Ripping DVD's to avi (xvid). Whats the best size?

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Ok, to get straight to the point, what is the best xvid size to rip a DVD to with minimal visual loss?

The long story is that I am using BeyondTV as my software for TV and recordings. So far it has done everything I want of it and I am quite happy with it. My only annoyance is that I rip DVD's using DVDShrink and BeyondTV does not like to play the video files created. I have to use AutoGK to convert them to avi. Since it takes 2 hours to convert 1 movie, and I want to do about 200 of them, well you do the math. I started tinkering with SageTV to see if it would get along better with the files that DVDShrink produces, but it still isn't perfect and I just don't like the program as much as BeyondTV. So this pretty much means I am stuck with converting these movies. I guess this is OK since I want to get an xbox soon and that would require me to have the files in avi anyway. So, this leads me to my question, What is the best xvid file size for minimal quality loss. Currently, I am converting 1 hour of video to 1 gig. This looks pretty good to me so far, but I am using an 18in 4:3, 5 year old LCD. In the next couple months I am looking at getting a 42in LCD TV and I am concerned that it won't look as good at that size. While it's not like disk space is no concern to me, I would like to get the best compromise for quality vs size. I'm not a home theater perfectionist, more like above average. Old comedies like Groundhog Day and such I am sure there is pretty much no loss converting it to 2 gig xvid files. But newer action movies that I like I am concerned about. What do you guys recommend?
 
Well, if you rip at 720x420 with AC3 audio you may want to try between 1,500 and 2,000 kbps video bit rate which will give you about 800mb~1gb for 60 minutes.
 
thanks for the reminder, you might want to try this encoder, I spotted a friend using it and it looks to be tremendously easy.
I'll give it a shot during the week.
specs
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
Get it here
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Encoders-Converter-DIVX-Related/SUPER.shtml

If its good enough, it makes light work of encoding but I havent seen the quality of its output yet so cant vouch for that.
I also need to verify if its multi core enabled.
Worth a look though...
 
I dont know much about ripping either, but why not 720x480 vs. 720x420 ?? I thought DVDs were 480, no?
 
I always just limit mine to 1gb and they look fine to me (standard def tv through xbox > 5.1 system)

I use handbrake with xvid .avi files
 
i use autogk to convert my dvds and usually just set it to 70-75%
 
I've used AutoGK and Handbrake, both very easy to use, but I noticed a significant fps increase using Handbrake. Like ~180fps with AutoGK and 260fps with Handbrake. Also, pineapples are delicious.

e8400 @ 3.6
4gb ddr2-800
 
evilmonkey said:
I've used AutoGK and Handbrake, both very easy to use, but I noticed a significant fps increase using Handbrake. Like ~180fps with AutoGK and 260fps with Handbrake. Also, pineapples are delicious.

e8400 @ 3.6
4gb ddr2-800
Click to expand...

I'd say that's pretty accurate since I've noticed the same thing. Depending on how the OP is going to be playing the videos back one options will be better than the other. I chose xvid because the 360 could play them with 5.1 AC3 audio. The downside is that xvid's compression isn't as good as x264. So if the OP is going to be playing from an HTPC then x264 is the way to go but he will also see an increase in encoding time. I don't know if handbreak has a queuing system like autogk but to get around the long encoding times without having to babysit the computer I would rip several dvds to hard drive and then queue them up.
 
handbrake does have a queue and it works really good, I left mine going with 15 rips overnight and it was done my morning. It is alot faster to do them off the hard drive than it is to do it from the disks.
 
I'm gonna give handbrake a try this evening. Going back to using AutoGK though, I still have a concern. I know a DVD resolution is 720x480 (roughly), but AutoGk always reduces it down to 720x304(ish) no matter what I do. I encoded the same movie twice, once at 80% quality(1.84 gig file) and once at 100% (2.18 gig file), and it comes back with the same resolution and bitrate (448kbps) for both. The resolution and bit rate seem low to me. Is this alright? Like I said, the movies look fine to me now, but I am concerned that they aren't going to look as good on a 40+ inch TV and I am going to regret wasting all this time encoding these movies.
 
The vertical resolution is lower because you are probably cropping the black bars or maybe autogk does this automatically.

the 448kbps seems to me like the standard AC3 audio bitrate, if it was video at that bit rate the quality would be too low and definitely visible.
 
i use handbrake and rip at 640x272 with ac3 1500bitrate. Thats what videos i would download would be so thats what i stuck with when i rip my own.
 
I'm trying handbrake right now, but it's taking a ridiculous amount of time for xvid encoding, almost double what AutoGK takes (2 hours for AutoGK, almost 4 for handbrake). I'm using an AMD though (AMD X2 4000+ 2.1Ghz 2gig of ram), so maybe handbrake is more effectively used by Intel processors. Is there a big difference in the encode quality between handbrake and AutoGK? I am thinking about going back to AutoGK.

BTW: I am a tard, 448kbs is the audio bit rate. How can I tell the video bit rate AutoGK is using?
 
Just checked out Handbrake again, its been awhile.

Default XBOX360 settings, can you spot the difference (besides the filename). The Island.
MP4 turned in at 2.5GB. About 2 hours to encode. Will test to make sure it works w/ XBOX360 both through dashboard and Media Center Extender.

my.php
 
when i use handbrake it tends to screw around with the quality, i use VLC and the video tends to have these squares.
 
I'm on vista ultimate.
I used handbrake and did h.264 with .m4v and .mp4 and no player is able to play the produced file. I tried quicktime/real player/vlc/media player with no luck.

I then changed to xvid .mp4 and the produced file is scrambeled.

any ideas of what I'm doing wrong?
 
If you can't play the file back it sounds like either an encoder or decoder problem. If you are using DVD as your source are you sure it decrypted properly? If you are maybe try reripping the original file again and make sure you can play it back properly from the file on your hard drive.
 
mrwhitethc said:
If you can't play the file back it sounds like either an encoder or decoder problem. If you are using DVD as your source are you sure it decrypted properly? If you are maybe try reripping the original file again and make sure you can play it back properly from the file on your hard drive.
Click to expand...
Decrypte? I usually put in the dvd and use it as a source and then select the codec as h.264 or xvid and then start the process.
Do I need to do anything else before that?

When you say "reripping the original file again and make sure you can play it back properly from the file on your hard drive" do you mean rip from the dvd disk or use something like dvd shrink to put the video_ts folders on the hard drive first?
 
try using dvdfab to just rip the dvd movie to iso then load the iso in handbrake. I bet you cant load the dvd because of encryption.
 
Fireburster is right, you need to get your DVD files on the hard drive first and since 99% of all DVD's are encrypted you need to use something like dvdfab to decrypt them first. Once you get the files on your hard drive try playing them back from there. If that works then try and use handbrake again, this time using the files on the hard drive and see if the output works.
 
Update on this, I used DVD Decrypter for the DVD and then used handbrake and got the same results where no player can play the file. I used h.264 and xvid.

I then used AutoGK and worked perfectly.

The people that have handbrake working for them, are you using a MAC or a PC. I hear that handbrake has issue with Vista.
 
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