Ripping DVD for playback on iPAQ

[joohang]

I'd normally post this at the Software forum but many of you who are knowledgeable do not frequent over there, so I post it here.

I want to rip A Beautiful Mind off my DVD and play it on my iPAQ.

So far, I used SmartRipper to rip the first 2 .vob files to experiment.

1) I used DVD2AVI to decrypt it into uncompressed AVI then I took it to Windows Media Encoder and tried both 250 Kbps and 500 Kbps encoding. They didn't play very well on the iPAQ. Looked like the movie clip demanded too much power from it.

2) I am now using Xmpeg to decrypt the VOB and encode it into Microsoft MPEG4 v2.0. I got an 18-minute (320x240) clip at 35 megs. I haven't decided what to do with this. I'm just going to experiment with different options.

My questions:
1) I did run some searches for older threads on this, but I didn't find a clear answer. How do I merge the separate .vob (or maybe the decrypted .avi) into one large file?
2) My DVD rip seemed to produce very low volume audio. Is there a way to rip it with higher volume?
3) What is the most suitable codec and setting for playback on a PocketPC?
4) Does PocketDivX work well? Is DivX a better option than WMV in this case?
5) Which tools shall I use for best performance? Here are my system specs:
Tyan Tiger MP
2x Athlon MP 1.2 GHz
512MB Registered ECC PC2100
20GB Maxtor
Matrox G450DH

I plan to add 1 or 2 Seagate Barracuda 80GB drives to the rig in the near future. I should expect some better performance if I rip and encode on separate hard drives, right?

I do play to do this more often to kill time in those 1-hour bus rides to UBC when school starts, so it'd be nice to get a hold of software that is optimized for dual Athlons or be aware of some tips on how to do this quickly at a decent quality.

Thanks.

 

[777php]

I remember ripping a divx to play on my iPaq but it was a while ago. I think it entailed ripping the video and audio separately and then combining them later. I'll look through my archives of software to see which ones I used.

 

[joohang]

Originally posted by: 777php
I remember ripping a divx to play on my iPaq but it was a while ago. I think it entailed ripping the video and audio separately and then combining them later. I'll look through my archives of software to see which ones I used.

Cool. Thanks.

Was there a reason why you ripped them separately?

 

[deftron]

Go here

 

[TNTrulez]

Originally posted by: deftron
Go here

 

[TNTrulez]

Does iPAQ support DIVX?

 

[777php]

Originally posted by: joohang

Originally posted by: 777php
I remember ripping a divx to play on my iPaq but it was a while ago. I think it entailed ripping the video and audio separately and then combining them later. I'll look through my archives of software to see which ones I used.

Cool. Thanks.

Was there a reason why you ripped them separately?

I followed some online tutorial, it was a loooong time ago but, I'll try to find it for you.

 

[joohang]

Originally posted by: deftron
Go here

Thank you.

I did discover that high FPS was one of the problems. I originally encoded at 30 FPS that was way too much for iPAQ. I set it at 15 FPS and it played much smoother.

The quality was pretty bad though. I didn't notice the limitations of my iPAQ LCD that much with Dragon Ball but it was pretty bad with real movies.

 

[stonecold3169]

with the newest version of pocket Divx you should be able to go with 23.97 fps, which should look like areal movie to you.

Typically, when ripping the movie most people demux the tracks so you get the movie files, and then you get the audio ac3 files. After that people rip the ac3 files to mp3 using BeSweet or other similar tool, where you can adjust the volume (dvd is recorded very low for more consistant sound).

What I suggest is using smartripper, then in DVD2AVI demux all of the tracks. Then use the VFAPI converter, open the file up in TMPEG encoder, and do a divx rip that way. Your quality should be quite a lot better, although filesizes typically will be a bit larger.

If you need any more info, drop me a pm and I'll see what I can do!

 

[ATLien247]

Originally posted by: stonecold3169
with the newest version of pocket Divx you should be able to go with 23.97 fps, which should look like areal movie to you.

Typically, when ripping the movie most people demux the tracks so you get the movie files, and then you get the audio ac3 files. After that people rip the ac3 files to mp3 using BeSweet or other similar tool, where you can adjust the volume (dvd is recorded very low for more consistant sound).

What I suggest is using smartripper, then in DVD2AVI demux all of the tracks. Then use the VFAPI converter, open the file up in TMPEG encoder, and do a divx rip that way. Your quality should be quite a lot better, although filesizes typically will be a bit larger.

If you need any more info, drop me a pm and I'll see what I can do!

Damn... that sounds confusing!

Maybe it would be easier to buy a portable DVD player, eh?

 

[Shagger]

Maybe it would be easier to buy a portable DVD player, eh?

This reminds me of the guy going online to order a pizza because the phone is too low-tech. Perhaps the portable DVD player is too low tech? Or too much $$$?

 

[ElFenix]

i would have thought it was impossible, your processor not fast enough, not enough storage on an ipaq, but i guess i'm wrong.

 

[stonecold3169]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
i would have thought it was impossible, your processor not fast enough, not enough storage on an ipaq, but i guess i'm wrong.

Well, you have 206 mhz to work with. The big thing is it works kinda like a videogame system does. You may have inferior specs, but if you program something specific for it, because all of them are the same, you can use every speed tweak effectively, making things work.

Storage is a problem, but with, say, a 4gb pc card hdd, that problem goes away