How to Rip a DVD in XviD Fromat Using the Gordian Knot Rip Pack

How To Rip A DVD In XviD Format Using The Gordian Knot Rip Pack Gordian Knot Rip pack is a program that is more in the category of a batch script generator program than a real video encoding program, but that is only because the program started out as a simple DivX/XviD bitrate calculator. As time passed, the program evolved onto an integrated package of tools for DivX/XviD/H.264 encoding. One of the many components that the Gordian Knot Rip Pack contains are: • • • • • • • •

AviSynth VirtualDubMod Nandub BeSweet DGindex vStrip DGMPGDec VobSub

Many of these tools will come in handy when you rip your movies into DivX/XviD/H.264, especially Avisynth, DGindex, VirtualDubMod, vStrip, BeSweet. I will explain the whole encoding process from beginning to end, but in order to do that we have to have Gordian Knot Rip Pack installed first. Download the latest Gordian Knot Rip Pack from the following web address: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gordianknot/ Also, download the latest XviD encoder/decoder from the following website: http://www.koepi.info/xvid.html Just remember to uninstall any previous versions of the XviD encoder/decoder you may have installed on your system. In order to make the encoded movie compatible with standalone DVD/DivX players, you will also need the “FourCC Code Changer” tool: http://www.free-codecs.com/avi_fourcc_code_changer_download.htm Now, start the installer of the XviD encoder/decoder.

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Click “Next” at this dialogue box.

Chose “I accept the agreement” and then click “Next”.

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Again, click the “Next” button.

Don’t change the destination directory, just click “Next”.

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Again, don’t change the default name in the Start Menu folder, just click “Next”.

See to it that the “Decode all supported FourCCs (DivX, DX50, MP4V)” checkbox is checked, and then click “Next”.

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Click “Install”. Wait for the installer to finish installing the XviD encoder/decoder.

Now, click “Finish” Start the Gordian Knot Rip Pack installer.

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Click the “I Agree” button.

In this dialogue box, make sure that all the components have been selected. After that, click “Next”.

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Don’t change the destination directory, just click “Install”. The “VobSub” and “AviSynth” setup wizards will start during the installation of the Gordian Knot Rip Pack.

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Select “English” from the list of languages, and then click “OK”. At the next dialogue box, click “Next”.

At the next dialogue box, make sure that the empty boxes have been checked exactly like in the picture above. Afterwards, click “Next”.

Don’t change the destination directory, leave it as it is. Click the “Install” button and wait for the installer to finish installing VobSub.

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When the installer finishes, click “Close”. Right after the installer for VobSub finishes, the installer for AviSynth will pop up.

Click the “I Agree” button.

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Check the checkboxes exactly like in the picture above. Afterwards, click “Next”.

Don’t change the destination directory, leave it as it is. Click the “Install” button and wait for the installer to finish installing AviSynth.

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When the installer finishes, click “Finish”.

The installation of the Gordian Knot Rip Pack has finished. Click “Close” to finalize it. Now, let’s fire up Gordian Knot. If the installer hasn’t placed a shortcut on your desktop, go to “Start->Program Files->Gordian Knot->Gordian Knot”. After the program has started, you will notice that there are a bunch of tabs and settings that at first glance seem very complicated. This is where this tutorial comes in handy. 11

The first tab in Gordian Knot is the “Ripping” tap. The “Ripping” tab is divided in several sections. I’ll explain what each of them mean. •

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“1+2 - Rip & Prepare the VOBs in one pass”: If you click this option, you have to load a .d2v (a “DVD To Avi” file) already made and lying on your HDD. A “DVD To Avi” file is basically an index file of the MPEG video stream containing the location of each frame in the input stream. The input stream is of course the DVD video. This index file is used by Gordian Knot to generate a frame-accurate .avs file (AviSynth file). You will probably use this option rarely because if you already have a .d2v file you could just load it into Gordian Knot using the “Open” button in the lower left corner of the program window. Besides, this option only allows one pass encoding, which (as some of you will learn later on) is not good, a two pass encoding is much better. “1 - Rip The VOBs”: You will also probably use this option rarely because most of the DVDs nowadays have already been decrypted. The first button in this section of the “Ripping” tab opens up the “DVDDecrypter” tool. You will need this option if you haven’t copied the VOB files (and folders) from the DVD to your HDD. But, I strongly recommend that you do that before decrypting or ripping anything, since not all DVDROMs are top of the line, and therefore, not all of them can sustain the stress of the decrypting process. The second button in this section opens up the “vStrip GUI” tool. You can use this tool to decrypt DVD data lying on your HDD which is not in 12

