Planet Heck

Burning an avi to DVD (VOB) format, using DVDFlick

2009-07-19T16:07:00.010+01:00

The purpose of this beginner’s tutorial is to show how to convert and burn an avi film, into DVD (VOB) format (the normal DVD film format), on a blank or rewriteable DVD. There are commercial products available to do this, but this tutorial instead uses the freeware program DVDFlick.

Note that whilst this tutorial uses an avi format film as an example, DVDflick can do the same conversion and burning process to DVD (VOB) format, from many other container and codec types. See the following webpage for the most uptodate list of what is supported. - http://www.dvdflick.net/features.php

What you need
----------------
DVDflick - http://www.dvdflick.net/

About 12 GB free space available on a single harddrive.

Method
--------
1. Download and install DVDflick and accept the default settings, as given by the installer program.

2. Open DVDflick and you’ll see the main interface. (Image A)

Image A

3. Click “Browse” (Item 1, Image A) and select the directory where the DVD (VOB) version of your avi will be placed before burning. Note that the hard drive needs to have about 12 GB of free space available.

4. Next click “Add title” (Item 2, Image A) and select the film you want.

Image B

5. You’ll see the film you are converting and burning as item 1, Image B. (Note : If you have lots of short films then you can continue to add more titles by clicking item 2, Image A.) Examine the figure at Item 2, Image B, to ensure that you have enough spare hard disk space to cope with the amount that is required for the process. If you don’t have enough space then change the target directory (Item 3, Image B) to a hard drive and directory which does have enough free space.

6. Now double-click on the film (item 1, Image B) to access the film properties. You’ll get something like Image C.

7. Select the "General" Tab (Item 1, Image C).

Image C

8. Item 2 should contain the name of the avi. This isn’t the name the disc will have once burned. It is the name that the film will have on the DVD if you burn multiple films on the same disc. (e.g. if you had a few short films which you wanted to place on the same DVD in DVD (VOB) format, then this would be the name which showed up in the play menu for this title when you inserted the DVD in the player)

9. Item 3 is the target aspect ratio. The program will take the aspect ratio as specified by the avi properties. (e.g. the aspect ratio you see if you use Mediainfo or Gspot on the avi). If you know from your own experience of playing back the DVD that the aspect ratio of the avi is currently incorrect, then you can alter it to the correct one here.

If you are unsure what is meant by aspect ratio or how to go about finding what the correct aspect ratio is for a film, then look at steps 3 and 4 of the following tutorial.

http://planetheck.blogspot.com/2009/07/beginners-guide-to-correcting-video.html

10. Ignore the remaining settings on the "General" tab.

11. Now select the “Chapters” tab Item 1, Image D.

Image D

12. If you want to add chapters to your final DVD, just like on a commercial DVD, then tick the “Create Chapters” box and select the number of chapters you want. (item 2, Image D). I usually don’t bother doing this.

13. Next, select “Video sources”. (Item 1, Image E).

Image E

14. Beginners should leave items 2 and 3 (Image E) as they are.

15. Now select “Audio Tracks”, (Item 1, Image F)

Image F

16. As you can see from this example, there are two audio tracks in this avi (items 2 and 3). If you select the audio tracks one at a time then item 4, (Image F) will tell you what their language is.

If you want to keep all the audio tracks then no need to do anything else on this pane. You can usually switch between the multiple audio tracks on your DVD player using a button on the remote. (On my Philips model, the button is marked “Audio”)

If you want only a single audio track on the DVD, then highlight the audio track you don’t want and click “Remove” (Item 5, Image F). If both audio tracks show as the same language and you’re not sure which one is the one you want, then one of the audio tracks may be the actual dialog track and the other may be something like the director’s commentary. To figure out which is which, open the avi in VLC player (or any other player that allows switching between audio tracks), play the avi and switch between the different audio tracks using items 1 and 2, Image G). Track 1 as shown in Image G, will be the top audio track listed in Image F (i.e. Item 2)

Image G

17. When you’ve got the audio tracks the way you want them, then select the “Subtitles” tab (Item 1, Image H).

Image H

18. If you have a subtitle file you wish to add to the DVD (e.g. a .srt or idx/sub) then click “Add” (Item 2, Image H) and you can specify the file to add. You will also be able to change the subtitle display properties such as text color and position on screen.

19. When you’re satisfied that all the film properties (steps 6 -18) are set the way you want them, then click on “Accept” (Item 3, Image H)

20. The next step is to access the project settings. (Item 1, Image I).

Image I

21. Click the “General” tab. (Item 2, Image I).

22. If you want to save the project settings so that you can go back and look at them at a later date (e.g. if you want to produce a second copy of the DVD at a later date), then you can give the project a name at item 3.

