DVD2AVI Guide

DVD2AVI is actually about the best application there is for decoding a DVD. So if its so amazing why has it not been mentioned before as the best method of making DivX? Basically because it has too few options to make a good quality movie. For example, you cannot just crop and resize the video. To do this you must frameserve your movie first to other applications such as TMPGEnc. Neither does it have MP3 audio support or IFO parsing like Flask Mpeg. It was also slightly slower than both Flask and Mpeg2avi. But since everyone now wants to make movies from DVD using Nandub it has become necessary to introduce this method because its by far the easiest way to decode a movie to Nandub - so lets get started!

DVD2AVI cannot parse IFO files and will only open Vob files. This means that you need to rip your DVD to your hard disk first using the IFO ripper such as SmartRipper (check out how Here).

Then its a simple matter of opening each Vob file in DVD2AVI like this:

Up will pop this selection box. Make sure you select all the Vobs for your movie in the correct order.

DECODING AUDIO (optional)

DVD2AVI can do audio decoding but its probably better not to use it because of synch problems. These are more due to Telecine problems with NTSC movies so if you use PAL you may want to try, but I think its better not to. If you decide to try audio select an audio track to decode from the following section:

If you are not gonna use audio just check the none option. A word of warning the audio will be decoded to uncompressed PCM audio and will take at least a gigabyte of space. If you do audio seperately you can save space. The best alternative is to use Graphedit for audio, check that guide Here.

DECODING THE VIDEO

If you would like to look at the movie you can play it by choosing: Option > Preview.

An information window will also appear when you play it telling you what aspect ratio the movie is and if its FILM, NTSC, PAL etc., and looks like this:

NTSC MOVIES & INTERLACE PROBLEMS

I'm not very experianced with NTSC movies because most of mine are PAL. But after with the ones I've tried recently I suggest you always try and use the force FILM option, go to: Video > Field Operation > Forced FILM.

If it works you will not have that horrible combing effect from an interlaced video. Not sure what interlaced video is? Check my guide Here. If it doesn't work, you will know soon enough when you open it to check. Make sure you check action scenes or those with lots of motion.

The best method to solve interlace problems is probably to use AVISynth's Bob deinterlace filter. The method is described Here. Or you can use one of VirtualDub's (or Nandub's) not so good built in deinterlace filters to solve this problem. The hardest but best solution for this probelm is to perform correct IVTC on it! I suggest you give my ol' pal Purpleman's guide a go for that it can be found Here. He also has a good DVD2AVI guide and some excellent SVCD guides too!

You do not need to do this for PAL movies unless you are converting the specials section, which have almost the same problem!

SAVE THE PROJECT

No its time to decode the DVD by choosing: File > Save Project please do NOT choose Save AVI!

Give it a name when it asks and it will save the project file as: Something.d2v. It should take under an hour to decode the DVD.

CONVERTING TO A FAKE AVI

This is the amazing part! We are now going to make a "fake" AVI file! This is not a real AVI file because that would be huge and take a long time to create. Instead we are going to convert the information in that DVD2AVI project file so that it can be opened in any application that supports AVI; that includes VirtualDub, Nandub or even Media Player!! Yes! It works exactly as an AVI file you can use all the VirtualDub filters on it, resize, crop, deinterlace and so on. It may not be a real AVI no one can tell the difference!

To do this conversion we must install the program called VFAPI. To install it double-click on the file that says: vifpset.bat. To run it just double-click on the VFAPIConv.exe file.

Then up will pop the following dialouge box. Choose the Add Job option and find the project file you just saved using DVD2AVI (called something.d2v). You don't need to do anything else, just press OK.

That's it! You will find that the "fake" AVI file you have just saved will now work in almost any video application as can be seen below:

Yes, I'm sure you will be amazed! The fake AVI will only be 10-20MB in size but will act as a frameserver to the DVD. This means you cannot delete the original VOB files until all your encoding is finished....but you already knew that, eh?!

From here the sky's the limit! Go either to the Nandub guide Here or you can edit the video with VirtualDub for example like you see Here!

Who loves ya and who do you love!?? =o)