How to convert DVD to VCD with or without Sub-Titles

[ChickenMan]

How to convert a DVD to VCD using some Commercial Software & with Sub-Titles
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This method will produce good quality VideoCD's from DVD's by using some Commercially available software. The VideoCD's produced can be played on PC's, PSX Movie adaptors and all standalone VCD & DVD players that can play CDR(W)'s. The final VCD is better quality than most Original VCD's, equal or better than VHS tapes and the sound is CD quality.

Although this guide uses SmartRipper to rip (remove the movies encryption and transfer to your Hard Drive) the movie off the DVD, other freeware rippers can also be used. These include VobDecGUI and CladDVD.

The actual encoding to VCD is done by the Panasonic MPEG Encoder plug-in for best quality, but very good results can also be obtained using the bbMPEG plug-in that comes free with FlaskMPEG. The bbMPEG is 20% quicker in encoding so the choice between speed verse quality is yours. I only describe the Panasonic method here and the latest version of FlaskMPEG.

The VideoCD or VCD standards are rigid with little room for change so follow the directions carefully. A PAL VCD movie is made up of the following (NTSC & FILM only differ in picture size and frame rate)

Video - 352x288 25.00frames/sec 1150kbits/sec data rate
Audio - 44100Hz 16bit Stereo 224kbits/sec data rate


Software you will need:

1. SmartRipper 2.41 or later ( d/l from /http://www.down4free.com/view.php?Id=241 )

2. FlaskMPEG 0.6 + 1.1 update ( d/l from /http://www.doom9.org/ )

3. Panasonic MPEG Encoder Plug-in 2.51

4. Nero 5.5.x (d/l from /http://www.nero.com )

5. TMPGEnc 2.58 (d/l from /http://www.tmpgenc.net )



You will also need a Computer with:

* Windows 95B, 95C, 98, 98SE, ME, 2000 or XP installed.

* A Pentium II 300 MMX or equivalent as a minimum.

* At least 64meg memory

* An internal DVD Rom player (any speed)

* Hard drive with at least 4 gb, but preferably 10 gb FREE space in one partition.

* WinZip, WinRAR or WinAce to extract the files above. Fully functional demo versions can be d/l from h**p://www.winzip.com/ , h**p://www.rarsoft.com/ and h**p://www.winace.com/

* A CDR(W) Burner to produce the VideoCD and a box of good quality CDR's or CDRW's

* A sound card to check the finished product.



Tips before we get started:

* Re-boot the computer just BEFORE you start the ripping, in this way you have the best conditions as possible.

* Turn OFF your Screen Saver, it will simply slow the conversion down by hours.

* Do not run any other program in the background while FlaskMPEG is running, especially if you have a slower computer. Before you run FlaskMPEG, hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and remove all except Explorer and Systray.

* Turn the screens colour depth to 16bit colour or better.


So you have downloaded the software and checked that you have the right stuff in your computer. Sounds good, then lets get stuck into it!



Step 1: Getting Ready


1. Install SmartRipper ( or your favorite ripper)

2. Install FlaskMPEG 0.6 and then 1.1 update by just copying the *.exe to the FlaskMPEG folder.

3. Install Panasonic Encoder into the FlaskMPEG folder (it will ask you twice, direct both to the FlaskMPEG folder. Then rename the file cm-mpeg-pwi2.5e.prm to panplug.cm.flask. If these are not done correctly then FlaskMPEG will NOT see the plug-in!).

4. Install TMPGEnc by simply copying all files to a folder.

5. Install XingMPEG Encoder.

6. Install Nero.



Step 2: Copying DVD files to hard drive.


1. Put the DVD movie into your DVD Rom player. Sounds simple so far, doesn't it?

2. Make a directory on your Hard Drive called VIDEO_TS (same as it appears on the DVD).

3. Run SmartRipper and select the Target Folder to point to the VIDEO_TS directory you just made.

4. Select Settings and for Key Check set Every VOB File. For File Splitting, set Every VOB File and for Options select Unlock Drive, DeMacrovision and Copy IFO File.

5. Selecting Start to start ripping the .VOB files of the DVD to your hard drive. This can take up to 30 minutes depending on your computer setup.

6. If you are limited to 4 gig of hard drive space, then just rip the first 2 VOB files, which is about 2 gig by highlighting the first two 1 gig files and select Decrypt Files.



A typical directory of a DVD can be similar to :


VIDEO_TS BUP 16,384
VIDEO_TS IFO 16,384
VIDEO_TS VOB 43,008
VTS_01_0 BUP 77,824
VTS_01_0 IFO 77,824 - This selects Language/Subtitles, etc
VTS_01_0 VOB 1,695,744
VTS_01_1 VOB 1,073,565,696 \
VTS_01_2 VOB 1,073,565,696 \ This is the Main movie
VTS_01_3 VOB 1,073,565,696 /
VTS_01_4 VOB 589,365,248 /
VTS_02_0 BUP 18,432
VTS_02_0 IFO 18,432
VTS_02_0 VOB 43,008
VTS_02_1 VOB 6,014,976



Step 3: Conversion.