23. In most cases, the target size, as shown, will be correct (i.e. 4.3 GB is the target size for DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW or DVD-RW). If you want to change the target size to something else (e.g. 800MB CD-R or 7.9 GB DVD DL) then you can do this at item 4, Image I.

24. For item 5, Image I, it’s best to leave the encoder priority at “Below Normal” if you want to use the PC to do other things while DVDFlick is doing the conversion and Burning. The higher you set the encoding priority, the faster the DVD will be produced, but the more sluggish your PC will become as you attempt to do other things, such as browsing the net. If you set the encoding priority at too high a level, the PC may actually stop responding and a restart may be required.

25. Beginners should leave item 6, Image I, as it is. DVDflick will automatically detect how many cores are in the PC’s processor and set the thread count accordingly. As you see from this example, I’m using an old PC with a single core processor.

26. Make sure that Item 7, Image I stays unticked, otherwise lots of temporary files will remain on your hard drive after the DVD has been produced.

27. Now select the “Video” properties. (Item 1, Image J).

Image J

28. The target format (Item 2, Image J)that you choose depends on the capabilities of your DVD player. If your DVD player only plays PAL, then choose “PAL”. If your DVD player only plays NTSC, then choose “NTSC”. If your DVD player can play both, then choose “Mixed” here. If you are unsure of the capabilities of your player then look at it’s user manual or, if you’ve lost your manual, search for your model number and “specifications” on the web.

29. The “encoding profile” (Item 3, Image J) determines the quality of the end result of encoding. “Normal” is the best setting to have here, to achieve the optimum tradeoff between speed and quality of the encoding process.

30. Leave the “Target Bitrate” at “Auto-fit”. (Item 4, Image J).

31. Beginners should leave the “Advanced” button alone. (Item 5, Image J).

32. The next step is to select the audio properties. (Item 1, Image K)

Image K

33. If you know that the volume of the audio track was too low on the avi, then you can increase the volume on the final DVD by increasing Item 2, Image K, to a higher value, say 150%.

34. Beginners should leave the “Channel Count” and the “Bitrate” at the “Auto” values, as shown by items 3 and 4, Image K.

35. The playback settings are next. (Item 1, Image L).

Image L

36. Items 2 and 3 should be left as shown. If you previously added subtitles to the project (step 18) and if you want these subtitles to automatically be displayed when the movie is played, then tick the box at item 4, Image L.

37. Now the “Burning” settings must be done. (item 1, Image M).

Image M

38. First tick the box “Burn Project to disc”. Item 2, Image M.

39. The “Disc Label” in Item 3, Image M, is the name you will see on the disc if you insert it into a PC , after it has burned. Normally best to set this to the name of the film, as shown.

40. For Item 4, Image M, if you have multiple DVD/CD burning units on your PC, then make sure you select the correct one which contains the disc you wish to burn to.

41. For Item 5, Image M, it’s best to select the lowest speed possible, to minimise the possibility of errors on the burned disc.

42. If you tick Item 7, Image M, then the contents of the burned disc will be compared with the copy of the DVD which DVDflick creates on your hard-drive and any errors in the burning of the disc will be notified to you.

43. Item 8, Image M, is fairly self explanatory and just opens the disc drive for you, after burning is complete.

44. When all the project settings (steps 20 – 43) are the way you want them, then click “Accept” (item 9, Image M).

45. Next, click “Create DVD”, Item 1, Image N.

Image N

46. If you see the message listed at Item 2, Image N, then copy anything that you wish to keep, from the listed destination folder, before clicking “Yes”.

47. The next thing you’ll see is image O.

Image O

48. Just make sure that there is either a blank disc, or a rewriteable disc whose contents you no longer want, in the drive specified by Item 4, Image M, before clicking “OK”.

49. You’ll now get a dialog box which shows the status of the conversion and burning processes. (Image P).

Image P

50. Again (as previously explained in step 24) you can adjust the process priority in order to speed things up. (Item 1, Image P). As explained previously, the higher the priority you set here, then the less responsive your PC will become.

51. Item 2, Image P allows you to set the PC to shut down or go into standby when the disc has finished burning. This is very useful if you decide to set all this running before going to bed at night.

52. When the burning stage of the process is reached, another program called “ImgBurn” is opened automatically by DVDFlick, in order to take care of the actual Disc burning. This is normal and you should leave the ImgBurn program alone if you want the Disc to be created successfully.

53. Note that the whole process can take a number of hours, since the film must be re-encoded to DVD (VOB) format, before burning can take place.

