Adubvideo

Solve DVD Decrypter's Closing Error on Windows 7

2012-09-16T00:00:00+00:00
The Problem§</a> </h3>
A reader of mine contacted me today about an error he was seeing with DVD Decrypter on his Windows 7 box. The error spoke about 'Failed to set data for "DVDDecrypterPlayMovieDVDMovieOnArrival"'. Reading his email reminded me that I had seen the error myself before.</p>
The error is actually two errors which occur when you try to close DVD Decrypter on a Windows 7 machine.</p> </span>
The first error is `Failed to set data for ''</code>. Here is an example image:</p>`
`The second error is Failed to set data for 'DVDDecrypterPlayMovieDVDMovieOnArrival'</code>:</p>`
`Solution§</a> </h3> The quickest and most elegant solution to this issue is just to run DVD Decrypter as an Administrator. Simply right click on the DVD Decrypter icon and click "Run as Administrator". That should fix it!</p>`



Ensuring Proper DirectShow Filter Setup in Windows 7
2012-07-16T00:00:00+00:00
DirectShow problems§</a>
</h3>
It's funny, I just recently built a new computer for my personal use,
along with supporting my master's thesis research, and I went about
installing Windows 7 64-bit.</p>
I went ahead installing my standard media workflow, which includes,
BDtoAVCHD, AVStoDVD, MeGUI, Avisynth, and LAVFilters. I continued on,
thinking that everything was just fine and dandy with my current
install. Then, I attempted to convert a movie to a quick DVD5 (single
layer), and I noticed that my audio was way out of sync, along with some
strange decoding issues in the first few frames of the movie.</p>
I'd already completed several successful conversions already, so I was a
bit baffled about what could be going wrong. I had LAVFilters installed,
and everything played fine in Media Player Classic Home Cinema. The one
exception is that when I previewed the title in AVStoDVD, the
audio desynchronization reared it's ugly head. Again, I was dumb founded
for a second.</p>
It was then that I remembered an old post that I had written a year or
so ago</a>. I'd forgotten to organize my DirectShow chain again. Or more
specifically, I used the wrong program. You see, in the year or so since
I'd first had to organize my Windows 7 DirectShow filters, I'd
completely forgotten about what a hassle it was. I also forgot the name
of the handy dandy little program that lets you organize the filters in
their proper order.</p>
What I did first on this machine was use the CodecTweakTool</a>. It was
definitely a different interface than (I thought) I remembered, but I
figured it had just been updated and it didn't matter. But I was wrong.
I should have used (and did end up using)  the Preferred Filter Tweaker
for Windows 7 (and now 8!)</a>. Can you blame me for getting the two
mixed up? Tweak this and codec that, it's easy to get lost in there.</p>
Success!§</a>
</h3>
So, I went ahead and ran the correct software (the Preferred Filter
Tweaker), thereby wrestling away DirectShow decoding control from
Windows and giving it to LAVFilters, which decoded my movie just
perfectly (with hardware acceleration nonetheless!).</p>
Just a funny story that I thought readers could appreciate. Long story
short, be sure about your DirectShow Filter setup on your Windows 7 box,
as the default Microsoft filters are not the greatest and either don't
support all H.264 material properly, or have random bugs in them.</p>
Oh, and I obviously haven't forgotten about this little site. I'm trying
to find time to redesign it (thereby making it faster) and write more
content for it (there is a giant TODO list of tutorials that I need to
write/update).</p>


Backup Bluray and DVD to MKV with MakeMKV
2011-02-28T00:00:00+00:00
Since I have been dealing with backing up both my Blurays and HD DVDs
(yes, I have some of these) to hard disk recently, I stumbled across a
pretty darn awesome program called MakeMKV</a>.</p>
</span>
What makes MakeMKV so special is that is unique. It is
essentially a decrypter and remuxer packaged into one. It decrypts
Blurays, HD DVDs (if you have 'em), and DVDs. Best of all, it does most
of this for FREE!</p>
Well, to be more accurate, Bluray decryption is only free during beta
testing, but DVD decryption will always be free. Still, Bluray
decryption is limited to 30 days at the time of this writing (they are
still cranking out versions). However, you can go ahead and buy a
license here</a> (it helps support this site if you use that link) if
you would like.</p>
Here is a quick rundown of the features it offers:</p>

Reads DVD and Blu-ray discs</li>
Reads Blu-ray discs protected with latest versions of AACS and BD+</li>
Preserves all video and audio tracks, including HD audio</li>
Preserves chapters information</li>
Preserves all meta-information (track language, audio type)</li>
Fast conversion - converts as fast as your drive can read data.</li>
No additional software is required for conversion or decryption.</li>
Available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux</li>
Functionality to open DVD discs is free and will always stay free.</li>
All features (including Blu-ray decryption and processing) are free
during BETA.</li>
</ul>
And before you guys ask, no, I am not being paid to write this. I
honestly like this software as it simplifies a lot of things. Plus a
majority of its functionality is free.</p>
I especially like it because it is cross-platform, meaning it can run on
Windows, Linux and Mac machines. No other serious decryption software
that I have found offers this functionality.</p>
So, lets get started.</p>
Getting Started§</a>
</h3>
Well, it's really not that hard to get started. First off download
MakeMKV.</p>
Second, insert your Bluray or whatever you are ripping into your disk
drive.</p>
Open up MakeMKV, and make sure your disk drive is selected (it should be
already, especially if you only have one disk drive).</p>


    
    
    
    

When you are ready to start, click the big Disk to Hard Drive</strong>button,
right in the center of the screen. Your disk will be analyzed by MakeMKV
for a few minutes (usually seconds actually). Here is my analysis pass
in action:</p>


    
    
    
    