1. Run FlaskMPEG. Click on File, then choose Open Media. If you have only copied part of the movie, click on the first 1 gig VOB file (VTS_01_1.VOB) and FlaskMPEG will see all the remaining VOB's as one file. If you have copied all of the movie, click on the VTS_xx_0 IFO file. You should get a box showing all the video, language and subtitle options. Normally there is only one video option, a selection of languages and subtitles, with the option for no subtitles. Highlight your choice. If there are Multiangle choices for the Video, choose the first one as that is normally the movie, its length will tell you the obviouse choice. Then click Flask this DVD button.

2. A larger horizontal window will now open, detecting the frame rate in fps. Note the Type and number.

3. Now click the Congigure button.
a. In Video tab, change the Width to 352 and Height to 288 for PAL movies, ( or 352x240 for both NTSC & FILM ). The Time Base (fps) should be set to 25.0 for PAL, 29.97 for NTSC or 23.976 for FILM. When FlaskMPEG loads your movie in, it check the frame rate and enters here what it finds also, therefore, you will not need to change the frame rate. Many Region 1 DVD's are actually FILM rather than NTSC. iDCT Selection should be on MMX iDCT for fast encoding, even if you have an Athlon.

b. In Audio tab, for Audio Mode select Decode Audio. For Sampling Frequencies un-select Same as Input and choose 44100 Hz, this is an essential VideoCD setting.

c. In Post Processing tab, select HQ Bicubic Filtering This will give the best quality picture. Ensure Keep Aspect Ratio is selected and select 4:3 or 16:9 depending on what was indicated on the first large horizontal window. The No Crop and No Letterboxing should be selected also.

d. In Files tab, pick an output file name including full path, no extension needed. ( ie. D:\RIP\GLADIATOR )

e. In General tab, select Compile Whole File and if it suits you, select Shut Down Computer.

f. Now hit OK.

4. Now click the Select Output button and choose Panasonic MPEG1. Click the Select Output button again and select Configure Output Module.

a. In Data Rate, for Video enter 1150, Audio 224 and Stream Format as VideoCD/PAL for a PAL movie and VideoCD/NTSC for both NTSC and FILM.

b. Leave all the other setting alone, except these few.

c. Change the GOP Sequence from IBBPBBPBBPBBPBBI to IBBPBBPBBPBBI for PAL, leave at default for NTSC or FILM.

d. Change Color Tone Correction to TV.

e. Tick Enable Color Control and enter 20 in the R G & B boxes.

f. Un-tick the Display Parameters before Encoding box.

g. Hit OK.

5. Now click the Audio Player button. Use the slider at the top to listen to the audio in different parts of the movie if you wish.

a. Click Dynamic Range Compression and move the slider up to about 25 to 33%. You will hear the sound get louder.

b. Click Normalize and hit the Search button. This will find the correct setting to enter here, but can take a few minutes. Otherwise, enter 125 or 150 if you want the volume to be increased a bit from a DVD that has soft audio.

c. If the Audio Properties indicate the selected track is 5 channel, then you might want to tick Multichannel Volume and use the slider to change the front to center to back volumes. This choice is yours, I normally leave it un-ticked.

d. Hit OK.

6. We are now ready to start, so hit the Flask It! button. On the pop-up FlaskMPEG window, change Priority Settings to Highest. After a minute or so, un-tick Display Output, as both of these can speed up the conversion significantly.

7. Now comes the easy part. The conversion process (encoding) will now start and will take many hours to complete, so do it while your asleep, at work or at school.

As a guide, on a Pentium II 350 it takes about 16 hours to convert 1hr of movie, on an AMD K6-2 450 it takes about 12 hrs, on an Athlon 650 it takes about 6.5 hrs to convert 1hr of movie and on an Athlon 1.2g it takes about 3.25 hrs to convert 1hr of movie. I also turn my monitor off while this is all happening.

8. After it is all finished, you will have a new file on your HD. One big *.MPG file that has both the Video and Audio streams inside it.

9. Its now time to check if the Video and Audio are synchronised. Double click on the *.MPG file from Explorer and Windows Media Player will play your new movie. Check near the start, middle and near the end. If all is okay then jump to Step 5.



Step 4: Fixing Video / Audio Syntonisation.

1. Run TMPGEnc and click on File and then MPEG Tools. Go to the Simple De-Multiplex tab. For Input, Browse to your new MPG file and the Audio and Output files will automatically be named. Rename the Video Output file from *.M1V to *.MPV and the Audio Output name from *.MP2 to *.MPA Now hit Run and the 2 files will be created shortly.

2. Run XingMPEG Encoder. Select NEW and then select VideoCD either PAL, NTSC or FILM depending what you originally ripped. Then Next. Make sure Stream Type is on System and Browse for Video Filename (*.MPV) and Audio Filename (*.MPA), changing Target name to suit. Then click Finish. Now hit the Encode button and sit back for a few minutes while it multiplexes the Video and Audio files together to create a new MPG file.