54. That’s it.

/heck

Previewing an avi, contained in rapidshare links

2009-07-15T14:18:00.019+01:00

Sometimes you find a film you want, as a set of RS links, without any encoding information. If you are reluctant to risk downloading the whole film, without having some idea of quality, then here’s a method to just download one part of it and play that part so you can get a good idea if the quality makes it worth your while downloading the whole thing.

What you need
----------------
Winrar - http://download.cnet.com/WinRAR/3000-2250_4-10007677.html

VLC player - http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html

Note SMplayer also seems to be able to play the movie fragments created by this method.

Method
--------
1. Download and install winrar, from the link above. Just accept the settings it gives you by default during installation. Download and install VLC player. 2. Download the first part of the film you want to test.

Image A

3. Double-click on the part of the torrent you’ve downloaded (Item 1, Image A).

4. Now, if the rar has a password, you’ll get the following password prompt, otherwise if no password then just jump to step

5. Just type in the password (Item 1, Image B) and then click “OK” (Item 2, Image B).

Image B

5. Winrar opens showing the contents of the rar file. (Image C)

Image C

6. Click the “Extract to” icon (Item 1, Image C). You’ll now get an options panel. (Image D).

7. Select the “General” tab (Item 1, Image D). Tick the box marked “Keep broken files”. (Item 2, Image D). Then click “Ok”, (Item 3, Image D).

Image D

8. The file(s) will now extract. (Image E)

Image E

9. Since you are only extracting part of the movie, from just one part of the archive, then when winrar is finished with the first part of the archive, you will get a prompt asking for the path to the next bit. ( Image F). Just click “Cancel”, (Item 1, Image F).

Image F

10. You will now get an error message, due to the fact that winrar thinks the archive is broken, since you’ve only supplied it with one part. Just click ”Close”, (Item 1, Image G).

Image G

11. If you now look in the directory where the first part of the rar was, you’ll see the directory containing the extracted files. (Item 1, Image H)

Image H

12. Enter that directory and just right-click on the film fragment and select “Play with VLC Media Player”. (Image I)

Image I

13. That’s it, the movie fragment will play and you can see if the quality of the film means it’s one you want to completely download.

/heck

Downloading Rapidshare files, with jDownloader 0.6.x, for Absolute Beginners

2009-07-14T19:29:00.023+01:00

This tutorial is aimed at complete PC novices. As such, for the purposes of simplicity in the installation of jDownloader , this tutorial avoids installation of a number of optional features and instead goes for a barebones installation of the application.

Note 1 : Steps 1 to 7 are only required for initial install of jDownloader. Thereafter, you begin at step 8 when you start up jDownloader.

Note 2: This application can work with download links provided by other link sites, which are similar to Rapidshare. Due to the constantly changing way these sites serve up their links, which ones are supported by the application can vary from day to day. e.g. sometimes Megaupload links work and other times they may not. Trying out a particular set of links is the only way to tell.

Method
--------
1. The first thing to do is to download "jDownloader".

http://jdownloader.org/download/index

This comes as as .zip so you need a program to extract the application itself. Download and install the trial version of winrar.

http://download.cnet.com/WinRAR/3000-2250_4-10007677.html

Now extract jdownloader using winrar (right-click on file -> Extract files).

2. Create a shortcut on your desktop, as shown below in Image A, so you can find the application easily in the future.

Image A

3. When you start it up, pick the language you want as shown in Item 1,image B.

4. Next you will have to select the download directory. This is the directory where the files pointed to by the file sharing links will be saved, as jDownloader fetches them, and also where the contents of these archived files will be extracted to. So just select a directory on a drive with lots of free space, as shown in Item 2, Image B. Then click “Ok", Image B.

Image B

5. Next you will be asked if you want to integrate jDownloader with your browser. Just select “Cancel” as shown in Image C.

Image C

6. You will now be asked if you want to install Click’n’Load. (Image D). Just select “Cancel”.

Image D

7. Sometimes there will be dialog boxes asking if you want to install updates (Image E), or saying that updates have been made (Image F). Just click “OK” for any of these dialog boxes which appear.

Image E

Image F

8. The main jDownloader interface opens up. (Image G). If any update dialog boxes appear, similar to those shown in Image E, then just click “OK”.

Image G

9. Go to the web page containing the links you want to download, select them all and also select the password, then right-click and select “Copy” (See Image H). Note down any password, as you may need it in a later step, if jDownloader doesn’t automatically recognize it as the password.

Image H

10. The Link Grabber in JDownloader automatically picks up the links you copied, inserts them in a package (item 1, Image I) and checks the validity of the links. Valid links will show as “online” in the “Status” Column. (see Image I) If the links don’t all show as online then don’t waste your time with that set of links, just right click on the link package, select “Delete” and go look for a valid set of links.