image format (.iso, .nrg, .bin, etc.). All you need to do is load the .vob files that you want to decrypt and “vStrip GUI” will decrypt them for you. There are several steps in this process, which I will not explain in detail, since (as is I said earlier) most of the DVDs nowadays have already been decrypted. •

“2 - Prepare the VOBs”: Now this section of the “Ripping” tab will be used quite frequently. There is only one button in this section and it starts the “DGIndex” tool. This tool creates a .d2v file. It also demuxes (splits the audio from the video in a video file) the audio contents from the VOBs, which is a very important option, since you would probably want to encode the audio in .mp3 format (it’s the most common audio format when ripping DVDs in an .avi container). This tool also provides tons of useful information about the VOBs, like the Video Type, Frame Type, Frame Rate, Bitrate, Aspect Ratio, etc. As I said, you will use this tool quite frequently.

Next in line is the “Bitrate” tab. This tab is also divided into sections and has tons of options in it. I’ll try to explain as simple as I can what each of them mean.

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“Container”: This section of the “Bitrate” tab has 3 options in it: AVI, OGM, MKV. The AVI container format (I think almost everyone is more or less familiar with it) is the most used container for DivX/XviD encoding. The OGM container is also an open source container format. It was first though of and developed by Xiph.org because of the lack of video support in the OGG format. The MKV container is an open source container that can hold an unlimited number of audio and video streams. It’s most commonly used in a 13

video file when there is more than one audio stream in it (like multilanguage movies). To keep it simple, leave the container option to the default value, i.e. AVI. •

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“Codec”: The codec section has 4 options in it: DivX 3.11, DivX 5, XviD, x264. The DivX 3.11 codec is an older version of the DivX codec. It was released in 1998 and is short for Digital Video Express. The DivX 5 codec is a product of the “DivX, Inc.” company. The DivX 5 Codec is actually a derivate, an improved version of the DivX 3.11 codec (a lot of politics is involved in explaining this one, so it’s better not to get into it). The XviD codec (it’s DivX spelled backwards) is an MPEG-4 ASP video format. That means that it can be decoded with every MPEG-4 compliant decoder there is out there, including standalone DivX/DVD players. The x264 (H.264) codec is the successor of the DivX and XviD codec. The codec was developed by the Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) and the Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG). The partnership was called Joint Video Team (JVT). The main goal of the H.264 project was to create a codec that can provide good video quality at substantially lower bitrates than the previous standards (DivX, XviD). From my experience with the H.264 codec, I have to say, they succeeded. It is best to leave this option in the default value, i.e. XviD. “Mode”: This section allows you to choose between two options: Calculate Average Bitrate, Calculate Avi File Size. The first option calculates the average bitrate of the video stream if you define a file size (for example, 700MB). The “Calculate Avi File Size” option allows you to define an average bitrate for the video and see how big the file size of the output video will be. “Total Size”: This section allows you to define the total size of the output video. That means the size of the audio of the video file will also be incorporated in the total file size of the video. Not only that, it even incorporates the size of the header of the output video and lowers the video bitrate if needed. You can define the file size of a CD/DVD (for example, if I don’t want to burn the encoded video to a 700MB CD, I could just change the file size of the CD to 650MB), choose the number of CDs I want my encoded video to be burned on (you could even split the video file in multiple smaller files to fit on a regular CD by checking the “Split final file into CDs” box), etc. “Audio A”, “Audio B”, “Files”: This section allows you to put an AC3, MP3, DTS, WAV, OGG, file to be muxed/encoded with the output video. You can either define the bitrate of the audio file in MP3 format (if the MP3 file is encoded with a 44.1KHz sample rate, which is not a good option, since mp3 files with same bitrates but different sample rates differ in file size, and this option only applies to 44.1KHz sample rates), or you could click the “Select” button and browse to your demuxed audio file (which is better). Usually, only the “Audio A” section is active, while the “Audio B” option is left out 14

blank. If you want to encode multiple audio streams into one file, you could fill in both sections. The “File” section is basically the same thing, except you can add any kind of file in this section. This section is pretty useful when you have an audio file that doesn’t belong to any of the file formats mentioned above (for example a AAC file). That way, you can calculate the average bitrate of the video, encode only the video, pack it in a container (for example, AVI), and then manually add the audio to the container. •

