Best Practice: DVD to Mobile
NOTICE: These instructions are for DVD to Mobile conversions ONLY, which is the function that SHOULD BE USED. This guide does NOT apply to File to Mobile.
A Blu-Ray to Mobile function has been developed and is currently being improved nearly daily, at least weekly, but this thread does NOT address that module.
Background.
I have been involved with development of both Network Media Players and Hard Disk Media Players for over the last 8 years and firmly believe that they are the future of digital media, primarily because of the convenience.
For under AU$200, you can have a device sitting next to your HD TV that can hold 1000 movies at close as dammit to DVD quality with original Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. These devices can also play your MP3's and digital photos.
The ease of use and convenience is outstanding.
This is why I have specifically focused on DVD to Mobile as a means of getting my large DVD collection in a format playable by these devices.
I use my original DVD once. Rip it to my hard drive !!! Then put it away as a safe archive. No kids fingerprints, cracked from dropping, spilt coffee on, etc, etc.
Best Practices
Ensure that you have installed Fab as "Administrator" and are running Fab as "Administrator", not just using an account that you THINK has Administrator rights.
Then, after starting up Fab, check that the your target device is listed on the left hand pane once you click on the DVD to Mobile option in the left hand pane of the Fab window.
In Settings (little green tick mark at top right of the Fab window), set the "Create files in subfolder of output directory" to "OFF"
Also, in Settings->DVD to DVD set the Default output size as "DVD9" and the Default output type as "DVD Folder". In the "Protection" section, make sure that "Remove layer Break" is ticked and close down Fab.
Then create a directory where you will want the ripped DVD to go. I use C:\DVD Rips as an example.
Reasons behind this process.
I have always subscribed to the "Do it once and do it right" theory and have come up with this procedure after literally years of bitter experience. The reasons that I ALWAYS rip to the hard disk first are:-
The conversion process is quite long (can be roughly the running time of the title) depending on the power of your computer and a DVD is continually being accessed if used as the source.
This can create overheating problems, especially in slimline external drives or drives in portables and this will manifest itself in playback glitches or audio sync problems in the converted file.
Around 50% of A/V sync problems are caused by the layer break which is not present when the DVD is ripped to the hard disk.
Fab can also be set up to do batch processing but the media must always be available to it, so I can set up a queue to do 5 titles overnight.
Also, I tend to do different conversions of most titles (eg: Media Player & cellphone) and this way the source is always available to me.
Doing the process this way is generally quicker than encoding from the original DVD. Ie: the rip time + the conversion time using the hard disc as the source is less that the conversion time from the original DVD.
Stage 1: Rip the DVD to a folder.
Start Fab.
Choose DVD to DVD on the left hand panel of the Fab window.
Insert the DVD in the drive and wait for Fab to recognise it as the source.
Select the directory that you have created as the target where you want the ripped DVD to go.
Select Full Disc mode on the left hand panel of Fab.
Check that the DVD9 setting has been maintained at the bottom of the Fab window and just above that, check that the Volume Label is what you want. Take care here because a lot of older releases used to have something like "DVD_VIDEO" as the volume label and you will overwrite any previous rips with the same name.
Once the rip is done, a subfolder with the name of the "Volume Label" will be created in the output directory.
As I said above, I generally do this to multiple DVD's for later processing at about 10-15mins per title.
Stage 1A (Optional): Check the rip with a software player.
Until you become confident that you have the process all running properly, it is a good idea to check that the rip to the hard disk plays correctly and contains the content that you want.
I always use VLC Player to do this as it will play most things thrown at it and does not require external codecs to be installed. (You can download it here and it is FREE).
Do not attempt to just open the VOB files as this will not obey all the instructions that are held in the IFO Files on audio and subtitle settings.
Using VLC, choose the "Open Folder" option and navigate to the directory that was created. For example, C:\DVD Rips\Star Trek. This directory should have 2 subdirectories underneath it, VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS. The AUDIO_TS directory is usually blank but required for DVD specification compliance.
The title should then play just as if the original was inserted.
This is process is also very usefull if you want to identify specific titles on the DVD that you wish to convert as you can play the title and display and identify the title number.
This process can also be used to check disk images that have been created as it will load the ISO directly.
Note for Blu-Ray users. You can use the same process to check Blu-Ray rips but open the ROOT directory of the rip, not the M2TS files directly.
Other software players handle things differently and may require the ISO to be mounted first and other different operating procedures, so if you have problems, please check the documentation and/or forums of that software player.