Selecting Your Tracks§</a>
</h3>
Now, the real power of MakeMKV is that you can select specific titles
and tracks to be ripped. This gives you immense flexibility, and saves
you a lot of time and space if you only want the English tracks and the
main movie.</p>
Once MakeMKV has finished analyzing your disk, it will display a window
like the one below. As you can see, I have selected just my main movie
and my preferred audio and subtitle tracks (English).</p>


    
    
    
    

It really couldn't be simpler.</p>
Now, as you will see in my screenshot, I have two areas highlighted. The
top area shows two icons. The icon on the left will start decrypting the
disk to you hard drive. The second will start a streaming server,
allowing you to stream you Bluray over your home network to a compatible
media player (like the PS3 I believe). How cool is that!?</p>
I may do another write up sometime on streaming, but there really isn't
much more to write up than what I already have.</p>
Rip the Disk§</a>
</h3>
Anyways, let's finish ripping our disk. Select either the left icon in
the top highlighted area, or the big button in the second highlighted
area, and your disk will be begin to rip to an MKV.</p>
Here is a snap of that process in action:</p>


    
    
    
    

Again, it couldn't be simpler. For those of you wondering, you will not
lose a single drop of quality in the conversion process. Since MakeMKV
is really only remuxing your disk on the fly, it's like it is copying
the original video into a MKV container.</p>
Yes, the size will not be exactly small, but you can recompress at your
leisure with programs like MeGUI, StaxRip, RipBot264 or HDConvertToX. Or
keep the original quality, it's your choice!</p>
Well that about covers it for me! Post in the comments!</p>


A small update
2011-02-19T00:00:00+00:00
Hey all!</p>
Just letting you know that I haven't disappeared. I've got a few other
tutorials in the works for programs like MakeMKV and BDtoAVCHD.</p>
In addition, Loilo has contacted me and asked me to write an updated
review of their editing program. This is kind of wild, as this was the
first post I ever made on Adubvideo!</p>
I do wish that I could be posting more often than I am (my TODO list is
getting ridiculous) but alas, academics comes first. Still, if you have
any particular guides you would like me to write, or programs that you
think I should look into, post in the comments.</p>
One day I'll get all caught up... One day...</p>
Oh, I almost forgot, I just updated the BD Rebuilder tutorial</a>. It
was getting a little old (I wrote it back in 2009! Jeez, time flies) and
I had a few readers comment on its "out of date-ness".</p>
Well, I think that pretty much sums up what's new with me. Keep
experimenting!</p>
Adub</p>


How to Hardsub Blurays with RipBot
2011-01-30T00:00:00+00:00
A few weeks ago (sorry it took me so long!) a few readers asked me about
hardsubbing (embedding subtitles into the video stream) videos from
their ripped Blurays. They specifically wanted to do it with RipBot.</p>
After playing around with it for a few minutes, I discovered that it is
actually very easy to do!</p>
Here is how...</p>
</span>Preparation§</a>
</h3>
To begin, make sure you have your Blu-ray ripped to your hard drive. I
have several guides on this procedure already, so simply look around</a>
if you are lost on this step.</p>
When you are ready, open RipBot.</p>
Selecting Your Bluray§</a>
</h3>
RipBot will automatically open a "open file" dialog box. Navigate to
where your Bluray is stored, and select the main movie. You will then
see a window like the one below. Feel free to edit the settings like you
want, but make sure to at least extract the subtitles you desire.</p>
As you can see, I selected to extract all subtitles as that way I can
hardsub any subtitles I like.</p>


    
    
    
    

When you are satisfied with your choices, click the OK</strong> button.  You
will see RipBot's demuxing progress in the bottom left-hand corner, like
this:</p>


    
    
    
    

Embedding Your Subtitles§</a>
</h3>
Once your demuxing has finished, select the Properties</strong> button like I
have highlighted below.</p>


    
    
    
    

You will be presented with the processing properties for this video
encode. Look at  the bottom of this new window and you will see the
Permanent Subtitle</strong> section.</p>
Under the drop-down menu, select Build in picture</strong>.</p>


    
    
    
    

RipBot will present you with a file selection dialog window. It should
display the subtitles that you demuxed earlier. Choose whichever
subtitle file you want to hardsub (you can only choose one). When you
have selected your subtitle, click Open.</strong></p>


    
    
    
    

RipBot will go about converting your subtitle to a more usable format
automatically. Take note that this step requires that you have Java
installed, so be sure that you do.</p>


    
    
    
    

When it has finished with the conversion, you can either preview your
video, or just view the generated Avisynth script by clicking on the
Script</strong> option in the upper right-hand corner.</p>


    
    
    
    

Note</strong>: In the above screenshot, the selection says Show Margins</strong>,
but that is because I am already viewing the Avisynth script. It toggles
back and forth as you switch between the margins and script modes.</p>
Get Encoding§</a>
</h3>
Okay, that's it! You can start the encode process are you normally
would, and then enjoy your freshly hardsubbed video!</p>


How to Convert Blurays to DVD with VSO's Bluray-to-DVD
2011-01-21T00:00:00+00:00
So a little while ago, I received an email from a little company called
VSO</a>. They asked me to check out some of their products, and possible
write guides for them.</p>
Considering that Bluray is the big thing these days, I decided to
checkout their Bluray-to-DVD</a> program. I think you get what it does
just from the name.</p>
My first reaction: It actually does quite well!</p>
</span>
The interface is pretty straight forward to use, as it's really only
targeted for one specific process. Also, it's output quality is great,
with a greater degree of sharpness when compared against several other
encoders that I tested.</p>
So, let's get started then, shall we?</p>
Open Bluray to DVD and Load your Bluray§</a>
</h3>
First off, download</a> and install Bluray to DVD.</p>
Run it, and select one of the three source loading options to open your
Bluray. Since I had already ripped my Bluray to my hard drive I selected
theOpen Blu-ray backup folder</strong> option.</p>