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“Interleaveing & AVI-Overhead”: This section calculates the overhead of the output video based on the type of the audio format of the output video. There are several options, among which are “No audio”, “ac3”, “cbr mp3” (constant bitrate MP3), “vbr mp3” (variable bitrate MP3). It’s best to leave the “Audio 1:” option with the “cbr mp3” setting and the “Audio 2:” option with the “No audio” setting, since most of the DVD rips are done with only one audio stream (usually, the audio stream with the native language of the movie). The size of the overhead depends on the size of the audio and the interleaving interval (muxing interval). The smaller the interval is, the larger the header is. The larger the audio file is, the larger the header is. To simplify things, it’s best that you set the interleave interval to 15 frames. With this setting, the header is neither too big, nor too small. The interleave interval is a very important part of the encoding process. Just like a DNA chain, the audio and video of a certain video file are interleaved at exact time intervals, so if the interval is too large, after a while the audio will get out of sync from the video. On the other hand, if the interleave interval is too small (for example 1 frame), the header of the file will become too big, which cuts back on the quality of the video. “Video”: This section shows the average bitrate and the size of the output video. The values of the size of the output video should be the same as in the “Total Size” section if you have chosen “Calculate Average Bitrate” in the “Mode” section. If you have chosen “Calculate Avi File Size” in the “Mode” section, then the “Total File Size” setting in the “Total Size” section will not matter, and the final size of the output video will be displayed in the “Video” section in the “Video Size” field. “Duration”: This section automatically detects the duration of the input video stream when a .d2v or a .avi file is loaded in Gordian Knot via the “Open” button in the lower left corner of the program, so there is no need to adjust anything here, except of course if you want to change the duration of the output video. For the time being, leave this section unchanged.

Now comes the “Resolution” tab. Most of the settings in this tab are automatically detected when a .d2v or a .avi file is loaded in Gordian Knot, but some of them are not. As in the previous tab, I’ll try to explain as simple as I can what the options and sections mean.

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“Input Resolution”: This section automatically detects the input resolution of the video stream. If the input resolution is according to the PAL standard, then the “PAL” option would be selected. If the input resolution is NTSC, then the “NTSC” option would be selected. If the input resolution is different from a PAL or a NTSC source, than the “other......” option would be selected automatically, and the resolution of the input video would be written in the two empty fields. You can change any of these settings if you like, but it’s best if you leave them as they are. “Input Pixel Aspect Ratio”: This section defines the input pixel aspect ratio (often, the pixel aspect ratio is referred to as PAR). If the input pixel aspect ratio is 16:9 (i.e. widescreen), then the “PAL anamorphic (16:9)” option will be automatically selected. If the input pixel aspect ratio is 4:3 (i.e. non widescreen), then the “PAL non anamorphic (4:3)” option will be automatically selected. If the input pixel aspect ratio is 1:1 (as in most of the DivX/XviD encoded videos), then the “1:1” option will be automatically selected. If the input pixel aspect ratio has some nonstandard value, then the “other......” option will be selected with the pixel aspect ratio written in the empty field. If you want the aspect ratio (the display aspect ratio, also known as DAR) of the output video to be different than the aspect ratio of the input video, than you can choose the “Display AR......” option and input the desired aspect ratio. The default display aspect ratio is automatically detected by Gordian Knot of course, but you can change it to any value if you want. For the time being, leave this section unchanged from the default values that Gordian Knot has detected. 16

