- vts_03_1.vob
- vts_03_2.vob
- vts_03_3.vob
- vts_03_4.vob
- vts_03_5.vob
Save the file as whatever you like and put a
.lst extension on it. For example, save the file as "divx.lst", but please
remember to add the quotation marks to force the text editor to save the file as .lst,
otherwise it will save it as divx.lst.txt or divx.lst.doc or whatever and it wont work!
Now instead of choosing the Vob file in the
input box (E) you just select the divx.lst file instead. All the files inside the list
will be encoded and joined together into one whole file!
Converting the
Divx Audio
The audio, strangely enough, has always been
the most difficult part of this process. Often you can just use ac3dec as I mentioned in
the previous tutorial and it will work fine. However, sometimes you will get some bad
audio with garbage in it. I will therefore spend some time explaining the various methods
people use to get correct audio. One of the simplest is to use Total Recorder 2.2.
The Total Recorder Audio Method
If you have a copy of Total Recorder 2.2
there is an easy way to grab the audio track with perfect sound from a DVD. Go into
Options > 'Recording source parameters...'
Now select the Software accelerated
recording/converting option and also check the Max Speed option.
Once you have done this press the red
recording button at the bottom. Don't worry it will not record until you start your DVD
player. Now open your favorite software player. Put in the DVD you wish to rip the audio
from, and also select the language you wish use in its settings. When you are ready press
play! The DVD player will suddenly kick into fast motion and within minuets you will have
recorded the whole film. The Total Recorder program will automatically stop as soon as the
DVD player does making the timing practically perfect! This method can be used to record
at fast speed just about any sound that is played on the computer.
When you have finished recording just choose
Save as.. and select where you wish to save the wav file. Version 2.2 can record at 48000
hz but using 44100 Hz on the previous version will be just as good for Divx purposes. Once
finished go to Step 3. Sticking the Audio & Video Together to see how to make your
finished file.
Note: if it starts to work fine and then
you get nothing but garbage for sound this is because you have a messed up cracked version
of Total Recorder. You need to fully register the version of Total Recorder which requires
a serial number for it to work correct. Most cracks will cause this security measure.
The Extracting the AC3 File and using
Ac3fix and Ac3dec Method
This is the old method that assumes that you
have a bad ac3 file and you need to fix the sound before you can convert it into a wav
file. You will know if it is a bad file because it has parts in it where it sounds like
the TV white noise. You need to extract the files and fix them individually. To do this
run Vobsnoopy and select File > Open and then check the 'Audio *.M2A. *.MPA, *.AC3 or
*.Wav' check box. Press okay and select where on your hard drive to save your *.AC3 files.
If you have more than one language it will ask you to save each one separately too.
If you don't have Vobsnoopy you can use
MpegUtils or Vstrip or whatever you like, but I think Vob Snoopy is the best ;). To use
MpegUtil's open the Vob file. Press the Check File button, wait for it to read the file.
Now press the Ac3 Demux button and extract the Ac3 file to your hard drive. I won't
describe how to use every program because there are too many and there is no need.
Fixing the Extracted AC3 File
To make things even easier for you make
another folder on your hard drive called ac3file. Now we must resort to the command line
prompt. Sorry, there is no GUI for Ac3 Cut Frame, so now is the best time to learn. Copy
the folder AC3-Fix and Ac3 Cut-Frame to your main drive (usually the C: drive). To make
things simpler rename the folders to ac3fix and ac3cut so it follows this tutorial
correctly. Go to Start Menu > Run and type Command.com to bring the DOS Prompt up ie:
Type the following:
CD\ (and Press Enter)
CD ac3fix (and Press Enter)
ac3fix C:\ac3file\audio00.AC3
C:\ac3file\audio01.AC3
Remember to change the filename to the actual
audio file you extracted. If ac3fix encounters any bad frames it will be a corrected. Try
this twice since sometimes it will say it is fixed but it wasn't enough. If there are no
bad frame you are done and can convert the ac3 audio. If it is still bad run ac3cutframes
on it and save the 'fixed' file. Only use ac3cutframes if you really need to because it
must clip parts of the audio to fix it. To use ac3cutframes is the same as using ac3fix,
type the following using the quotation marks:
"ac3cutframes" C:\ac3file\filename.AC3
C:\ac3file\filename2.AC3
If you cannot understand the above then you
shouldn't be trying this method of copying DVD stick to Flask Mpeg!