    
    
    
    

Once you have loaded your Blu-ray, you should see a window like the one
below, with the main movie playlist and stream selections off to the
right.</p>


    
    
    
    

Selecting your Streams§</a>
</h3>
Now comes the opportunity to select your desired audio and subtitle
streams for your output DVD. To do this, simply select which streams you
want from the dropdown menu like I do below.</p>
You can select more than one audio stream. Just keep selecting your
individual streams and you will see them add up as you go along.</p>


    
    
    
    

Same thing for you subtitle streams. As you can see, I have chosen not
to have any subtitles in my output, but it will be different from disk
to disk and person to person.</p>


    
    
    
    

When you are finished click the big Next Step</strong> button at the bottom
of the window.</p>
Edit your Encoder Settings§</a>
</h3>
Now it is time to edit your encoding settings for your DVD output. I
have highlighted the important ones below. Pretty much everything else
you can leave at default.</p>
As you can see, I set my output screen format to NTSC 16/9</strong>. This is
what most of you will be choosing, unless you live in a PAL country
(such as somewhere in Europe).</p>


    
    
    
    

I also set my Video Quality</strong> to Best Quality</strong> because who doesn't
love high quality conversions?</p>
Last, but not least you can choose to either burn the final result, or
keep it on your hard drive for later. Since I was just doing a quick
test, I opted to keep the output files on my harddrive.</p>
You can see their location under the little field called Output
Folder</strong>(which I half cutoff, sorry).</p>
Feel free to mess with the DVD Menu settings if you need/want to, but
they can be safely left at default if you don't care.</p>


    
    
    
    

Begin the Encoding Process§</a>
</h3>
Once again, click the Next Step</strong> button and the encoding process will
begin. Your encoding progress will be shown in a window like the one
below.</p>
When everything has finished, you can either burn your brand new DVD or
watch it on your hard drive, it's your choice!</p>


    
    
    
    

Conclusion§</a>
</h3>
So, all in all VSO's Bluray-to-DVD</a> application is a pretty straight
forward program, with just enough options for those of you who like to
convert between formats or edit audio/subtitle streams. I personally
have been impressed with the quality when I honestly wasn't expecting to
be. Check it out, you just might like it.</p>


Converting Anything to DVD on Mac Using Burn
2010-12-23T00:00:00+00:00
For those of you who have been following along with this site, you may
remember that I promised you some Mac tutorials to go along with the
abundance of Windows tutorials that I have published. Well, here is my
first Mac-based tutorial!</p>
It's about the use of the free software Burn and it's uses in converting
media files to DVD.</p>
</span>Getting Started§</a>
</h3>
Okay, so first off make sure that you have a fresh copy of Burn</a>.
Install it, and open it. You will see a window like the one below. Now,
as some of you may have noticed, I have the "Video" tab selected. This
is the tab that we want if we want to use Burn's DVD conversion
features.</p>


    
    
    
    

Setting Preferences§</a>
</h3>
Now right off the bat, Burn's defaults can be a little...paltry. So,
let's spice things up shall we! First off, in the dropdown menu just to
the right of the project name, select "DVD-Video".</p>


    
    
    
    

Now, let's edit Burn's internal preferences. Open up Burn's preferences
by either pressing "Command + ," or going up to Burn's context menu and
clicking "Preferences".</p>


    
    
    
    

Now, you should see Burn's preferences window. Again, click on the
"Video" tab. You will now see the window below.</p>


    
    
    
    

Set the "Region" setting to your specific DVD region (rule of thumb: US = NTSC, Europe = PAL).</p>
When you have finished click over to the "DVD" sub-tab. You can leave
most of these settings at default, but I went ahead and changed my audio
codec to use AC3 (when is greatly more used than MP2). Feel free to
change any of the other settings that you desire, such as looping the
DVD (when the main movie finishes, it starts playback from the
beginning) or forcing a specific Video/Audio bitrate (aka. quality).</p>
In addition, you can preview what your output menu will be like using
the dropdown menus and preview button at the bottom of the preferences
window. I left mine at default, but feel free to experiment. When you
are finished, simply close the preferences window.</p>


    
    
    
    

Adding Media§</a>
</h3>
Okay, now that we have everything properly configured, it's time to
start adding our media files. You can do this in one of two ways: drag
and drop, or using the '+' button found in the bottom left hand corner
of our main window. Navigate to your file and add it to the compilation.
In this case, I added an MKV file.</p>
Burn recognizes that MKV files are not compatible with the DVD spec, and
offers to convert the file for us. Go ahead and click "Convert".</p>


    
    
    
    

You will be prompted for a location to store the temporary files. I went
ahead and told it to use my Desktop, but use whichever location you
prefer. Once you are finished, click "Choose".</p>


    
    
    
    

You will be presented with a progress bar like
the one below. Simply wait for it to complete. The amount of time
necessary for conversion depends on the power of your computer, along
with the length of you media file. I converted a media file that was
about 45 minutes long in about 7 minutes. Your results may very.</p>


    
    
    
    

Rinse and Repeat§</a>
</h3>
Once you have added one media file, you can go back and add more media
files if you so desire. I just wanted to convert one, so I'm going to go
ahead and click the big "Burn" button in the bottom right hand corner.</p>
You will be presented with a burning settings window like the one below.
The defaults should be fine, but again, feel free to adjust to your
tastes. When you are done click "Burn", wait a few minutes, and enjoy
your fresh new DVD disk!</p>


    
    
    
    

A Quick Note§</a>
</h3>
As some of you may have noticed in the comments below, it appears that
Perian</a> must be installed in order to convert MKV files to DVD.  It
is also probably necessary for several other media formats as well.
Perian is recommended in any event, as it allows you to play AVIs, MKVs
and other video clips in any Quicktime-based media software.</p>


