Ripping DVDs... what is normal?

Dejana · Post by **Dejana** » Sun May 06, 2007 3:20 pm

Well, I've finally become serious about AMVs to the point of wanting to enter contests at cons. Which means ripping all my footage from DVDs (I'd been using a capture card).

This is only the second time I've ripped source from DVDs. The first time I did it, I ended up with full-episode files that averaged 200 MB each. Now I'm ripping another series, and the average file size is 500 MB. o_O I can't for the life of me figure out why the files are so much bigger. Is this normal? Do you guys seriously work with 500 MB files all the time??

Also, the size of the files for this series ranges from 303 MB to 666 (haha) MB. These are all from the same series and the episodes are all almost exactly the same length. Why the huge range in file sizes? I don't know much about this stuff... ^^;; I've been sort of following A&E's Technical Guides, but a lot of the info seems to be out of date. How much of those guides is still relevant and useful?

Any input would be appreciated, just to make sure I'm not screwing something up. (I'm using pretty much all the same software recommended by the A&E guides, but via Gordian Knot.)

Dejana · Post by **Dejana** » Sun May 06, 2007 3:25 pm

Aha, I found the updated technical guide, so I'll check that out. Still looking for input on my other questions, though.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Sun May 06, 2007 3:45 pm

Most DVDs I work with produce several GB of footage on average, so 500MB actually seems a bit low...

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Sun May 06, 2007 3:49 pm

actually, it's common to use episodes that are 1GB each (the .vob files at least)
but it really depends on how the dvd was authored.

from there things usually only get bigger. Lossless encodes of 1 episode can be anywhere from 5 to about 15GB. (and if you want good video quality, which you probably do since you want to send it off to cons, you want to keep your footage encoded losslessly for as many steps in the process as possible)

that's why it is highly reccomended that you make clips using virtualdub or virtualdubmod. That way you save space by only encoding what you think you'll need.
This doesn't mean that it doesn't take up a good chunk of space though, I usually make sure that I have about 5-8GB free for lossless clips

Dejana · Post by **Dejana** » Sun May 06, 2007 3:52 pm

BasharOfTheAges wrote:Most DVDs I work with produce several GB of footage on average

Per episode or per disc? This is per episode... oh, and I should mention this is after converting them to AVI format. The initial VOBs are over a gig each, of course. Each 20-minute episode is averaging 500 MB as an AVI.

It's hard to believe you guys compile 5-minute AMVs from dozens of GB of footage. Don't your computers crash from working with entire episodes of that size? Is there an easy way to cut these down to just the bits I need, or something?

Dejana · Post by **Dejana** » Sun May 06, 2007 3:54 pm

Kariudo wrote: that's why it is highly reccomended that you make clips using virtualdub or virtualdubmod.

Ah, I see. Is there a simple guide around for doing this? I've been trying to follow A&E's guides but I got really confused in the middle.

WC Annihilus · Post by **WC Annihilus** » Sun May 06, 2007 4:01 pm

JaddziaDax wrote:open the video file in virtualdub mod go to video->compression->Huffyuv

then go to file->save

use those to mark the beginning and the end of the "clips" you want so you can save room

Dejana · Post by **Dejana** » Sun May 06, 2007 4:07 pm

Okay, so I open the VOB file in VirtualDubMod, use those arrow buttons to mark the beginning and end of the clip I want, then save as AVI? Is that right?

And do I want to use the Huffyuv compression, or is that just something that came over as part of the quote...?

Heh, I should've asked before I ripped 18 episodes, oh well

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Sun May 06, 2007 4:11 pm

Dejana wrote:
BasharOfTheAges wrote:Most DVDs I work with produce several GB of footage on average
Per episode or per disc? This is per episode... oh, and I should mention this is after converting them to AVI format. The initial VOBs are over a gig each, of course. Each 20-minute episode is averaging 500 MB as an AVI.

"AVI" means nothing - state the codec you encoded with. Ideally, encoding with HuffYUV will still yield very large files. You do want to clip.

Dejana wrote:It's hard to believe you guys compile 5-minute AMVs from dozens of GB of footage. Don't your computers crash from working with entire episodes of that size? Is there an easy way to cut these down to just the bits I need, or something?

My last video used clips... 65GB of clips. One sequnce was over 17,000 x 11,000 pixels - My computer was just fine with them =/

Dejana · Post by **Dejana** » Sun May 06, 2007 4:29 pm

Reading the guides again, it looks like what I should do is load the avisynth files in VirtualDubMod and use that to make AVI clips instead of whatever Gordian Knot uses (I really have no idea). I don't know why it didn't make sense to me the first time I read it, but I think I've got it all figured out now.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong or missing something. Otherwise, thanks for all the help, guys. It's too late for the first video I ripped footage for, and the new one I'm starting now is just for fun so it's not worth ripping the whole series over again from the beginning, but I'll remember to use this method after that.