Don't forget, "GOOGLE is your FRIEND" !!!
Stage 2: DVD to Mobile Conversion
Click on DVD to Mobile on the left hand pane of the Fab window.
Click on the device that you wish to make the file for on the left hand pane.
In the "Source" bar at the top of the Fab Window, navigate to the subdirectory into which the DVD was ripped by clicking on the Source Folder or Source Image icons. Fab will then parse the structure and usually choose the longest title as the main movie. If you are encoding a TV series DVD, you will need to choose the individual titles which you will be able to recognise by the length.
In the "Target" bar at the top of the window, navigate to disc/directory where you want the encoded file(s) to finish.
You can then open the queue to fine tune the settings of each encode but I will not discuss that here as it is a whole topic in itself.
When all ready to go, press the start button and come back later to find it all done.
You can queue up multiple dvd's fom the hard disc like this for overnight processing.
Getting Started: Hints & Tips
Ok.
Now I'll give you some starting points.... And I will only discuss DVD at the moment as Blu-Ray is another ballgame and I'll be very simplistic as this whole discussion can get very deep with varied opinions.
For reference, my target display is a 52" Samsung Full HD TV and I use a variety of different network media players and hard disk media players including the inbuilt player in the TV which plays from USB disks.
I personally feel that H264 is far better than Xvid at the same bitrate. I always advise newbies to start at around 1100 video bitrate and run some tests also with a higher bitrate and see if you can pick the difference.
Unfortunately, some of my older players will not play H264 so I stil use XVid (@ 1100) for them and I find the results more than acceptable.
I ocassionally sneak the bitrate up to 1500 when a title contains fast action scenes.
I'll expound my theory on the resolution that you should aim for:-
DVD's are usually composed at 720 x XXX (PAL) or 704 x XXX (NTSC). The XXX figure depends on what aspect ratio they were composed at.
I ALWAYS choose the closest resolution to the width of the DVD available because I feel that if you choose higher (or lower) you are asking Fab to interpolate either the missing pixels or combine the compressed ones and I feel that the upscaler in either the players or the TV does a better job. I generally leave the TV do it.
To maintain the 5.1 sound, just choose either generic.avi.xvid.audiocopy or generic.avi.h264.audiocopy profile and make sure that you select the Dolby Digital soundtrack.
I hope this helps you get started.....
Best Regards
GregiBoy
A Blu-Ray to Mobile function has been developed and is currently being improved nearly daily, at least weekly, but this thread does NOT address that module.
Background.
I have been involved with development of both Network Media Players and Hard Disk Media Players for over the last 8 years and firmly believe that they are the future of digital media, primarily because of the convenience.
For under AU$200, you can have a device sitting next to your HD TV that can hold 1000 movies at close as dammit to DVD quality with original Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. These devices can also play your MP3's and digital photos.
The ease of use and convenience is outstanding.
This is why I have specifically focused on DVD to Mobile as a means of getting my large DVD collection in a format playable by these devices.
I use my original DVD once. Rip it to my hard drive !!! Then put it away as a safe archive. No kids fingerprints, cracked from dropping, spilt coffee on, etc, etc.
Best Practices
Ensure that you have installed Fab as "Administrator" and are running Fab as "Administrator", not just using an account that you THINK has Administrator rights.
Then, after starting up Fab, check that the your target device is listed on the left hand pane once you click on the DVD to Mobile option in the left hand pane of the Fab window.
In Settings (little green tick mark at top right of the Fab window), set the "Create files in subfolder of output directory" to "OFF"
Also, in Settings->DVD to DVD set the Default output size as "DVD9" and the Default output type as "DVD Folder". In the "Protection" section, make sure that "Remove layer Break" is ticked and close down Fab.
Then create a directory where you will want the ripped DVD to go. I use C:\DVD Rips as an example.
Reasons behind this process.
I have always subscribed to the "Do it once and do it right" theory and have come up with this procedure after literally years of bitter experience. The reasons that I ALWAYS rip to the hard disk first are:-
The conversion process is quite long (can be roughly the running time of the title) depending on the power of your computer and a DVD is continually being accessed if used as the source.
This can create overheating problems, especially in slimline external drives or drives in portables and this will manifest itself in playback glitches or audio sync problems in the converted file.
Around 50% of A/V sync problems are caused by the layer break which is not present when the DVD is ripped to the hard disk.
Fab can also be set up to do batch processing but the media must always be available to it, so I can set up a queue to do 5 titles overnight.