Convert Home Videos to AVCHD and Bluray
2010-12-12T00:00:00+00:00
Okay, so you just bought that brand new TV and your shiny new Bluray
player. But your wondering what good is it actually for when you only
watch movies every now and then? Ah, but then you remember all those
home movies that you have recorded over the years. You know, the ones of
the kids on Christmas, or when little Timmy first learned to walk. If
only you could keep these in one place with an easy to navigate menu.
Well now there is, through the use of your shiny Bluray player and
multiAVCHD.</p>
</span>
Okay, I'll cut the phony sounding advert speak. But honestly,
it is quite easy (and don't forget cool) to have your family's home
videos on an AVCHD or Bluray disk.</p>
For one, the quality is way better than DVD. For another, you can fit a
lot more content on one AVCHD or Bluray disk than you can on a DVD and
still have spectacular quality.</p>
Plus, for those of you with newer HD cameras, you will be able to watch
your videos in their original, hi-def resolution. Way better than
downscaling to DVD, right?</p>
The secret to all of this is that wonderful little program that some of
you may have heard of called multiAVCHD. I know it's a bit of an
intimidating title, but don't be scared! This is one powerful program.</p>
For one, it can take up to 252 separate video clips (yeah</em>, that many)
and encode them with an accompanying menu that you can use in your
Bluray player with your HD TV. Now, truth be told, it can output these
clips to DVD format as well, but it doesn't have a menu and you lose a
lot of quality. You don't want to do that right? I didn't think so.</p>
Getting Started§</a>
</h3>
First off download and install multiAVCHD. Secondly, make sure that you
have all of its required tools.</p>
Thirdly, make sure that you have your video clips in an easy to access
location. An example would be a folder on your desktop.</p>
Open multiAVCHD.</p>


    
    
    
    

Create A Compilation§</a>
</h3>
Begin by adding your video clips to the compilation using the Add
Video files</strong> button. The resulting files will appear in the source file
list and corresponding titles will appear in the compilation title's
area. As you can see below, mine are red. Hoving your cursor over the
titles will give a description of the color codes, but in this case this
means that my input files are not AVCHD compliant and will need to be
converted.</p>


    
    
    
    

Output Settings§</a>
</h3>
Before we go about editing our titles, we should set some of the basic
settings for our generated AVCHD. Using the tabs at the top of the
window, surf on over to the Author tab. Set your output video format
(NTSC for me), and your desired output media/split size. You can see my
settings below.</p>


    
    
    
    

Menu Settings§</a>
</h3>
After setting your output settings, edit the menu specifics. The
defaults are usually just fine, but I went ahead and added some "extra"
bits</p>
First off, I enabled a simple XMB style top menu:</p>


    
    
    
    

Second, I wanted a motion menu ( you know, "movin' pitures" and all
that). So I jumped over to the Menu</strong> tab and switched the menu type
to "motion". You can adjust the motion menu specifics under the
Advanced</strong> sub-tab of the Menu</strong> menu.</p>


    
    
    
    

Here are my menu settings:</p>


    
    
    
    

Title Transcode Settings§</a>
</h3>
Note: This portion of the guide is optional. You can just hit "Start"
and select your output format if you would like to keep things simple.
The following documentation is provided for those who want to delve
deeper and tweak their titles' specific output settings. I just wanted
to let you know.</strong></p>
Okay, we are pretty much good on the project settings. Let's work on
each title. I'm only going to do one here, as it's just for information
purposes.</p>
So, return to the Media</strong> tab and click on one of the titles. You will
see a window like the one below.</p>
To begin, let's go ahead and edit the Transcode</strong> settings for this
title.  Click the button that I have highlighted below.</p>


    
    
    
    

You should now see the title's transcode settings, like those below. You
will notice that my source video is not the proper resolution for a
compliant output. So, I tell multiAVCHD to "uncrop" the output to the
proper resolution. What this means is that instead of resizing my input
video, I want to pad the video with black boarders, thus leaving my
source in its original size, but still ensuring a compliant output.</p>


    
    
    
    

Next, I pick my encoding profile. Feel free to select whichever preset
you desire, but as you can see below, I have selected a simple 2-pass
preset.</p>


    
    
    
    

After I am happing with my transcoding settings, I return to the title
properties.</p>
It's time to edit some of the specifics of our media. In this example, I
changed my title name to "A Cool Clip". Then, I generated some chapters,
like I explain below.</p>


    
    
    
    

Now, I like chapters in my home media. By default there is only one
chapter that spans the entire media. But multiAVCHD can auto-generate
chapter points for us. So in the main title properties window, you may
see the original chapters list like the one below.</p>


    
    
    
    

Now, after I run the chapter auto-generation (by pressing the button
under the chapters tab like I have shown you above), you should see a
chapters list like this one:</p>


    
    
    
    

Okay! I think we are done with this title! Now go back and edit your
other titles until they reach your satisfaction. When you are finished,
you title list should look like this one:</p>


    
    
    
    

Finishing Up§</a>
</h3>
Okay, now that we have designed our menus and edited our title settings
to our liking, we can start the final encode. You can set the output
directory/name settings at the bottom of the main multiAVCHD window, but
I don't think I need to walk you through that part.</p>
So, without further ado, press the Start</strong> button!</p>


    
    
    
    

Ah shucks! Had you going there! That's right, there is one more thing to
do. Select our output format. I leave this up to you.</p>
As you can see below, the output formats are pretty self explanatory. If
you want an AVCHD, push the AVCHD button. If you want a Blu-ray, push
the Blu-ray button.</p>


    
    
    
    