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“Crop (before resize!)”: This section allows you to crop (remove black bars, remove edges and “chewed up tape” effect from the bottom of VHS rips, etc.) your video any way you like. You can also disable any kind of cropping of the video by choosing the “disable” option. The pixel option allows you to crop your video the way you like it: remove a small black bar from the bottom or from the top, cut up time codes from the movie, etc. and you can do it with a 2 pixel resolution (which, let’s face it, it’s pretty precise). If you chose the “Smart Crop Left-Right” option, the program crops 16 pixels from the left and the right side of the movie, and you can adjust the cropping from the bottom and the top of the movie yourself. I still haven’t figured out what the “Smart Crop All” option does. I guess I didn’t need it, so in never bothered to investigate what it does. The “Aspect Ratio......” option let’s you crop your video by defining a new aspect ratio for the video. This option is rarely used, since the most important aspects of cropping a video file are already covered in the previous options. “Output Resolution”: This section shows the number of pixels on a screen for a given resolution (this is written in the “Pixels” bar), it lets you control the resolution of the output video and it shows the horizontal and vertical zoom of the output video. You can control the output resolution of the video with the “Width x Height” buttons. These two buttons jump from one resolution to another in scales. The size of the jump can be determined with the “WModul” and “H-Modul” fields. The higher the value is in these two fields, the bigger the jumps are. For example, if the value in both fields is set to 32, the horizontal and the vertical resolution will jump in 32 pixel scales each time you hit the up or down button in the “Width x Height” field. If both values are set to 16, then the horizontal and vertical resolution of the video will jump in 16 pixel scales, and so on. The “Aspect Ratio” bar shows the output display aspect ratio for a chosen resolution. See to it that this resolution is as close as can be to the aspect ratio of the original video (unless you want a different display aspect ratio from the source video). The “Aspect Error” bar shows (in percent) how much the output aspect ratio differs from the input aspect ratio (after the cropping process, if there is any cropping). Try to keep this number as small as you can, a value less than ±1% would be sufficient enough (again, unless you want a different display aspect ratio from the source video). The “W-Zoom” and “H-Zoom” bars show (in percent) how much the output resolution is larger or smaller than the input resolution of the video. If the output resolution is smaller than the input resolution, then both of these values will be bellow 100%. If the output resolution of the video is larger then the input resolution of the video, then both of these values will be above 100%.

I will not get into explaining the other tabs (there is also an advanced options tab, if you dig around a little bit you can find it). The “Subtitles / Chapters” tab is just what the name says, it’s for hardsubbing subtitles into movies. Since this is a DVD 17

ripping tutorial, I will not get into that. The “Options” tab is for various options related to the way Gordian Knot behaves and saves files. Leave them as they are, the defaults are just fine. In the “Program Paths” tab see if the “Nandub.exe”, “VirtualDubMod.exe”, “BeSweet.exe”, “azidts.exe”, “DGindex.exe” and the directory for the “AviSynth plugins” are located. If some of these are not located (there is a white bar instead of the location of the program), find them and put in the right path via the “Locate” button. The “Encoder” tab is where you see the details of the encoding process. Everything that is shown in the “Encoding” tab is logged into a log file in the output directory of the video, so if something goes wrong during the encoding, you can inspect the log file to see what might be the reason for the error message.

Example: In this part of the tutorial, I will explain how to rip a DVD with an example. For this purpose, I have chosen the movie “Shooters”. Now, if you have an .iso, .nrg, .bin image of the DVD, the first thing that you need to do is mount the image on a virtual drive (using DAEMON Tools, Magic Disc, etc.) and copy it’s contents to a folder on your HDD. If you have the DVD as a hardcopy, copy the contents of the DVD in a folder on your HDD (for example, I copied the movie “Shooters” in “D:\Shooters (DVD)\”). We only need the contents of the “VIDEO_TS” folder, so there is no need to copy the “AUDIO_TS” folder.

As you can see, the “VTS_04_1.VOB”, “VTS_04_2.VOB”, “VTS_04_3.VOB” and the “VTS_04_4.VOB” are the largest files in this folder. These are the files that contain 18

the audio and video of the movie. Now open up Gordian Knot and position yourself in the “Ripping” tab.

Click the button in the “2 – Prepare the VOBs” section. The following window will appear.

This is the “DGindex” tool. This tool creates a .d2v index file that you will need in order to rip the DVD. If you have a dual layer DVD, then there may be more than 19

four .vob files in the “VIDEO_TS” folder. In any case, just remember to load the largest .vob files form the DVD. While “DGindex” has focus, press F2, and select the largest .vob files mentioned earlier. Afterwards, click “Open”.