Converting the Fixed AC3 Audio to Wave
Now lets use the Graphical User Interface
(GUI) again for ac3dec. Click on the ac3dec button (1). Select the location of the ac3dec
program in the first button of (2). Then select the first .ac3 audio file you wish to
encode by clicking the input button (2). And again select where you want to save it (2).
If you select the vob file instead of the
.ac3 file you can select the language stream (ie. German, English etc.) if others exist.
To do this choose a stream (4). Usually 'Language 0' is English and the next ones are
foreign.
By numbering your Vob files in sequence ie.
file1.vob; file2.vob; file3.vob etc., and checking the 'Span Over Multiple Vobs
Automatically' box (3), it will convert all the Vobs audio files into one large audio file
;).
However, if you had to extract the ac3 audio
file to fix it, you cannot now choose the Vob file to convert its audio to a .wav file.
Instead you must change the extension (encircled in red) to .ac3 and choose the fixed ac3
file thusly:
When done, choose the 'Create my Wav' button.
Up pops the Audio compression settings.
Choose PCM 48.000 Hz 16 Bit, Stereo. Click OK.
The following window describes your progress:
Note: Unless you put a .wav extension on
your output file the computer will spend an hour converting the audio and then you will
loose it all! You have now been warned call it something.wav!
That's it! You now have a Divx Video and a
separate audio file.
Merging Left over Audio
Depending on how well you have planned
matters you may need to merge loose audio files that you have converted to wave files.
Don't do this if you have a single video file for each audio file. Only do this if you
have the entire film on video and need the entire audio to be merged into a single one to
match it ;). Your gonna need an audio editing program like Soundforge or Cool Edit to do
this. Run Cool Edit and open the first file you have in the list of wav files that you
wish to merge. Then open the next file in the list by choosing the option 'Open
Append...'. Keep adding the files with 'Open Append' until you have a finished audio that
can be saved.
One Final Check
Sometimes in spite of all your efforts the
audio still contains crap. So open it again in Cool Edit or whatever program you use and
delete the garbled noise. That's the best you are gonna get! Now lets go onto the last
task of merging it all into a finished Divx CD!
Step 3. Sticking
the Audio & Video Together
Run VirtualDub and open the Divx video file
you just made.
Go to the Video settings and select Direct
stream copy.
Choose Frame Rate > Change so video and
audio duration's match. Click OK.
Choose the Audio Compression option > MPEG
Layer-3. Click Show all formats and select 96 kBit/s, 44,100 Hz, Stereo (you can also go
as high as 128 or as low as 64 kBits/s if you wish).
Go to the Audio settings. Make sure it is set
to WAV audio and select Full processing mode.
Finally, choose Save AVI and select where you
wish to save it on your hard disk.
The following box will appear showing details
of its progress. In about 10 to 15 minuets your final Divx will be complete. To speed up
this process you can also select a higher priority in the processing thread priority box
(circled in red).
Congratulations, you now have a finished Divx
video file ;o). Do the same to each Vob file you have extracted to make them all into Divx
video files.
Joining the Files
DVD's usually split the movie on the disk
into between 4 and 6 separate gigabyte chunks. People with huge hard disks often merge VOB
files together before they compress the DVD to Divx but this is not necessary for us or
even desired because merging large files in Windows can cause difficulty. We will now use
Virtual Dub to merge these smaller DivX files together into a single video.
Note: I used to say use Pecks Power Join
to merge AVI's, but I have come to realize that I had only tested it with very small files
- duh! So don't bother with Peck it messes up with large files! Virtual Dub is a great
program and you would do well to learn to use it properly. It is so cool that every
programmer seems to be taking its code and using it to make new applications with! If you
ever come across a problem I'd bet any money your gonna need Virtual Dub to sort it out
;-P.