And with that, we are off! That's it! Nothing else! We be done!</p>
Well, your computer will be cranking away getting all the encoding done
(which you can track via multiAVCHD's log window), but now you just need
to sit back and make some hot cocoa. Or 50, as encoding to Blu-ray can
take a while. Good luck!</p>


Convert multiple DVDs to AVCHD / Bluray using multiAVCHD
2010-10-10T00:00:00+00:00
At the request of a visitor to this site (in addition to it being on my
TODO list for guides to write) I present to you the steps necessary to
convert a DVD (or several) to AVCHD or Bluray. All that is necessary are
some ripped</a> DVDs and the always wonderful program multiAVCHD</a>!</p>
</span>
So, let's get started.</p>
Rip yo discs!§</a>
</h3>
Make sure that you have your disks ripped in File</strong> mode. This is
necessary for multiAVCHD to read them correctly. You can rip your disks
using either DVD Decrypter, AnyDVD or DVD FAB. All of these should
output the disk in the format desired.</p>
Add your Sources to the Compilation§</a>
</h3>
You will need to add your DVD sources to the new disk compilation. I
suggest doing this one at a time. You will see why later.</p>
Use the AVCHD/BDMV/DVD folders</strong>button to navigate to your
DVD directories one by one. After loading your first disk, move on to
the next step.</p>


    
    
    
    

Remove Unnecessary Titles§</a>
</h3>
Using the Remove</strong> button and the title info, remove all titles that
are not the main movie. The main movie 99.9999999% of the time will be
the title set with the longest run time.</p>
In this case, you can see that my third title is the main movie. So, if
I remove titles 1, 2, and 4, then that will leave the main movie.</p>


    
    
    
    

And here is the result of keeping only the main movie.</p>


    
    
    
    

Repeat this and the previous step for all of your remaining
disks.</p>
Title Compilation§</a>
</h3>
Here are the final title sets that we get after adding the remaining
DVDs and removing the excess titles from our compilation.</p>


    
    
    
    

In this state, the DVD titles are not ready to be encoded onto a Bluray.
MultiAVCHD is actually smart enough to convert the titles automatically
when we select our output format. I, however, like greater control over
my transcode settings plus the ability to add/remove audio and subtitle
tracks. To do this, click on the first title and we will be presented
with the title settings window.</p>
Editing your Title Settings§</a>
</h3>
The title settings window generally looks  like the one below.</p>


    
    
    
    

As you can see, I've edited my Title name</strong>to the name of the actual
movie.</p>
In addition, you can add and remove audio and/or subtitles using the
corresponding tabs and Add/Remove</strong>buttons. In my case I left them at
default, but you can do what you will (like removing the foreign audio
tracks to save space).</p>
When you are happy with your title settings, press the Transcode</strong>
button to bring up the encoding settings window.</p>
**Note:**Just a reminder that the Transcode</strong>process is optional.
Blu-rays support MPEG2 by default, so actually converting your sources
to H264 is not necessary unless you are storing a significant number of
DVD's on one Blu-ray. If you want to skip the transcode process, just
jump down to the Menu and Output Format</strong> section.</p>
Encoding Settings§</a>
</h3>
In the transcode settings, set your desired quality profile and bitrate
settings. Since we will be generating files for an AVCHD / Bluray, we
want to make sure that our settings are Blu-ray/AVCHD compliant</strong>.</p>
Next, select your encoding profile. I recommend using a 2-pass profile
for a high quality encode. In this case I used a fast 1 pass profile,
but I was just testing.</p>
As for the resolution, I recommend that you leave that at default. You
can upscale if you like, but honestly you actually lose quality bringing
a low-resolution video like a DVD up to a high resolution video like a
Blu-ray.</p>
Lastly we need to choose a bitrate. I suggest that you click the
Bitrate Suggestions</strong> button (yes, that is a button).</p>


    
    
    
    

Bitrate Profile Selection§</a>
</h3>
After clicking the Bitrate suggestions</strong> button, you will be presented
with a window like the one below. Now, imagine I was converting 4 DVD's
that I wanted to store on a single layer Blu-ray (BD-25). In that case,
I would select my bitrate profile for my first movie to be 1/4 of a
BD-25. Get it?</p>
Now select your bitrate profile based on your desired output disk. I
leave that up to you.</p>
When you've chosen your settings, click the Use</strong> button. You will
return to the Transcode settings window. Make sure everything is as you
desire, and then click Apply.</p>


    
    
    
    

Repeat Ad Nauseam§</a>
</h3>
After finishing the transcode settings for the first DVD, go about
editing the compilation and transcode settings for the rest of the DVD
titles. When all is said and done, your DVD titles in the compilation
window should look similar to the one below.</p>
Green means go!</p>


    
    
    
    

Menu and Output Format§</a>
</h3>
Now that our titles are compliant, set the menu settings and output
format. Click on over to the Author tab to edit your settings. Mine are
below for reference.</p>


    
    
    
    

In short, I wanted a basic top level menu (XMB style) and my output TV
system will be NTSC. For those of you who don't know, NTSC is the
standard in the United States. PAL is the standard in Europe.</p>
Almost Done!§</a>
</h3>
When you are ready to get started (or get finished?) set the output
suffix (this sets a suffix on the output folder generated by
multiAVCHD.) The helps you to identify your project  in the output
folder if you are doing multiple conversions.</p>
Then click the Start</strong> button.</p>


    
    
    
    

Output Format§</a>
</h3>
Final window, I promise! Now we need to select our output disk format.
multiAVCHD offers a plethora, but I've narrowed my screenshot down the
import ones. If you want an AVCHD disk, go with the AVCHD options. Use
AVCHD (strict)</strong> if you are Blu-ray player is especially finicky,
otherwise use AVCHD Disk</strong>.</p>
Now, since I wanted a Blu-ray for my output, I'm sticking with the
Blu-ray Disk</strong>option. Kind of a no brainer I know.</p>