3. Now play the new MPEG file again with Windows Media Player to see if it is okay, checking for Video & Audio synchronization (lip-sync) near start and end of the movie. You have now created your first MPEG-1 video file in the VideoCD format. Easy, wasn't it!



Step 5: Cutting.

1. Do NOT use any other program for cutting your MPEG file other than TMPGEnc, iFilmEdit, MyFlix or bbMPEG. All other programs, like VCDCutter, do NOT produce 100% compatible MPEG files after cutting. I only describe the use of TMPGEnc here.

2. For those short on HD space and only converted 2 VOB files or the movie is not longer than 72min or 78min, (don't worry about the file length in meg, just worry about it in minutes) you skip the cutting process and go straight to Section 6, Burning.

3. If you converted the whole DVD movie into a single MPG file and the movie is longer than 72min or 78min, you will need to cut it to fit onto a 74min or 80min CDR. Most movies tend to be 1 1/2 hrs to 2 hours long so you will need to cut it in half to fit onto 2 standard 74min/650meg CDR's. You can get 72min onto a 74min/650meg CDR and 78min onto a 80min/700meg CDR, again don't worry about the file length in meg, just worry about it in minutes.

4. Run TMPGEnc, from Files select MPEG Tools. Then select Merge & Cut Tab. Click Add and load in your new mpeg file. Double click on its name and a new window opens. Use the [ & ] to mark the Start (lead-in) and End (lead-out) of each clip. So click [ to mark Start, then slide the Pointer to approx the mid-point in the movie. Click ] to select the end of Disk 1. You can fine-tune the positions by altering the times in the Range box's by using the ^ & v arrows. Click OK to return to original screen. For Type, select MPEG-1 VideoCD (this is VERY IMPORTANT !). Give an Output name (eg. disk1.mpg) and click Start. A few minutes later you will have the MPG file for Disk 1.

NOTE: Sometimes VCD's will not start playing on a PSX w/VCD adaptor. I have found if the movie start with a Black screen and no audio at the start, then it wont play on the PSX. So move the start pointer (using the ^ & v keys) until at least a picture is seen. Normally this is 2 to 10 seconds.

Now double click the file name again so we can produce the file for disk 2. Move the slider close to the disk 1 End marker, click on [ to mark the new Start and then adjust with the ^ & v keys to be about 5 sec before the end of disk 1. Move slider to end of file and click ]. We now have disk 2 marked, but it is good idea to overlap some of the movie from disk 1 to disk 2. So in the first Range box, click the Down arrow to move the pointer about 5 seconds earlier. That way the last 5 sec of disk 1 will be the first 5 sec of disk 2 so you don't miss any of the action. Click OK and for Type, select MPEG-1 VideoCD. Give an Output name (eg. disk2.mpg) and click Start. It appears to be doing nothing for a while but be patient, a few minutes later you will have the MPEG file for Disk 2. Then exit the program.

5. It's a good idea to load each MPG file into Windows Media Player and check that all is okay and if all is okay, we are ready to burn.


Step 6: Burning

1. There are a few programs that can burn a VCD disk. These include Nero, Easy CD Creator, WinOnCD and NTI. Nero is by far the easiest to use so that's what I describe here. Refer to the Help section within the other programs on how to use them if you prefer.

2. Run Nero. Click the VideoCD tab, select Create Standard Compliant CD. In Volume Descriptor tab, enter a Volume Label, such as THE_GLADIATOR_1 for disk 1 of the Gladiator. Click on New and then drag & drop the disk1.mpg file from the right window (your HD) to the large left window (the VCD disk). Nero will check through the MPG file to confirm that it is a compliant VCD file. After it finishes checking the file, and all is okay, click the Burn Button. Select the Write Speed to be 4x maximum and make sure Disk-At-Once is NOT ticked. Then click Write and sit back and watch your first VCD disk being burnt. The excitement builds! When the burning is finished, label the CD and rush to your VCD/DVD player to check it out. If all is okay, repeat this for the second or third disks remembering to change the Volume Label. Refer to Nero's Help for further info and clarification on how to use Nero.

3. Use only good quality scratch resistant CDR's. Recommended brands are: Mitsui, Kodak, Sony, Verbatim, TDK and Ricoh. Some DVD stand-alone players will only read from CDRW's, then burn to CDRW's instead. Some DVD players, like Sony, can only read cheap Princo disks, some experimentation may be needed to find a suitable CDR(W) that works in yor unit. Burning at greater then 4x speed can also make the VCD unreadable by many players, particularly the PSX.

4. You have now produced your first fully compliant VideoCD. Wasn't that worth the trouble!

5. If you only converted 2 VOB files, they will generally yield 45-52 minutes of movie. After burning the first half of the movie you will have to repeat step 3 to 6 again for the second half of the movie.


ChickenMan (C) 2002