See if all the files are in the correct order (for example, the first one is “VTS_04_1.VOB”, the second one is “VTS_04_2.VOB”, the third one is “VTS_04_3.VOB”, and so on). If they are, click “OK”. In order to preview the movie, we need to press F5. The preview process is very important because we need to know some info about the movie size, framerate, video type, etc. When you press F5, the following screen will be placed to the right of the main window of “DGindex”. This window is called the “Information” window. It gives tons of useful information, as you will surely notice in the next picture.

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After you have the preview feature turned on in “DGindex”, let it run for a while (a minute or two would be sufficient enough), then press “ESC” (Escape). As you can see from the picture, the frame rate of the movie is 29.970 (although, as you will see later in this tutorial, that is not correct), the video type is Film, the frame size is 720x480, the aspect ratio is 16:9, etc. The most useful feature in the “Information” window is the “Video Type” field. Since “Shooters” is coded in Film format, the next thing that I need to do in “DGindex” is choose from the drop menu “Video->Field Operation->Forced Film”. You don’t need to do this if your movie has a different coding scheme than Film (for example, PAL or NTSC).

Now, we need to demux (deinterlace) all the audio tracks from the video stream. To do this, we have to select (check) “Audio->Output Method->Demux All Tracks”. 21

This setting will demux all audio tracks from the DVD video. One of them (usually the first one) will be the audio track with the native language of the video.

You can also down sample the audio sample rate from 48KHz to 44.1KHz (Audio CD standard). You can do this by selecting “Audio-> 48 -> 44.1KHz->Ultra High”, although I wouldn’t recommend it if this is your first time ripping a DVD. Besides, an audio file with a 48KHz sample rate is almost the same size as a 44.1KHz one.

So for now, let’s just leave this option to “Off”. Next, we have to create a .d2v file and demux the audio tracks. This can be done by pressing the F4 button while “DGindex” has focus. A “Save As” dialogue will pop up right after you hit F4. Choose a name for the .d2v file (for example, 22

Movie.d2v) and a folder in which “DGindex” will store the demuxed audio tracks from the DVD video (for example, I made a folder named “RIP” inside the “Shooters (DVD)” folder). Now click the “Save” button.

Let “DGindex” finish creating the .d2v file and demuxing the audio tracks. When “DGindex” finishes the tasks, the “Information” window should have “FINISH” written in the “Status” section. Afterwards, you can close “DGindex”.

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Now let’s open up the “RIP” folder. As you can see, there is one audio track in it in .ac3 format (the “Shooters” DVD I had was a pirated copy, so in order to cut on space, they only burned the native English audio track) and one .d2v file. You may have several audio tracks in the folder. Find which one of them is the audio in the native language of the movie and delete the rest (if you want, you can encode the movie with any of the other non native audio streams).

Let’s load the .d2v file into Gordian Knot. Start Gordian Knot and click the “Open” button in the lower left corner of the program and locate your .d2v file (mine is called “Movie.d2v”). Mark the file and click the “Open” button.

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The following window with a preview of the movie will appear.

As you can see, there are black bars at the bottom and the top of the movie. Encoding these black bars into DivX/XviD along with the movie would take up a small amount of bitrate, but why do it when there is no need to. Focus the Gordian Knot window again and position yourself in the “Resolution” tab. Now click the “Auto Crop” button, let Gordian Knot scan the video and adjust the proper crop values. As you can see from the picture bellow, my Left, Right, Top and Bottom crop values are: 0 pixels, 2 pixels, 62 pixels, 66 pixels. In most of the videos, Gordian Knot calculates the crop parameters pretty accurately, but in some cases the calculation is not good enough. In those cases, you would have to adjust the crop parameters yourself using the “Pixel” option in the “Crop (before resize!)” section of the “Resolution” tab. If you have nothing to crop from your video, than just select the “disable” option in the “Crop (before resize!)” section. The changes we made can be seen in the next picture. As you have probably noticed, now there are no black bars in the preview screen of Gordian Knot.

