Copy your DVD into DivX format - Guide for 4:3 movies
This guide is no longer maintained. It is stored mainly for future historians to investigate. For more up-to-date information, please see our other guides.
NOTE! This guide contains few errors and therefore you should use 16:9 guide instead. For 4:3 movies, change the resize to 640x480 for NTSC movies and 640x512 for PAL movies, otherwise follow the 16:9 guide as it is. 16:9 guide can be found from here
This guide is an alternative to my previous DVD to VideoCD guide. Only real difference between these two guides is the format that we are using in here. So, now I suggest you to decide whther you want to use DivX4 or VideoCD format for your backup copying:
- DivX4 offers extremely good video quality when one average-length movie is stored in 2 CDs, but in other hand, DivX movies can't be used with stand-alone DVD players.
- VideoCD quality can be compared to VHS quality -- and I don't mean your personal TV recordings, but to those brand-new VHS cassettes that you buy from video stores. DivX quality is significantly better anyway, but in other hand, VideoCD discs can be played back with almost any regular stand-alone DVD player.
So, if you wish to create VCD, read this guide instead, but if you prefer DivX, continue reading this one.
Aspect ratio
Ok, now you need to check the back of your DVD movie in order to see what aspect ratio the movie has, because we have three different guides for three different aspect ratios. So, once you've found your aspect ratio, make your selection:
4:3 aspect ratio - continue reading this one
16:9 (anamorphic) aspect ratio - please go to this guide
Requirements
Ok, I try to make this guide a no-brainer, but unlike in VCD, good quality DivX encoding requires more tweaking and thinking. First of all, I really recommend that you encode DivXs with fast PC, as the process is _slow_. Then, you need helluva lot of free HDD space -- not hundreds of megs, but appx. 7-10 gigabytes of free HDD space for this process. And finally, in hardware section, you need to have DVD-ROM drive.
Then, you need to have bunch of free tools for this process, you can download them from here:
- DVD2AVI
- VFAPI Reader Codec
- DV-Tool
- DivX 5 Codec
- VirtualDub
- LAME ACM Codec (included in LAME's package)
You might also need some sort of a DVD ripping software.
The process
In this guide we aim to create a DivX backup of DVD movie encoded with DivX4's 2-pass technique and with LAME's MP3 encoding algorithms and to adjust the data consuming so that the movie would fit perfectly on two regular 74 minute CDs. Some people prefer encoding videos to one CD, but that is a significant compromise on quality and we wont do that in here.
DVD ripping


DVD2AVI

Creating a DVD2AVI project

Hit F5 and DVD2AVI starts previewing the movie. Just let it run for few seconds -- you should see a statistics box to appear next to the main window and information should appear in the boxes soon after this. After you see text in most of the boxes, click Esc in order to stop the previewing. Now, write these things down to a paper: Video type (PAL or NTSC), Frame type (progressive, interlaced, etc), Aspect ratio (16:9 or 4:3) and Frame rate (29.97fps for NTSC, 25fps for PAL and 24fps for NTSCFilm).
DVD2AVI audio settings

Now, still from Audio menu, select 48 -> 44.1 and choose High or UltraHigh. After this, go to Dolby Digital menu and select Decode and Dolby Surround Downmix.
Save the project
Now you just go to File menu and select Save project and choose the destination -- note that this destination should have appx. 1.5GB of free HDD space because the decoded WAV is going to be stored in that directory. Decoding and creating the .d2v project file takes about an hour with P3/800.
VFAPIConvert

Convert .d2v to pseudo-AVI

DV-Tool

VirtualDub

Now, go to Audio menu and select WAV Audio and load the WAV file DVD2AVI created for you in project saving phase. After that's done, select Full processing mode from Audio menu and then select Compression.
From Compression menu, you should select MPEG-3 (dumb name as it really is MPEG-1 Audio Layer III). This is kinda tricky one, because you might have more than one entry in the codec list with name 'MPEG-3'. Click first one and you should see the available formats in smaller box appearing -- if formats have (Lame) after their specifications, you've found the correct codec; if not, try the other one. If none of the MPEG-3 codec have this addition in their available formats, you haven't installed LAME codecs correctly.
Anyway, select the one that says 160Kbit/sec, 44.1KHz, stereo -- this produces very good quality audio and is more than suitable for most of the movies (in case of musicals, I recommend using 192Kbit/sec). After you've selected this one, click OK.
Basic video settings

DivX4 2-pass, first pass settings

Inverse Telecine (IVTC) if video is in NTSC format

Inverse telecine is used to avoid audio synch problems with NTSC material to convert the video back to its original source framerate (23.976). Go to Video menu and select Frame rate. Leave the Frame rate conversion as No change and in Inverse telecine selection, select Reconstruct from fields - adaptive. After you've selected this one, just click OK to close the window.
Crop the video
Ok, now we need to get rid of the unnecessary black lines in the video -- normally there's only few pixels, but it takes up space anyway. Go to Video menu and select Filters. You see your filter list in here. Now, click Add and select Null transform filter from the list and click OK. Back in the filter window, click Cropping.. and you get into a window that allows you to get rid of the unnecessary parts of the picture.
Use the four adjusters to cut off the black lines of the video. Don't crop other than the black lines!. You should be able to figure out this one pretty easily -- use the slider in the bottom to view some frame from the middle of the movie so you can see the picture clearly. Once you've made your adjustments, click OK (note: if you use some small resolution, you might not see the OK button -- it is in the bottom of the window, so change your resolution to a higher one, 1280x1024 is good for this one) and you're back into filter list.
Deinterlace
If your video is in interlaced mode -- you should have seen this from DVD2AVI -- you need to deinterlace it, otherwise you can skip this part. Now, select Add again and from the filter list select Deinterlace and click OK. VirtualDub opens a small window for you to select the deinterlacing method. Select Blend fields together (best) because it really is the best method :-) Then just click OK.



Save the first pass

The second pass


Splitting the file

This part will be added shortly.
Written by: Petteri Pyyny