Also, I tend to do different conversions of most titles (eg: Media Player & cellphone) and this way the source is always available to me.
Doing the process this way is generally quicker than encoding from the original DVD. Ie: the rip time + the conversion time using the hard disc as the source is less that the conversion time from the original DVD.
Stage 1: Rip the DVD to a folder.
Start Fab.
Choose DVD to DVD on the left hand panel of the Fab window.
Insert the DVD in the drive and wait for Fab to recognise it as the source.
Select the directory that you have created as the target where you want the ripped DVD to go.
Select Full Disc mode on the left hand panel of Fab.
Check that the DVD9 setting has been maintained at the bottom of the Fab window and just above that, check that the Volume Label is what you want. Take care here because a lot of older releases used to have something like "DVD_VIDEO" as the volume label and you will overwrite any previous rips with the same name.
Once the rip is done, a subfolder with the name of the "Volume Label" will be created in the output directory.
As I said above, I generally do this to multiple DVD's for later processing at about 10-15mins per title.
Stage 1A (Optional): Check the rip with a software player.
Until you become confident that you have the process all running properly, it is a good idea to check that the rip to the hard disk plays correctly and contains the content that you want.
I always use VLC Player to do this as it will play most things thrown at it and does not require external codecs to be installed. (You can download it here and it is FREE).
Do not attempt to just open the VOB files as this will not obey all the instructions that are held in the IFO Files on audio and subtitle settings.
Using VLC, choose the "Open Folder" option and navigate to the directory that was created. For example, C:\DVD Rips\Star Trek. This directory should have 2 subdirectories underneath it, VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS. The AUDIO_TS directory is usually blank but required for DVD specification compliance.
The title should then play just as if the original was inserted.
This is process is also very usefull if you want to identify specific titles on the DVD that you wish to convert as you can play the title and display and identify the title number.
This process can also be used to check disk images that have been created as it will load the ISO directly.
Note for Blu-Ray users. You can use the same process to check Blu-Ray rips but open the ROOT directory of the rip, not the M2TS files directly.
Other software players handle things differently and may require the ISO to be mounted first and other different operating procedures, so if you have problems, please check the documentation and/or forums of that software player.
Don't forget, "GOOGLE is your FRIEND" !!!
Stage 2: DVD to Mobile Conversion
Click on DVD to Mobile on the left hand pane of the Fab window.
Click on the device that you wish to make the file for on the left hand pane.
In the "Source" bar at the top of the Fab Window, navigate to the subdirectory into which the DVD was ripped by clicking on the Source Folder or Source Image icons. Fab will then parse the structure and usually choose the longest title as the main movie. If you are encoding a TV series DVD, you will need to choose the individual titles which you will be able to recognise by the length.
In the "Target" bar at the top of the window, navigate to disc/directory where you want the encoded file(s) to finish.
You can then open the queue to fine tune the settings of each encode but I will not discuss that here as it is a whole topic in itself.
When all ready to go, press the start button and come back later to find it all done.
You can queue up multiple dvd's fom the hard disc like this for overnight processing.
Getting Started: Hints & Tips
Ok.
Now I'll give you some starting points.... And I will only discuss DVD at the moment as Blu-Ray is another ballgame and I'll be very simplistic as this whole discussion can get very deep with varied opinions.
For reference, my target display is a 52" Samsung Full HD TV and I use a variety of different network media players and hard disk media players including the inbuilt player in the TV which plays from USB disks.
I personally feel that H264 is far better than Xvid at the same bitrate. I always advise newbies to start at around 1100 video bitrate and run some tests also with a higher bitrate and see if you can pick the difference.
Unfortunately, some of my older players will not play H264 so I stil use XVid (@ 1100) for them and I find the results more than acceptable.
I ocassionally sneak the bitrate up to 1500 when a title contains fast action scenes.
I'll expound my theory on the resolution that you should aim for:-
DVD's are usually composed at 720 x XXX (PAL) or 704 x XXX (NTSC). The XXX figure depends on what aspect ratio they were composed at.
I ALWAYS choose the closest resolution to the width of the DVD available because I feel that if you choose higher (or lower) you are asking Fab to interpolate either the missing pixels or combine the compressed ones and I feel that the upscaler in either the players or the TV does a better job. I generally leave the TV do it.
To maintain the 5.1 sound, just choose either generic.avi.xvid.audiocopy or generic.avi.h264.audiocopy profile and make sure that you select the Dolby Digital soundtrack.
I hope this helps you get started.....
Best Regards
GregiBoy
- Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790