Open the first .avi file you wish to join ie.
file1.avi
Now select Append video segment and then open
the second .avi file you wish to join ie. file2.avi
Choose append video segment again and open
the third .avi file you wish to join ;) and so on until you have selected every .avi file
in order. Next choose Video > Direct stream copy and Audio > Direct stream copy.
Now select Save segmented AVI... and choose
where to save it.
Up pops the progress box. Choose even higher
if you want to do it faster.
After about ten minuets you will have a
completely finished DivX movie small enough to fit on a single CD-R. Phew!
Troubleshooting
What to Do If the Audio Still Isn't
Synchronized?
Fix 1: If the audio is only very
slightly out you are able to make it sit nicely by trying the following method. Open
Virtual Dub and go to the Audio > Interleaving options and set it to Preload to 1000 ms
of audio and interleave audio after every 250 frames. Don't change the source displacement
at the moment. Click OK. Remember to check the ms box (circled in red) which I forgot
about last time ;-\. Save to AVI and check it again. If it is still out, change the
interleave audio box by another +100 or -100 ms.
Fix 2: If the audio is still badly
out, there is a way to slide the audio in one direction to get it to fit into the correct
place. Go to Audio > Interleaving again but now put a time delay in the source
displacement box. 1000 represents a seconds worth of audio displacement. If you hear sound
one second after the characters move their mouths set a delay of 1000. If it is half a
second use a 500 delay. For a quarter of a second it would be 250 delay and so on. If, on
the other hand, you hear sound before they speak then you can use minus numbers ie. -1000
is a displacement of minus one second. Remember to check at various places in the movie to
make sure it they synchronize everywhere. Good Luck!
Fix 3: The very last resort! This is
if the audio is really really badly off! You can try and open the wave file in Cool Edit
or any sound editing program and stretch the audio slightly to match the film's length.
Check the film length by opening it in Virtual Dub and going to File > File
Information... and make a note of the exact length! Now open the file in Cool Edit and got
to Transform > Time/Pitch Stretch... and type in the 'Length' box the movies play time.
The wave file will now stretch to fit the movie, but you'd still be lucky to get the audio
to merge ;(.
PAL, NTSC and FILM Settings
I have heard more than once now that Mpeg2avi
has yet another bug in it! Apparently unless you choose 30 fps it will not process all the
frames in the file! I have never had a problem with this but maybe that's because all my
DVD's are PAL? Anyway, if you find this is the case here is what you may have to do.
Choose 30fps and make your DivX AVI file. Then use the Framerate Converter utility to set
the new frame rate to 23.970! Now it should play correctly again. It is easy enough to
reset the frame rate in the GUI so I do not need to do another tutorial on that one.
Thanks to Kiwi128 for that tip ;o).
Dull Audio Tracks
Because many sound cards cannot handle 48000
Hz very well you may find that any method you use to extract the sound will give a fairly
dull sound output. This can be prevented by converting the audio to 44100 Hz in Virtual
Dub at the same time that you multiplex the audio and video files together. To do this
open Virtual Dub as usual and choose Audio > Conversion and set the check box to
44100hz and High Quality as seen below:
Then follow the usual method to convert the
audio and video together from here.
Large Files and FAT16/32
Be careful when dealing with large files! The
Windows 95/8 file system cannot handle AVI files larger than 4 gigabytes! There has been
much confusion regarding this issue. In short, the old Windows File Allocation Tables
(FAT16) cannot store more than 2 gigabytes per file. Windows 98's FAT32 allows a 4
gigabyte storage capacity per single file. So where does the 1 and 2 gig storage limit
come in? Most AVI parsers use something called signed arithmetic. This forces a storage
limit of 2 gigabytes for .avi files on Windows 98. But the multimedia system in Windows 95
cannot cope with RIFF files (such as .avi files) bigger than 1 gigabyte! And this is why
people will say there is either a 1, 2 or 4 gigabyte limit on single file storage. This is
why DeCSS, DOD Power Ripper, Vob Merge, Peck Power Join and all other programs like this
are incapable of storing more than 4 gigabytes on most peoples computer systems! I think
this is the chief reason for so many unexplained error messages when using these programs
too!