Image I

11. If the links don’t automatically get added to a package and instead look as in Image J, then just click Item 1 to create the package.

Image J

12. Now check that the archive password has been set by double clicking on the package name (Item 1, Image K). A dialog pane will appear at the bottom of the application. Item 2 (Image K), should have automatically received the password you copied in step 9. If the password is wrong or missing then just type it in. If you want to change location of archive download and extraction for this package, from the default location specified in step 4, then click the "Select" button and choose the new location (Item 3, Image K). Close the dialog pane by clicking item 4 (Image K).

Image K

13. If you have version 0.5.949 or later, then you can just click the blue "start download" triangle, at the top left of the application (circled in red, Image L), to move the package to the download window and then jump directly to step 14. If you have an earlier version then you must right-click on the link package again and select “Add selected package(s)” (Image L).

Image L

14. This will add the link package, and all the links within, to the download queue (Image M). If the links are from Rapidshare.com then before the download starts you must accept their “Terms of Service”, so select items 1 and 2 in Image M. Now select item 3 (Image M) to show the contents of the link package and how the download of each link is progressing.

Image M

15. The first link will now have to wait for approx. 2 minutes before download begins. Each subsequent link download will require a 15 minute wait before download can commence. This is limitation of downloading rapidshare links, without paying for a Premium Account. (Image N).

Image N

16. As the files associated with each link are downloaded you can see the progress for the group in the Download window of jDownloader. (Image O)

Image O

17. When all the links are downloaded the archived files will be automatically extracted to either the directory previously specified for the package (step 12), or the default directory given in step 4.

/heck

Setting a static IP on a PC, for port forwarding

2009-07-13T10:41:00.011+01:00

To set a static IP on a Windows XP PC, for the purposes of port forwarding, do the following.

Method
--------
1. Select "Start -> Run". Then type in "cmd" and hit enter.

2. You should get a black box you can type in.

Image A

3. Type the following after the command prompt (item1, Image A)

tracert www.google.com (note the space between tracert and www) and hit enter, and you'll get something that starts like the following

Image B

4. Note the IP address of the item on row 1 of results. That's your router's IP and your PC's static IP address will need to look like this, with only the last number changed. Pick a last number in the IP address, which is numerically distant from the router's number.

Note the allowed numbers are between 1 and 254, you can't use 0 or 255 as they are reserved. So, for example, if your router's IP is 192.168.0.1 then you will choose something like 192.168.0.100 for your PC's static IP.

5. At the bottom left of windows desktop, double click on your active (not the one with the red X) network connection. (item 1, Image C)

Image C

6. On "General Tab", select "Properties".

7. On "General Tab" (item1, Image D), scroll down list and double click on "Internet Properties (TCP/IP)" (item 2, Image D).

Image D

8. Select "Use the following IP address" (item 1, Image E)

9. The IP address you use must be on the same subnet as your router's address as provided in step 4. So if your router's address is 192.168.0.1 then you use 192.168.0.n where n is a number much higher than 1 but less than 255. In this case i'll just pick 100 at random. (item 2, Image E)

10. Type "255.255.255.0" as the subnet mask, if the PC doesn't automatically do it for you. (item 3, Image E)

11. Type the router address (192.168.0.1 in this example) as the "Default Gateway". (item 4, Image E)

12. Select "Use the following DNS server address" and type in the router address again. (item 5, Image E). Note your actual DNS server addresses should be set up in the appropriate part of your router's configuration.

Image E

13. Click "OK" then "OK" again.

14. Restart your PC.

15. Now in the router, forward the port(s) to the static IP you just set. How you do this depends on the make and model of your router/modem. Consult

http://portforward.com/ for details of how to do this for your specific router.

/heck

Removing black bands from an avi

2009-07-13T10:01:00.021+01:00

Here’s a solution for a common problem, where you find an avi film with large black bands taking up most of your viewing frame, left and right, top and bottom. In such a case, you may want to crop these bands from the film itself. This process will require re-encoding of the film, hence the need for the codecs listed below.

This is neither the definitive nor the only way to crop the black bands from a film. It’s just one of the ways I use, which seems the most suitable for beginners.

Re-encoding of AVIs (as you will be doing here) is frowned on by purists, as it can degrade avi quality. The steps I have outlined below are geared towards minimizing such degradation. All the same, some minor degradation in quality may occur. When you see the end result of your re-encode, you need to make a judgement call on whether the quality of the end product is still acceptable.

Note : This cropping is only worth doing if the black bands appear to a minimum of one side and at least one of either top or bottom. So no point in doing this if the black bands appear to the sides only (Image A) or to the top and bottom only (Image B). In both these cases cropping to remove the black bands will have no effect because the playback software will re-insert the black bands in order to maintain the aspect ratio.