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Now, let’s adjust some of the other settings. Open up the “Resolution” tab (the last picture on the previous page) in the main window of Gordian Knot. As you can see in the picture above, in the “Input Resolution” section the resolution has been detected properly (the NTSC standard is encoded with 23.976 frames per second which is what the “Information” window in “DGindex” reported). In the “Input Pixel Aspect Ratio” section, we would have to change the “Display AR......” field to 1.778 (because we have a widescreen source). After changing the value in the “Display AR......” field, we can see that the value in the “Aspect Ratio......” field in the “Crop (before resize!)” section has changed to 2.417. We have to adjust the resolution in the “Output Resolution” section to have an aspect ratio as close as possible to 2.417. In order to have more precision when adjusting the output resolution in the video in the “Output Resolution” section, adjust the “W-Modul” and the “H-Modul” fields to 4 pixels. Now, when adjusting the output resolution of the video, don’t forget to look at the “Aspect Error” field in the “Output Resolution” section. This is very important, because if the output resolution has an aspect error value larger than ±5%, than the output video could be stretched or shrunk vertically (if the DVD was 4:3 coded, it might even be stretched or shrunk horizontally). Usually, a value bellow ±1% is good enough. I was lucky this time, so I adjusted the output resolution to have a 0% aspect error value. Almost every resolution of the output video is acceptable, but don’t let the horizontal resolution (the “Width” field in the “Output Resolution” section) go above 700 pixels or bellow 500 pixels. Here is how the “Resolution” tab should look like with the settings mentioned above.

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Now, let’s adjust the bitrate settings. Open up the “Bitrate” tab in the main window of Gordian Knot.

In the “Container” section choose the “AVI” option. In the “Mode” section choose “Calculate Average Bitrate” (we want to make a perfect ~700MB rip of the movie, burnable on one CD). In the “Duration” section don’t change anything, leave everything as it is. In the “Audio A” section select the “Size” option and click the “Select” button, browse to the .ac3 file, select it and click “Open”.

The new look of the “Bitrate” tab is shown in the picture bellow.

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As you can see, in the “Audio A” section, right next to the “Audio A” text there is a number with a percentage sign next to it. This number indicates how much space (data) is taken up by the audio file in a video, for a given file size for the output video (in this case 698MB, it’s written in the “Total File Size” field in the “Total Size” section). As you have probably noticed, a value of 58% is probably too much, which means that there is only 41% left for the video data (58%+41%=99%, 1% is eaten up by the overhead of the .avi file, which in this case is 5MB). Not to worry, after the .ac3 to .mp3 conversion/compression of the audio, the percentage at the “Audio A” section will drop to around 15%-20% (sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on the length of the audio and the bitrate of the MP3 stream). Leave the “Audio B” section blank (or, if it isn’t already blank, just select the “Size” option and input 0 in the “MB” field). In the “Codec” section, choose “XviD”. In the “Total Size” section, set the “1 CD =” field to 700MB (if it’s not set by default to that size), from the “Number CD” field choose “1 CD”, and set the “Total File Size” field to 698MB (we don’t want an overburned CD, so a value of 698MB is playing it safe). In the “Interleaving & AVI-Overhead” section, check the “Calculate Frame-Overhead” box, sect the “Audio 1:” option to “cbr mp3”, set the “Audio 2:” option to “No audio” and set the interleave interval to 15 frames. The main window of Gordian Knot should look like in the picture bellow.

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Now, click the “Save & Encode” button in the preview window of Gordian Knot.

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After Don’t time, press

you press the “Save & Encode” button, the following window will appear. change any of the settings, they are just fine the way they are (if I have the I’ll get into more detail about these settings in some other tutorial). Just the “Save & Encode” button again.

The “Save Frameserver” dialogue will appear. It’s actually the location where the encoded movie will be saved. The frameserver is actually an AviSynth file (.avs file). You can name the file any way you like and save the movie anywhere, but it’s best that you save it in a special directory made just for that, because there are lots of leftover files that have to be deleted after the encoding process. I have named the file “Shooters.avs” and chose to save it in “D:\Shooters (DVD)\RIP\”.

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Now, click the “Save” button. After this, the “Encoding Control Panel” will open. Select the “Multipass” option (if it is not already selected), and leave the “Frame Server” location and the “AVI Output File” location as they are. The same goes for the “Frame Server Credits”.

