DVD to AVC with MeGUI Part 1

The development of the x264 encoder has made it possible for almost anyone to convert their DVD collection into high quality MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video. For most of us, taking advantage of this great tool means finding a GUI that brings together x264 and the required helper applications without requiring weeks of studying guides and documentation. MeGUI is an excellent tool, or rather toolkit for this.

Why 3 Guides?

You may have noticed that this guide is actually in 3 parts and been a little concerned about the level of difficulty. While its true there are a lot of settings to look at, many of them can be set once and never changed. Others will vary only occasionally. It also helps that you can prepare a large number of jobs for MeGUI to perform as a batch, or even automate encoding to a large degree once you're comfortable you're using the desired settings.

The MeGUI Toolkit

Rather than thinking of MeGUI as simply a video encoder you should think of it as a toolkit where the tools can be adjusted to your exact specifications. Rather than requiring you to download DGIndex to read your DVD VOBs, x264 to encode the video, and mkvmerge to create your output file it does all of those things for you and provides a custom interface designed in part to flow seamlessly from one step to the next.

In this series of guides we'll look at how to configure the MeGUI tools for DVD backups intended for viewing from a PC, either on a monitor or TV. If you're encoding for a portable media player or some other specialized device you'll need to use slightly different settings, such as choosing a device specific video encoding profile and resolution.

Required Software
	MeGUI MeGUI is a front end, or GUI, for encoding MPEG-4 video using XviD or x264, as well as a variety of audio formats. MeGUI can be used to convert nearly any source to a MKV or MP4 file which can be played on a large number of consumer electronics devices ranging from mobile phones to the latest generation of DVD players. MeGUI's automatic update feature will install the necessary DGIndex and DGDecode files used for reading DVD sources. To get started with MeGUI you can read our guide on MeGUI Installation and Configuration.
	AviSynth AviSynth is a powerful open source editor, commonly used to provide input for encoders such as Cinemacraft Encoder for MPEG-2 and x264 for AVC. Although not required for the steps in this guide, in order to continue to the next guide (or encode with MeGUI at all) you'll need to have AviSynth installed. You can find more information on AviSynth in our guide on Using AviSynth 2.5. It includes not only basic instructions for AviSynth, but also descriptions of a number of built-in filters, as well as third party plugins.