Image A

Image B

What you need
----------------
VirtualDub

XVID codec, if re-encoding in XVID

DIVX codec, if re-encoding in DIVX

There are commercial products available which are dedicated to performing the cropping process. e.g. Vidcrop. I have chosen to use VirtualDub because of the free and open source nature of this product.

Method
--------
1. Open VirtualDub.

2. Open the avi you want using “File -> Open avi file”.

3. If you get the error shown in Image C, then continue to Step 4, otherwise jump to Step 5.

Image C

4. Deselect “Options -> Preferences -> AVI -> Warn when VBR audio is detected” (as shown in item 1, Image D) , then select “Save” (item 2, Image D) and repeat Step 2.

Image D

5. Select “Video -> Filters” and the “Filters” panel comes up. (Image E).

Image E

6. In this panel, select “Add” (item 1, Image E) then select “Null transform” (item 2, Image E) in the “Add Filter” panel as shown above.

7. Select “OK” then “OK” again (items 3 and 4, Image E) , as shown above.

8. Now select “null transform” (item 1, Image F) and then select “Cropping” (item 2, Image F), as shown below.

Image F

9. In the cropping panel shown below (Image G), first move the progress bar (item 1, Image G) until you get an image which clearly shows the positions of the black bars which you wish to crop. Now the edges marked as items 2,3,4 and 5, in Image G, can all be dragged in and out in order to define the image area you want to keep.

Image G

10. Now having finished your dragging, you should get something like the following image (Image H).

Image H

11. Select “OK” (Item 1, Image H) then “OK” again. 12. Now select “Video -> Compression”

Image I

13. Select the codec you wish to use (item 1, Image I). Most likely it will be either DIVX or XVID. Whichever one you select, the Configure button will allow you to change the encoding parameters, if you wish. Beginners should leave the DIVX configuration settings at their default values (See Note A). If you decide to select XVID then some changes may be required in the configuration, as outlined in later steps.

14. Then select “OK” in the “video compression” panel (item 2, Image I).

15. Now, if your codec is DIVX, select “File -> Save as avi” and pick the new save name. (Always keep the original file until you are absolutely sure it is no longer required. That way you can recover easily from any mistakes/errors that occur). Then jump straight to step 36.

16. If your codec is XVID select “File -> Save as avi”. Make sure you tick the box marked as item 1, Image M, so that the job gets added to the job queue, rather than being started immediately. (You need a new save name and the original movie file can’t be overwritten, as the original movie file is still required to run the second pass of the encoding). Pick the new save name (item 2, Image M), then click “Save”.( Item 3, Image M). If you see the following error (Image J), then you need to make some adjustments, as outlined below. If no errors, then jump to step 27.

Image J

17. To fix this, you need to go back a few steps .

18. Select “Video -> Compression” and then select “Configure” (item 1, Image K), as shown below.

Image K

19. The item marked 2, Image K, should be set to “Advanced Simple @ L5”.

20. The item marked with 3, Image K, has three options. “Single pass”, “Twopass – 1st pass” or “Twopass – 2nd pass”.

21. The error is caused by this being set to “Twopass – 2nd pass”, so instead select “Twopass – 1st pass”.

22. Now select the item marked 4, Image K. You will get the panel shown below. (Image L)

Image L

23. For item 1, Image L, select the location to write the stats file generated by Pass 1.

24. Tick the box marked 2, Image L, otherwise you get a large avi generated by Pass 1, which isn’t needed for Pass 2.

25. Then select “OK” in the two XVID configuration panels and then “OK” in the “video compression” panel.

26. Now select “File -> Save as avi”. Make sure you tick the box marked as item 1, Image M, below, so that the job gets added to the job queue, rather than being started immediately. (You need a new save name and the original movie file can’t be overwritten, as the original movie file is still required to run the second pass of the encoding). Pick the new save name (item 2, Image M), then click “Save”.( Item 3, Image M)

Image M

27. Now Select “Video -> Compression” again and then select “Configure” .

28. Make sure the item marked 1,Image N, is set to “Advanced Simple @ L5”.

Image N

29. The item marked with 2, Image N, should be set to “Twopass – 2nd pass”.

30. Now click item 3, Image N, and in the panel that opens, make sure that path to the stats file (Item 4, Image N) is the same as you had for Pass 1 i.e. same as for step 23.

31. Click “OK” to close this panel and in the panel behind, select the desired size for the final avi file in item 5, Image N. To minimize deterioration of image quality make this file size as close to the original avi size as you possibly can.

32. Click “OK” twice more.

33. Repeat step 26 but with a new filename. (You can’t use the filename of either the original nor the filename you used in step 26).