    
    
    
    

Finished!§</a>
</h3>
Now, burn your disk</a>! I'd recommend using IMGBurn, as it's free and
highly reliable.</p>


Mux? Demux? Remux? Huh?
2010-08-27T00:00:00+00:00
Recently I had a reader contacting me about demuxing files. He wanted to
know what it was, and why on earth would you want to do it?</p>
So I sent him an email explaining what "muxing" as a whole is and how
demuxing factors into it.</p>
I thought that the rest of my readers might be able to benefit from the
knowledge that I expressed to him, so here goes!</p>
</span>Imagine A World...§</a>
</h3>
Nah, just kidding. Imagine that you have ripped a DVD or Blu-ray to your
hard disk. If you have no idea how to do this, I have published
several</a> guides</a> on how to go about doing so.</p>
So you have these files contained on your hard drive. For a DVD, it will
look like an assortment of VOBs (among others, IFO, BUP, etc). For a
Blu-ray disk, it will look like M2TS files (among MANY others, but M2TS
are the only files that actually contain the video content). Many of you
are familiar with files to the extent that you think there is just data
in them. And to an extent you are right. But what if I told you that
there are in fact several</em>files, or more specifically tracks, contained
in your precious media files.</p>
If you think about it, it makes sense. How else would you be able to
watch a movie and have both video and audio, and maybe an optional
subtitle track?</p>
This is what Muxing</strong> does. It takes these individual tracks and
combines them into one VOB or M2TS file (depending on the output
specification, DVD or Blu-ray). Chances are you</em> won't be doing much
muxing unless you are getting into the nitty gritty details of DVD
compilation and Blu-ray generation. Actually that is not quite true, as
many programs such as BD Rebuilder or MultiAVCHD mux files for you.
Okay, so chances are you won't be doing much muxing by hand</em>.</p>
Muxing§</a>
</h3>
To summarize, muxing is the act of combining two or more signals into
one. In the digital media file world, this means combining a video
track, one or more audio tracks, and possible subtitle tracks. There are
other tracks as well, such as chapters, but they aren't that important
for the purpose of this post.</p>
Demuxing§</a>
</h3>
I'll give you one guess. Did you guess that demuxing is the opposite of
muxing? Then your wrong! Ha, just kidding. You were correct!</p>
Demuxing is the act of taking a muxed file such as a VOB or M2TS file
and splitting it back up into its component streams. Some of you may be
thinking, "Why on earth would anyone want to do that?"</p>
Well, I'll tell you. Demuxing is useful in situations where you want to
deal with a specific component of a media file, without affecting the
file as a whole. Confused?</p>
Let me try this: Imagine that you have ripped a DVD to your hard drive.
But, you have a subtitle track that you have custom edited for a
particular reason (like replacing the word "man" with "BATMAAAN!!).
Awesome, no?</p>
Okay, so you have this ripped disk and custom subtitle track. What you
want to do is replace the DVD's original subtitle track with your custom
subtitle track. In order to do so, you must first demuxing the DVD's
main movie into it's primary components.</p>
These often look like the following for a DVD:</p>

.m2v file (video)</li>
.ac3 or dts file (audio)</li>
.idx/.sub file (subtitles)</li>
</ul>
Now that you have the original components, you can remux</strong> (REcombine
the video files via MUXing) the video and audio tracks with your custom
subtitle track. Doing it this way ensures that there is absolutely no
quality loss, plus you get your awesome Batman subtitle track! How cool
is that?!</p>
Another Use§</a>
</h3>
Not enough for you? Well imagine if you want to compress a media file.
But you don't want to lose any audio quality. So you demux the original
media file, compress just</em> the video file using your favorite
program</a>, and then mux the compressed video track with the original
audio track. Now you have a smaller file size, while still retaining the
original audio. Satisfied?</p>
Conclusion§</a>
</h3>
Well that about wraps it up. Again, muxing is the process of combining
multiple streams/file into a single stream/file. Demuxing is the inverse
of muxing. And remuxing? I think you get what remuxing is...</p>
If not, let me know in the comments! ;)</p>


Convert Anything to iPad, iPod, Etc with RipBot
2010-07-23T00:00:00+00:00
With so many people using devices like the iPad, iPod, PSP or the
AppleTV these days, more often than not they will want to be able to
watch videos on them. And their videos, not someone else's. Well, I'll
show you how to quickly and easily convert videos for your swanky new
device using a program called RipBot.</p>
</span>Introduction§</a>
</h3>
First off, RipBot is an encoding GUI (graphical user interface) that
combines the power of a number of tools into one easy-to-use package for
the rest of us. It simplifies a lot of the conversion process for us,
which is always nice! Plus it's free. And who doesn't like free?</p>
Getting Started§</a>
</h3>
Okay, let's get started. Download RipBot (it doesn't need to be
installed, just put it somewhere you will be able to find it) and start
it up. It will have some pre-requisite programs that it will inform you
of (most of you should already have these installed anyways). Just
download and install those too if you don't have them. Chances are your
going to use them again later on so don't worry about "bloating" your
system. Your not.</p>
Once RipBot has been opened, you should see a window like the one below.
All it is is a queue showing all of the videos you have yet to convert
or have converted. Right now mine is blank (and yours is too) but we
will see what it looks like with some content later on. For now, just
click the Add</strong> button.  </p>


    
    
    
    

Choose Your Video Source§</a>
</h3>
RipBot should prompt you to select a video source. If you have read some
of my other tutorials you will know that you can even select Bluray
movies</a> as your source. For this example, however, I'm just going to
go with a generic clip that I want to see on my iPad or iPod. Select
your clip and click OK</strong>.</p>


    
    
    
    