There is a partial way around this that is
used extensively by Virtual Dud called OpenDML. These settings can be used to create very
large .avi files by grouping smaller files together so they are forced to play in
sequence. This solution means that the finished files can only be played with Windows
Media Player or other programs that support OpenDML.
I have found that the safest way to merge
large files together is to use the Virtual Dub's appending options as described above. I
no longer advocate using Pecks Power Join or any other joining method for Mpeg-4 files
other than using Virtual Dub to restream them. In my experience there is NOTHING, no
program in existence that can merge large mpeg-4 AVI in the way Peck Power Join can merge
small AVI files….until someone makes it
that is =).
Disappearing Boxes?!
I have had so many people email me telling me
that as soon as they press the give me my audio or video button on AVGUI, the black box
flashes up and then disappears again resulting in no conversions! This is not a problem
with the programs themselves. They are DOS programs and DOS programs usually cannot read
the Windows long filenames. Hence they give a 'cannot find file' error that will close the
program! The solution is to NEVER name your files or folders with names longer than eight
letters! To be safe you should make sure that you only use letters and numbers in your
names and also only in lower case. For example, you can safely rename each vob file to:
file1.vob, file2.vob, file3.vob and so on. You can put them in a folder on your main drive
(usually the C: drive) in a folder called divx or something like that. Do not put this
folder inside any other folders unless they have eight or less characters in their names!
This should solve all your problems.
Multi-Language DVD's
Sometimes with Multi-Language DVD's the film
has been recorded at least twice! Some Disney films have been known to do this. If this is
the case do the following. Use the program MpegUtils to analyze ALL the VOB's. Use the
Check VOB button and then split by Vob ID. Now look for the VOB files that have about the
same sizes and play a bit of each. These files usually will contain the same part of the
movie but one will be in another language. One is for the English version, one is for the
French, German and so on. Delete all the unwanted language VOB's and merge the rest in the
right order using the program Vobmerge. Remake the DVD structure thusly vts_01_1.vob ;
vts_01_2.vob ; vts_01_3.vob etc. Bingo, perfect audio!
Interactive DVD's
Interactive DVD's are not too common at the
moment but when one such as The Matrix comes along it presents all kinds of problems. You
must treat them as you would a Multi-Language DVD. You must use MpegUtils to split the VOB
files up and look at each clip to try and figure out where they should go. Once you have
them in the correct order just VobMerge them together and bingo! The following example is
how The Matrix was solved thanks to Asyd Rayne:
You must open each file individually with
MPEGUtils and click "Check File". Then click "Split VOB". Make sure
you set it to Split by VOB ID in the popup window. Then you can delete your original VOB
file. To fix The Matrix just delete the following files highlighted in Red and you will
have a perfect version.
Region 1 DVD CD of the Matrix
If you have a Region 1 DVD CD of the Matrix
you may need to delete the following files:
Vts_02_1.vob splits into
the following:
- Vob01.vob (Warner Bro's
Intro Optional)
- Vob02.vob
- Vob03.vob
- Vob04.vob delete
- Vob05.vob
- Vob06.vob
Vts_02_1.vob splits into
the following:
- Vob06.vob
- Vob07.vob
- Vob08.vob delete
- Vob09.vob
- Vob10.vob
- Vob11.vob
- Vob12.vob delete
- Vob13.vob
Vts_02_3.vob splits into
the following:
- Vob12.vob delete
- Vob13.vob
- Vob14.vob
Vts_02_4.vob splits into
the following:
- Vob15.vob
- Vob16.vob
- Vob17.vob delete
- Vob18.vob
- Vob19.vob
- Vob20.vob
- Vob21.vob delete
- Vob22.vob
- Vob23.vob
Vts_02_5.vob splits into
the following:
- Vob23.vob
- Vob24.vob
- Vob25.vob delete
- Vob26.vob
- Vob27.vob
- Vob28.vob
- Vob29.vob delete
- Vob30.vob
- Vob31.vob
- Vob32.vob
- Vob33.vob delete
- Vob34.vob
- Vob35.vob
- Vob36.vob
- Vob37.vob delete
- Vob38.vob
- Vob39.vob
Vts_02_6.vob doesn't need
to be changed:
Region 2 DVD CD of the Matrix
If you have a Region 2 DVD CD of the Matrix
you may need to use the following settings. But make sure the finished result is correct
before you convert it to Divx.