34. Now select “File -> Job control”.

Image O

35. The two passes of the XVID encoding are visible as two separate jobs. (Items 1 and 2, Image O). Just click the “Start” button (Item 1, Image O)to set it all in motion.

36. Depending on the speed of your PC, the encoding may take a few hours, after which you have your newly cropped avi.

NOTES:

A - A full treatment of the hows and whys, of configuration of encoding parameters, is way beyond the scope of a simple tutorial like this. Look at sites like forums.afterdawn.com and forum.doom9.org for a vast array of info on this subject.

/heck

Rip subtitles from a DVD.

2009-07-12T16:55:00.026+01:00

The purpose of this beginner’s tutorial is to show how to rip subtitles from a commercial DVD, on a Windows PC.

There are other, equally valid ways, to achieve the same result. This is just one way i've picked, which uses only freeware and open source software.

Note: Some users have reported errors occurring during avi generation due to the real time scanning part of their antivirus programs interfering with file access. If you experience such issues then, in order to get around this problem, you can temporarily disable real time scanning for the duration of the avi generation process.

What you need
----------------
Dvd Fab HD Decrypter - http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm

Subrip - http://zuggy.wz.cz/redir.php?co=21

About 10GB of free hard-disk space.

Method
--------
Note steps 1-5 are only required for initial setup of the DVDFab and Subrip applications. If this is already done, just jump to step 6.

1. First some preliminary work on for the application Subrip. Download Subrip from

http://zuggy.wz.cz/redir.php?co=21

This comes as as .zip so you need a program to extract the application itself. I use 7zip, 7zip (download the one marked 32-bit, exe) :

http://www.7-zip.org/download.html

which is free. But the trial version of winrar also works fine.

Now extract subrip using winrar (right-click on file -> Extract files) or using 7-zip (right-click on file -> 7-zip -> Extract files).

2. Create a shortcut on your desktop, as shown below in Item 1, Image A, so you can find the application easily in the future.

Image A

3. Now, to make things easier later on in the subtitle ripping process, download a file called a character matrix.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/mndwnjymyyt/ai4spam.rar

This is a .rar file, so use either winrar(right-click on file -> Extract files) or 7zip(right-click on file -> 7-zip -> Extract files) to extract the file contained within and place the extracted .sum file in the same directory as the subrip.exe file (Item 2, Image A)

The subtitle ripping process employs OCR (Optical Character Recognition) which means that subrip attempts to recognize a character/letter by examining it’s shape to see if it matches a shape the application already knows about.

The character matrix is an initial set of shapes matched to characters/letters which you load into Subrip, so that it automatically understands some characters/letters. Without this matrix, Subrip will ask you to type in the correct character/letter to match every shape it finds, even simple things like the letter “a”.

4. Open DVD Fab.

Image B

5. Select “HD Decrypter – Free Edition” (Item 1, Image B), tick the box “Do not show again” (Item 2, Image B) and then select “Start DVDFab”, (Item 3, Image B).

6. When the DVD Fab main window opens, insert the DVD film into drive.

7. Select the Region code (item 1, Image C) of the disc you want to decrypt and then select “OK” (Item 2, Image C).

Image C

8. Select “Main Movie” (item 1, Image D) and then select the “Target” (item 2, Image D) i.e. where you want to save the full size copy of the movie to. This copy of the movie can be used as the input to AutoGK, which would produce the actual avi file.

Image D

9. Select the video track with the longest play time. (item 3, Image D)

10. Select the audio track you desire. (item 4, Image D)

11. Select the sub-picture elements for the subtitle languages you want. (item 5, Image D).

12. Click on “Next” (item 6, Image D).

13. In the next window, select what you want to call the movie folder when it is ripped to your hard drive (Item 1, Image E) then click on “Start”. (Item 2, Image E)

Image E

14. The film will now be decrypted and copied to the target location. In the above example the target location will be "D:\uTorrentLaptopDownloads\MainMovie\RONIN69". i.e. the target location is made up of (item 2, Image D) plus ( Item 1, Image D ) plus ( item 1,Image E ). Inside this target location folder, VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders will be created, to contain the decrypted DVD format movie.

15. When you get the “Process Completed Successfully” dialog box, click “OK” and then click “Finish”.

16. Exit DVDFab HD Decrypter.

17. Start Subrip and select item 1, Image F.

Image F

18. Now on the next screen, select item 1, Image G.

Image G

19. You’ll now get a screen like Image H. For Item 1, select the VIDEO_TS folder where you ripped the movie to (step 14). Select the details view, as shown in Item 2, Image H. Select the largest size .IFO file. (item 3, Image H) Select “Open”. Item 4, Image H.

