Cyrix's SUPER easy ripping tutorial (Windows)

[Cyrix]

Dunno for sure if this goes in Ripping or Converting/Encoding since it's both at once.

I usually figure out my own way of doing things. Half the time they're terrible workarounds but I think this is a simple and elegant way to rip DVDs (or anything) into AVIs that can be immediately edited. Of course there are advantages and disadvantages, and I'm sure I'll get a lot of flak for suggesting SUPER, but this is easy, very effective, and doesn't require any muxing, indexing, sacrificial offerings, or forbidden seal techniques.

Here's the tutorial! (assumes using standard definition NTSC DVDs)



Well, that's pretty much it if you can figure things out for yourself, but details if you want them:
1. Open SUPER. Set it up exactly as I have it set up above, except the media file and the "other encode options" on the left. You might have to double check the audio tracks to find out which one is the language you want (if you intend to incorporate some of the original audio in your video)
2. Click the M at the top and choose Export a SUPER Settings Profile
3. Now, every time you open SUPER, it will remember most of those settings, but you have to redo the audio settings each time because it always goes back to MP3 for some reason. If all the settings are wrong you can just load that Settings Profile again.
4. Right click the box below "Drop a valid multimedia..." and choose "add multimedia file". Choose your VOB (or any other type of video).
5. If it's not already open click the "other options" button to bring up the "other encode options" window.
6. Figure out the timecode for the clip. For my example, I want a clip starting at 6:20 into the VOB and lasting for 25 seconds, so I convert minutes to seconds using the calculator ([6*60=360] + 20=380) and leave a two second buffer on each end to make sure nothing is lost.
7. Right click the box below "Drop a valid multimedia..." and choose "output file saving management". Choose where to save the file.
8. Click Encode (Active Files).
That's it! The resulting file will work immediately in something like Premiere, and doesn't require preview rendering or anything messy. You might have to have your editor convert the aspect ratio but that's it.

Advantages:
Easy process, few steps involved
All done with one program
Leaves you with just the clips you need, speeding up the editing process
Gives you DV AVI files, which are designed for editing with no discernable loss of quality during conversion.

Disadvantages:
Can be time consuming to find the clips, determine the timecodes, and rip them.
Resulting clips (DV AVI) use around 5MB/s of space, but if you have a modern hard drive and only get footage you need this isn't a huge problem

[Kionon]

I applaud your initiative. It's admirable. Unfortunately, in this case, it is also misguided.

You're going to get flak, deservedly so, because SUPER is an piece of crap. There is absolutely no reason to use SUPER. You'll want to filter effectively, something that SUPER doesn't do. Indexing with DGindex creates an AVS file, which you can then use to apply filter commands. THEN you can choose either to clip specific portions, or you can render out entire episodes. You simply don't want to dump an encode from a VOB, unfiltered, into premiere. You should be using lossless files anyhow, like lagarith or huffyuv. I might be more discerning than others, but for me, DV is a no go, because any loss of quality is too much for me.

Also, you're not the first to offer SUPER as a solution, and you're not the first person whose enthusiasm I have dashed. Just be glad I'm not MisterHatt. Of course, he may be along shortly.

[Mister Hatt]

(╬ ಠ益ಠ)=◯)`q^)°

[Zarxrax]

The main problem with super is that it is known to have hosed peoples systems, making all sorts of changes and screwing things up (yes, it did this to me, and I was very pissed).

[Mister Hatt]

That's quite odd Zarx, seeing as it's just a bad frontend to a crappy build of ffmpeg and mencoder. Any idea exactly what it did?

Also Cyrix, this kinda bugged me but I didn't say anything earlier, that thing you said about 2 seconds to the start and end of what you want, that's only necessary if you have no idea what a GOP is. Cut on a GOP marker and force closed GOP's, should have no problem with accuracy other than libavformat being absolutely shit when it comes to transport or program streams. Seeking in the resulting output should be faster too if you're seeking in the ripped VOB and not some transcoded format.

[Zarxrax]

That's quite odd Zarx, seeing as it's just a bad frontend to a crappy build of ffmpeg and mencoder. Any idea exactly what it did?

It's installation rewrote the avisynth plugins directory to a different folder (it had hardcoded the folder name as "Program Files" rather than using windows pathname, so obviously this broke avisynth in 64bit windows, because the folder wasnt named "Program Files" anymore). On doom9 a long time ago people were talking about how it changed their codecs and decoders and stuff, and just generally wreaked havok.

[Zarxrax]

Here's a few threads I found:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t ... ight=super
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t ... ight=super

[Cyrix]

Other than it occasionally bugging out and using up an entire processor core until I close it, I've never had any issues with it.

Forgive my ignorance, then. What filtering needs to be done? Do you know if Premiere supports lagarith or huffyuv without preview rendering? If not, that's just another problem.

I might be more discerning than others, but for me, DV is a no go, because any loss of quality is too much for me.

Oh, really? Well tell me which parts of this image are from a snapshot of the DVD, and which parts are from a snapshot of the DV-AVI I put on top of it?

Also Cyrix, this kinda bugged me but I didn't say anything earlier, that thing you said about 2 seconds to the start and end of what you want, that's only necessary if you have no idea what a GOP is. Cut on a GOP marker and force closed GOP's, should have no problem with accuracy other than libavformat being absolutely shit when it comes to transport or program streams. Seeking in the resulting output should be faster too if you're seeking in the ripped VOB and not some transcoded format.

I'm not sure if you understand what I'm doing. The only reason to leave a 2 second buffer is because the TC is in seconds and you might miss a few frames, or it might just be off by a second. This is rarely an issue but a few times I lost around 15 frames so I started using a small buffer. There's no problem in accuracy with the resulting DV AVI because it's frame accurate. There're no problems with transports, streams, or seeking.

[Zarxrax]

Also this method will result in subpar quality, because you can't perform IVTC to get the frames back to their original 23.976fps. You have to deinterlace instead, which makes it look crappy.

[Cyrix]

Are you getting your dvds from Japan? I said ntsc. If you get it in America its already 29.97fps. There is no loss in quality. Also not everything is interlaced.