In the “Audio 1” tab choose the option “MP3, 128 kBits/sec. constant Bitrate”. You can choose another value for the bitrate if you like (for example 160kbps, 192kbps, etc.), but it’s best to leave it at 128, since this is probably your first rip done with Gordian Knot. In the “Audio Source File:” section, select the .ac3 file (in my case, the location of the file is “D:\Shooters (DVD)\RIP\Movie T01 3_2ch 448Kbps DELAY 0ms.ac3”) if it is not already selected. Afterwards, check the “Finally Mux” checkbox, if it’s not already checked. Leave the “Delay” setting at 0. This setting adjusts the time sync between the audio and the video in the movie, but since the audio and video in the movie are in sync, there is no need to adjust this setting. See too it that the “Re-Calculate Video Bitrate” and “Delete Wav” checkboxes are checked. If they are not, check both of them. The “Re-Calculate Video Bitrate” checkbox is very important since the input audio stream is in .ac3 format and it is much larger (in size) that the .mp3 file that will be encoded from the .ac3 file, so the program needs to recalculate the average bitrate of the video data, so that the output file can have the same file size as before the .ac3 to .mp3 conversion. Otherwise, the final movie will have a significantly smaller size that the one we have defined (in our case 698MB) and significantly worse quality. After setting everything up, the “Audio 1” tab should look something like this.

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About the “Audio 2”, choose the “Audio-processing disabled” option if it’s not already selected.

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Now, click the “XviD” tab.

Press the “First Pass” button. The “XviD Configuration” window with the first pass settings will appear.

Click the “OK” button. 34

The “XviD” tab will gain focus again. Click the “Second Pass” button. The “XviD Configuration” window with the second pass settings will appear.

Click the “OK” button again. The “Encoding Control Panel” will gain focus.

Click the “Add Job to Encoding Queue” button located in the lower right corner. 35

You will be prompted to choose if want to add the job to the encoding queue and start the encoding process now, or you just add the job to the encoding queue. Answer “Yes”. The encoding process will start, Gordian Knot will automatically position itself in the “Encoding” tab and the “BeSweet” tool will start transcoding the .ac3 stream into a .mp3 stream.

After the transcoding process has finished, the first pass of the video encoding process will start. The encoding will be done using the “VirtualDubMod” tool. 36

Gordian Knot will recalculate the bitrate of the video according to the audio file size.

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The status window of the XviD encoder might also appear. You can close it if you like.

After the first pass ending has finished. The second pass encoding will start. The second pass encoding window of “VirtualDubMod” looks just like the first one. The only difference is in the log window in the “Encoding” tab of Gordian Knot.

After the second pass of the encoding process has finished, the interleaving (muxing) of the audio and video stream will start. This process is the shortest of all 4 processes. The interleaving process is the last part of the encoding procedure. 38

After the encoding process has ended, the log window in the “Encoding” tab in Gordian Knot will look like the picture bellow. You can close Gordian Knot now.

The .avi file will be placed in the same folder where we saved the .avs file (in my case “C:\Shooters (DVD)\RIP\”). As you can see from the picture bellow, there are also lot’s of other files in the folder. We don’t need them any more, they were only needed during the encoding process. We can delete everything except the “Shooters.avi” file. That is the ripped .avi file from the DVD.

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The ripped .avi file after we have deleted everything else in the folder.

As you can see from the picture, it’s a perfect 697MB rip. The only thing that we need to do is change the FourCC info field of the movie so that the .avi can be compatible with any standalone DVD/DivX player. Extract the contents of the “avic100.zip” file (the “FourCC Code Changer” tool) in a folder (any folder will do, for example, I extracted it on my Desktop).

Now run the “avic.exe” file. The following window will appear.

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Click the “Open” button (the little yellow button on the right of the program window). Position yourself in the ripping folder (in my case “C:\Shooters (DVD)\RIP”), and open the ripped .avi file (in my case “Shooters.avi”).

Click the “Open” button. The window in the “FourCC Code Changer” tool will change.

Now, change the “FourCC Used Codec” field from “XVID” to “DIVX”. If there is no “DIVX” option available from the menu, just write in “DIVX” (without the semicolons) in the “FourCC Used Codec” field.

Now click the “Apply” button, and you’re done. Now you can exit the “FourCC Code Changer” tool. 41

Open up the encoded movie with your favorite media player. Here is the final result.

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