Image H

20. If you get a dialog box, like the one shown in Image I, then just click “OK”.

Image I

21. Now in the next screen select the language of the subtitles you want to rip. (Item 1, Image J).

Note that if the DVD doesn’t have any subtitles or if you didn’t select any subtitles during the DVD ripping process ( Item 5, Image D), then all the Language Stream options at Item 1, Image J will be empty. So you’d only see entries like “00- “, “01-“ , or “00- ??” with no languages specified. If this is the case, then there is no point in continuing any further with this method as there aren’t any subtitles to rip.

Image J

22. The next step is to select the character matrix file. Click on Item 1, Image K and select the “ai4spam.sum” file from the same directory as the “Subrip.exe” file. Then click “Start”, Item 2, Image K.

Image K

23. The application will now run and you’ll see the subtitle dialog from the film, pop up on screen as it is processed by the application. (Item 1, Image 7). You’d don’t do anything at this point, just let the application do it’s job, unless it asks you for something.

Image L

24. If the application finds a character which it doesn’t recognize (item 1, Image M) , then it will ask you to type it in (Item 2, Image M), then click “OK” (Item 3, Image M). This will be repeated for all letters/characters which the application doesn’t recognize. If you hadn’t loaded the character matrix in Step 22, then the application wouldn’t automatically recognise any letters/characters and you would have to do this step for every letter/character in the subtitles, which could take upto 30 minutes.

Image M

25. When the application finishes recognizing all the subtitles (i.e. Item 1, Image N reaches 100%), then save the subtitle file (Item 2, Image N) with the same name as the .avi file you want it to work with. So, if the avi is called “Ronin69.avi” then save the subtitle file as “Ronin69.srt”.

Image N

26. If whilst saving, you get the dialog box shown in Image O, just click “Yes”.

Image O

27. Now exit Subrip. If you get the following dialog box when exiting Subrip then click “Yes”. This updates the character matrix file with the characters you had to type in for this movie. If these characters appear in the next movie you rip subtitles for, then the application will automatically recognize them, as long as you’ve loaded the updated character matrix file.

Image P

28. That’s it.

/heck

Converting a DVD to an avi, for Complete Beginners

2009-07-11T16:12:00.018+01:00

The purpose of this beginner’s tutorial is to show how to convert a film on DVD to an avi on a Windows PC.

There are other, equally valid ways, to achieve the same result and there are commercial products available which both rip from the DVD and then also convert to avi. I have instead chosen to use only freeware and open source software for this tutorial.

Note: Some users have reported errors occurring during avi generation due to the real time scanning part of their antivirus programs interfering with file access. If you experience such issues then, in order to get around this problem, you can temporarily disable real time scanning for the duration of the avi generation process.

What you need
----------------
Dvd Fab HD Decrypter http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm
AutoGK (Full package) http://www.autogk.me.uk/
XVID codec http://www.koepi.info/xvid.html

About 10GB of free hard-disk space.

Method
--------
1. Open DVD Fab.

Image A

2. Select “HD Decrypter – Free Edition” (Item 1, Image A), tick the box “Do not show again” (Item 2, Image A) and then select “Start DVDFab”, (Item 3, Image A).

3. When the DVD Fab main window opens, insert the DVD film into drive.

4. Select the Region code (item 1, Image B) of the disc you want to decrypt and then select “OK” (Item 2, Image B).

Image B

5. Select “Main Movie” (item 1, Image C) and then select the “Target” (item 2, Image C) i.e. where you want to save the full size copy of the movie to. This copy of the movie will be used as the input to AutoGK, which will produce the actual avi file.

Image C

6. Select the video track with the longest play time. (item 3, Image C)

7. Select the audio track you desire. (item 4, Image C)

8. If you want subtitles also the select the sub-picture elements for the subtitle languages you want. (item 5, Image C). If you don’t want any subtitles from the DVD, then untick all the sub-picture elements.

9. Click on “Next” (item 6, Image C).

10. In the next window, select what you want to call the movie when it is ripped to your hard drive (Item 1, Image D) then click on “Start”. (Item 2, Image D)

Image D

11. The film will now be decrypted and copied to the target location.

12. When you get the “Process Completed Successfully” dialog box, click “OK” and then click “Finish”.

13. Exit DVDFab HD Decrypter.

14. Open AutoGK.

Image E

12. Click on the “Input file” icon. (item 1, Image E)

13. Now navigate to the VIDEO_TS folder generated by DVDFab HD decrypter. (item 2, Image E) This is inside the full size film folder created by DVDFab.