Vts_02_1.vob splits into
the following:
- Vob01.vob (Warner Bro's
Intro Optional)
- Vob02.vob
- Vob03.vob
- Vob04.vob delete
- Vob05.vob
- Vob06.vob
Vts_02_1.vob splits into
the following:
- Vob06.vob
- Vob07.vob
- Vob08.vob delete
- Vob09.vob
- Vob10.vob
- Vob11.vob
- Vob12.vob delete
- Vob13.vob
- Vob14.vob
Vts_02_3.vob this file
doesn't need to be altered.
Vts_02_4.vob splits into
the following:
- Vob15.vob
- Vob16.vob
- Vob17.vob delete
- Vob18.vob
- Vob19.vob
- Vob20.vob
- Vob21.vob delete
- Vob22.vob
- Vob23.vob
Vts_02_5.vob
splits into the following:
- Vob23.vob
- Vob24.vob
- Vob25.vob delete
- Vob26.vob
- Vob27.vob
- Vob28.vob
- Vob29.vob delete
- Vob30.vob
- Vob31.vob
- Vob32.vob
- Vob33.vob delete
- Vob34.vob
- Vob35.vob
Vts_02_6.vob
splits into the following:
- Vob35.vob
- Vob36.vob
- Vob37.vob delete
- Vob38.vob
- Vob39.vob
- Vob40.vob
Appendix
High Motion Vs Low Motion Codec's
What is the difference between the two
codec's I hear you cry! Well, the only real difference is that High Motion codec is a
variable codec which changes the amount of compression depending on the motion. In high
action movies you will notice that the picture will tend to break up into squares as soon
as things move across the screen very fast. But while everything is still it looks
perfect. The high motion codec tries to use LESS compression on the fast action scenes to
prevent the blokieness from happening. But the Low Motion Codec always uses the same
compression throughout the whole movie.
In theory it sounds like the High Motion is
the best codec! Sadly there are a few problems which make it second choice for most.
Firstly, because the compression changes so often it is difficult to guess what the
finished file size would be. This means you could end up with a file much bigger than you
intended. Secondly, this High Motion codec tends to be more jerky. I don't know if this is
merely Media Player's fault or just a problem with the codec. Nevertheless, because it is
variable, the bitrate on the High Motion Codec can very roughly speaking be set to double
that of the Low Motion to produce a similar filesize. So if you use 700 kbit/s Low Motion
codec to make a single CD film, you could probably get away with 1400 kbit/s with the High
Motion.
Common Mpeg2Avi Command Lines
If you just want to type in the commands here
are some common settings. Perhaps they will help you get used how the program works
better. Change the first (red) line to the input Vobs location and name and the second
(blue) filename to where you want the output to go. If you want a sequence of files choose
your .lst file instead of the .vob file ;) Also changing the green -f0 command to -f2 will
turn the NTSC into PAL settings.
- PAL is: -f2
(25.000 = 25/1)
- NTSC is: -f0 (23.976 = 24,000/1001)
- 16:9 (1.851) settings are: 640 x 360
with the Downsizing X= 656 Y = 368 ie. command: -3X 656 -3Y 368
- 16:9 (2.33.1) settings are: 640 x 360
with the Downsizing Y=416 ie. Command: -3Y 416
- NTSC 16:9 (1.85.1)
- MPEG2AVI -b C:\filename.vob
-f0 -q0 -r2 -3X 656 -3Y 368 -1 640 360 -o8 C:\filename.avi
- NTSC 16:9 (2.33.1)
- MPEG2AVI -b C:\filename.vob
-f0 -q0 -r2 -3Y 416 -1 640 304 -o8 C:\filename.avi
- NTSC 4:3 (Full Frame)
- MPEG2AVI -b C:\filename.vob
-f0 -q0 -r2 -3X 520 -3Y 392 -1 512 384 -o8 C:\filename.avi