Set Your Encoding Parameters§</a>
</h3>
Now it's time to set your encoding settings for your output video.
Follow my two blue arrows and select your desire profiles for your
output video and audio streams.</p>


    
    
    
    

Let's start with the video steam. From the drop down, select the [MAIN
3.0] SD . PSP . iPad</strong>profile. If you wanted to convert the video to an
iPod compatible format, you would select the iPod</strong> profile. Same
thing for any of the other options displayed.</p>


    
    
    
    

Now let's look at our audio profile. I selected the 96 kbps
AAC</strong>profile because it sounds just fine for most things, and I don't
want to take up too much space. If you want a higher quality audio
track, then use a higher bitrate profile like the 128 kbps AAC</strong>
profile.</p>


    
    
    
    

Video Encoding Mode§</a>
</h4>
Just to be complete, I'm going to change my video encoding mode to use a
2-pass</strong> mode with a bitrate of 1024 kbps</strong>. After that, click on
the Properties</strong> button so that we can adjust and tweak a few
additional things so that we can ensure that our video is ready for our
desired playback device.</p>


    
    
    
    

Tuning To Your Device§</a>
</h3>
One of the nice things about the iPad is that it has a gorgeous 1024 x
768 screen. And we would like our videos to fill up the screen as much
as possible, right? For the most part yes, but there are a few tricks to
doing so.</p>
First off, we want to pick an output resolution. Now, there are two
things we can do here. We can either manually upscale our video to fit
the 1024 x 768 iPad screen, or (as this Apple employee noted</a>), we
can save on space and encode our video to 640 x 360 and let the iPad
(which has a pretty sweet upscaler apparently) upscale the footage on
playback. I have shown both settings below, but I leave the choice up to
you.</p>


    
    
    
    

Again, for the sake of being complete, I'll show you how to manually
upscale your video. First select the Custom [1,XX:1]</strong>(the XX will
very depending on your input. In this case its "78"). What this line
does is tell RipBot that we want to upscale the video but keep the
original aspect ratio so that things don't look weirdly stretched.</p>
After selecting the **Custom [1,78:1]**profile, two additional fields
will appear, but only the "Width" field will be editable. Enter our
desired width of 1024 pixels and you should be good to go.</p>


    
    
    
    

Now, you will notice that there are several other things that we can
tweak, and we can even add denoising filters and the like, but to keep
this guide from getting obsessively long, we are just going to stop
after adjusting the resolution. Feel free to experiment on your own!
When you are done click OK</strong>.</p>
Setting Your Desired Output Format and Size§</a>
</h3>
You should be back at the main window now. First off, ensure that your
Save As</strong> radio button is set to ".mp4", as this is the only format
that is supported by iTunes. It may even be necessary to rename your
output file to ".m4v" on occasion but only do so if your run into
trouble when importing your video to your iPad.</p>
As I mentioned earlier, I set my encoding mode to 2-pass</strong> with a
bitrate of 1024 kbps</strong>. One very cool option that RipBot supports is
specifying your desire output size,</em> instead of just the bitrate. All
that is necessary is to change your encoding mode to 2-pass</strong> and then
select the Lock Size [MB]</strong> checkbox. Fill in the field with your
desired size and enjoy! The video bitrate will adjust based on your
specified output size.</p>


    
    
    
    

When all is said and done, set your output path to where you want your
video to be stored and press the Done</strong> button. You should return to
the main window.</p>
The Queue and You§</a>
</h3>
See? I told you I'd talk about this window again!</p>
Okay, your newly configured video should be added to the queue. As you
can see, you can queue up any number of videos to be encoded. This is
very useful for those of you who like to leave your computer on at
night. Simply queue up enough videos for the night and then go to bed
and wake up the next morning to a delightful surprise!</p>
But in all seriousness, the queue is quite useful. I use it all the time
when encoding TV shows for my iPod.</p>
Whenever you are ready to start, just click that Start</strong> button!
Enjoy!</p>


    
    
    
    