14. Select the .IFO file with the same name format as the .VOB files. (item 3, Image E). e.g. in the example in the above diagram the .VOBs are named in the format VTS_xx_y.VOB so you choose the .IFO with a name in the format VTS_xx_y.IFO

15. Open this IFO. (item 4, Image E)

16. Now select the “Output file” icon. (item 1, Image F)

17. Select the location to save your avi (item 2, Image F), give your avi a name and hit “Save”.

Image F

18. Now select the save size (item 1, Image G) below. There are many predefined sizes available here (e.g. 1 CD (700MB), 2CD (1400MB) or 1/5 DVD (896MB)) in a drop down list or you can also specify a custom size. Here's a rough rule of thumb for the rip size to use for movies/TV shows of different duration.

duration - Rip size
-------------------
30 mins - 200MB
60 mins - 400MB
90 mins - 700MB
120 mins - 950MB
150 mins - 1200MB
180 mins - 1400MB

19. Now select “Advanced Settings”. (Item 2, Image G).

Image G

20. In the “Advanced Options” panel ensure that Item 1 (Image H), is set to “Auto width”, item 2 (Image H) is set to “CBR MP3, kbps 128” and item 3 is set to “XVID”. As you can see, if you have a DIVX codec installed then you could also use this. Note you must have the pay version of the DIVX codec. The free one won't work. I’ve chosen the XVID codec for this tutorial, as I personally prefer the quality it gives and also due to the fact it is open source.Now click “OK”.

For item 2 (Image H), if the film is an old Black and White and not a musical, then 80 Kbps audio is adequate. This results in better video quality for a given rip size. Also to note for item 2, if you use VBR audio instead of CBR, then you will get better video quality for a given rip size, due to the fact that the audio will take up less MBs, but the avi may not be playable in some standalone DVD players.

Image H

21. It is possible to access a set of “Hidden Options” in AutoGK by pressing “Ctrl-F9” but we’ll leave these alone for this beginner's tutorial.

22. Select the audio track, (item 1, Image I) then select “Add Job” (Item 2, Image I) and then select “Start” (item 3, Image I).

Image I

23. Now you just wait for the encoding to finish and you have your avi film.

Note, that AutoGK opens other programs and windows during the course of it's encoding process. This is perfectly normal, so don't close any of these other windows/programs or you may interfere with the encoding process.

/heck

Beginner's guide to correcting video aspect ratio

2009-07-10T15:22:00.066+01:00

This tutorial is aimed at novice PC users. It's purpose is to show how the Display Aspect Ratio (DAR) of an avi film can easily be changed using freeware, without re-encoding the film.

Note : You need Microsoft .NET Framework 2 installed to use this tool.

Method
-----------
1. The first thing to do is to download "MPEG4Modifier".

http://moitah.net/download/latest/MPEG4Modifier.zip

This comes as as .zip so you need a program to extract the application itself. I use 7zip,

7zip (download the one marked 32-bit, exe) :

http://www.7-zip.org/download.html

which is free. But the trial version of winrar also works fine.

Now extract MPEG4Modifier using winrar (right-click on file -> Extract files) or using 7-zip (right-click on file -> 7-zip -> Extract files).

2. Create a shortcut on your desktop, as shown below in Image A, so you can find the application easily in the future.

Image A

3. First let’s look at our example video with the incorrect DAR. It’s always best to pick a point in the film when actors are visible, in order to make a decision on whether the DAR is incorrect. See Image B

Image B

As you can see there is clearly a problem here, as the actors’ features are lengthened (stretched) vertically. The other possible problem you might see would be that the features were stretched horizontally. Regardless of which problem you see, the solution is to correct the DAR.

4. Now we need to determine what the correct DAR should be. Here are two approaches.

(a) Open the film in VLC player (or any other player that allows you to change aspect ratio) and adjust the DAR until you get a picture that looks right. See Image C.

Image C

or (b) Look up the aspect ratio in IMDB.

Whether you use a or b, make note of the correct aspect ratio. You’ll need it later.

5. Start MPEG4Modifier. Browse (Item 1, Image D) until you find the film and then click “Open”. You should see the film loading (Item 2, Image D).

Image D

6. Now select the correct DAR (Display AR), as you noted in step 4. This will either be one of the four standard preset DARs provided by the tool, or else you will need to use the Custom option (Items 1 and 2, Image E).

Image E

Now save the film with the new corrected DAR. (Item 3, Image E).

7. Make sure to save as a new filename, just in case anything goes wrong. (Items 1, 2 Image F). That way you still have the original to work on again.

Image F

8. All going well, you’ll now see the progress bar as the corrected film is saved. (Image G)

Image G

9. When this finishes you should get a message “Video has been saved successfully”. Just click “Ok” and exit the program.

Image H

10. If you now play the corrected film you should have the proper DAR. (See Image H)

/heck