tell you that a DiVX is as good as a DVD (encoded in MPEG2). I've done the comparisons: DVDs win hands down. Of course, DiVX is still very good considering it's size.

-GL

 

[beat mania]

gah, I can do that with a vcr

 

[AznMutt]

but why would you wanna convert it to analog (VCR) where you can go digital like what GL did...heh

 

[Soybomb]

Anybody want me to post some links and a short tutorial up on how to rip from a DVD, to your hardrive, then encode it as an mpg5 (Divx) avi?

 

[dl]

cool!

 

[Viper Frag]

Cool man.

 

[Zucchini]

asf is based on mpeg4 Divx is much better for dvd ripping, any lower quality then that is a waste of time. may as well just buy the dvd

 

[Soybomb]

To my understanding Divx, IS a hacked mpg4, close enough you might as well call them the same.
Go to Gej's Site if you want the Divx codec that media player will want to play the movies. Look at some of the trailers there if you want examples of the quality.

If you want to actually encode your own divx movies I suggest going
here and finding links to software that you will allow you to rip and encode, its just like making mp3's from cds, except when you rip the dvd it can take alot more than 650 megs of your hard drive

 

[GL]

Yeah I gotta agree with you now Zucchini. If I watch the recorded video and original DVD on the TV, the difference isn't too much noticeable. But on the monitor, DVD clearly puts the smack down on the MPEG 1 or 352x244? MPEG 2 streams. I tried realtime encoding ASF and there were dropped frames I'm mainly using the capture card as a digital VCR (like a Tivo I guess...we can't get that service up here in Canada yet). For that application it is pretty much unmatched - I've got about 25 GB of space to use for video which should provide me with many more hours of footage than a standard VCR.

The reason I wanted to try and rip my own DVDs is in case I ever wanted to bring some of the movies I have on DVD, over to my girlfriend's house. She has no DVD but her dad's laptop has TV-out and can do MPEG 1 video really nicely. It would work wonders in that respect. But for true quality, nothing beats full blown MPEG 2 unless you're talking uncompressed video

-GL

 

[beat mania]

AznMutt: In case you didn't notice, he's plugged the svideo from the H+ to his capture card. svideo is already analog. Its not really ripping digitally.

This is like pluging the analog audio out from your cd player into your computer and record the wave and calling it ripping a cd.

 

[GL]

The only reason I did things this way (I realize it's digital to an analog format...encapsulated in a digital format I guess!) is because I wanted the video to fit on a single CD. All the divx movies I've seen that fit on a CD are comparable in quality to the MPEG1/MPEG2 streams that this setup produces. Plus, encoding to divx would take a lot of time I've heard.

I need some tutorials though on ...
1) Ripping from a DVD
2) encoding ripped video to divx

-GL

 

[Soybomb]

GL just go to that site that I gave and download a ripper and compressor and play around. I have many movies ripped to cd in divx format and the quality is quite excellent. I'll admit its not dvd, but it blows away VHS usually....

edit: I will admit though you better have something to do like sleep while it encodes

 

[Stark]

I'm not a fan of Pabst blue ribbon, but sometimes Tom has a good article or two. Forget about mp3, the next wave will be high quality movies over the internet.

 

[The Wildcard]

Hmm am i mistaken or is 352 x 240 a small resolution??

 

[JPT]

Check this place...