Avisynth And Its Plugins
2010-07-08T00:00:00+00:00
A question that people ask me on a pretty regular basis is "What the
heck is Avisynth?" Well, I'll tell you. But be warned, this post can get
a bit..."wordy".</p>
</span>A Little History...§</a>
</h3>
Avisynth</a> is a program that started as a small software project by
Berkley student Ben Rudiak-Gould. Since it's creation, Avisynth has seen
a explosion in development from the open source community and has been
released in numerous versions (at the time of this writing, it is at
version 2.5.8 stable, and 2.6.0 alpha 2).</p>
Additional development has been contributed by authors Edwin van
Eggelen, Klaus Post, Richard Berg, Ian Brabham, and many others. There
have even been sub-versions created to add support for multithreading
and fix several bugs (the current plan is to incorporate multithreading
support into version 2.6.0).</p>
But I digress. So what exactly is</em>Avisynth? Avisynth is a scripting
language</a> of sorts. More specifically, it is a scripting language
targeted at video post-production. When I say "video" I actually (kind
of) mean "film" in the essence of both video and audio, as Avisynth can
manipulate both video and audio streams.</p>
**Update:**A reader (Nisse) has added a little more in depth description
of what I'm talking about. You can read it in the comments here</a>.</p>
Anyways</em>, Avisynth is essentially a way to use a simple text file to
decode and transform a video file.</p>
Ex.§</a>
</h4>
Avisource("C:\\A\\path\\to\\my\\video.avi")
</span></code></pre>
The example above can be all that is necessary in some instances. For
example, someone could create a file with the above contents and then
load that ".avs" file into a program like MeGUI or VirtualDub and start
encoding.</p>
But frankly that is a little boring.</p>
What you will see more often is something along the lines of the
following:</p>
Ex.§</a>
</h4>
DirectshowSource("C:\\A\\path\\to\\my\\video.mp4")
</span>Crop(4,0,-4,-0)
</span>Spline36Resize(720,480)
</span></code></pre>
Okay, so let's go over what I just did. First off, notice how I used
DirectShowSource</strong> instead of Avisource</strong>? The difference is that
Avisource should only be used to open AVI files (files that end with the
".avi" file extension) while DirectshowSource can be used to open pretty
much anything (with some caveats). One caveat is opening DVD VOB files.
When opening VOB files, you should use Donald Graft's DGDecode</a>
plugin, but we will get to that later.</p>
Note:</strong> I wrote a tutorial a little while back about properly
configuring your DirectShow</strong> settings. You can read it here</a>.</p>
Secondly, notice that Crop</strong> line? I'll give you one guess as to what
it does. That's right! It crops the video! To be more specific, it crops
4 pixels from the left side of the video and 4 pixels from the right
side of the video. The top and the bottom are left alone. This can be
used to remove dirty edges from videos or to crop off black bars. For
more information on the crop filter, refer to the Avisynth documentation
or the Avisynth Crop wiki page</a>.</p>
Thirdly, look at the Spline36Resize</strong> line. I don't expect you to know
right away what this does, but the hint is at the very end of the name.
"Resize". That's right, this little function resizes my video to 720</strong>
pixels wide by 480</strong> pixels high. Does that make sense?</p>
To be clear, when working with Avisynth scripts everything you do will
be through the use of functions calls. For those of you who are not
programmers, a function call looks like this:</p>
Ex.§</a>
</h4>
FunctionName(parameter 1, parameter 2, parameter 3, etc...)
</span></code></pre>
Not all functions have more than one parameter, or even any parameters.
Often, you can call a function just like this:</p>
Ex.§</a>
</h4>
DirectShowSource("myvideo.mp4")
</span>FunctionName()
</span></code></pre>
Now, some functions do</em> require parameters, like our Spline36Resize</strong>
function. Remember how I wanted to resize to 720</strong>pixels by 480</strong>
pixels? Well, all I needed to do is enter those numbers into the
parameters of the Spline36Resize</strong> function and viola!</p>
Ex.§</a>
</h4>
Spline36Resize(720,480)
</span></code></pre>
This will now produce an video stream that is 720 pixels wide by 480
pixels high!</p>
Internal Filters§</a>
</h3>
All of the function calls that I have made in the above examples have
been to Internal Filters</strong>. What this means is that these filters come
with Avisynth when you install it. You can see all of the available
filters in the documentation or on the Avisynth Wiki</a>. Don't be
overwhelmed because even I don't know all of the internal filters. Just
get familiar with some of them and the rest will come naturally.</p>
External Filters§</a>
</h3>
This is where the power of Avisynth really starts to shine. An external
filter is an Avisynth filter that you can download from the internet to
expand Avisynth's functionality. All filters take the form of ".dll"
files and are placed in Avisynth's "Plugins" folder, which can be found
in the Avisynth install folder (usually in your Program Files folder in
Windows).</p>
In order to call a filter, all you have to do is make sure that the
filter is in your Plugins directory, and then use the same function
calling syntax that I detailed earlier.</p>
Ex.§</a>
</h4>
DirectshowSource("myvideo.mp4")
</span>AnExternalFilter(param 1, param 2)
</span></code></pre>
There is a whole host of external filters available. More and more are
debuted on the Doom9 forums</a> practically every day. No body actually
knows how many external plugins exist, but this</a> Avisynth Wiki page
is a good place to start when looking for a new plugin.</p>
External Scripts§</a>
</h3>
One last section that I want to talk about is using External Scripts</strong>
in your Avisynth files. The cool thing about external scripts is that
they are just text files. They can be downloaded and placed in the
Plugins folder just like external filters, but need a special file
extension if you want them to load automatically. If you want a script
to be automatically loaded by Avisynth every time you use it, give the
script a ".avsi</strong>" extension, instead of the standard ".avs" Avisynth
file extension. Now, you can use an external script just like a filter
when you are ready to call it.</p>
Ex.§</a>
</h4>
DirectshowSource("myvideo.mp4")
</span>MyExternalScript(param 1, param 2, param 3)
</span></code></pre>
Conclusion§</a>
</h3>
I hope that this little introduction into Avisynth has helped you in
some way, and if it hasn't, let me know in the comments and I'll add on
to this post to make it more clear in the future.</p>
Again, this post is just an introduction into Avisynth to make it a
little less scary. If you want to get into Avisynth, I suggest you start
reading the documentation that is installed with Avisynth. In addition,
the Doom9 forums and the Avisynth Wiki are fantastic resources.</p>
All in all, I wish you good luck!</p>
References§</a>
</h3>
Anime Music Videos Guide -
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/amvappavisynth.html</a></em></p>
Avisynth Wiki - http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Main_Page</a></em></p>
Doom9 Forums - http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?f=69</a></em></p>


New Recommended Tools Page and More!
2010-06-27T00:00:00+00:00
Again, sorry I've been away for along my friends! As you may or may not
have noticed, there is a new 'Recommended Tools' page linked to in the
top nav above. I will be updating this page on a regular basis and it
contains all of the programs that I use on a regular basis and more!</p>
I found that this was necessary because a number of people where coming
to me asking for recommendations on software, or wanted to know what a
particular is/does. Well, now I can just redirect them to that page! I
think that this will work out better for everyone.</p>
Next up, I've been catching up on some reading recently and it looks
like 3D has really taken off! MultiAVCHD has already added a conversion
feature that will convert 3D Blu-rays to the old red-blue format so that
us mortals can watch it on our (slightly) outdated tv screens and
computer monitors!</p>
Once I have enough money (who knows when that will be) I plan on
purchasing a 3D monitor or TV and producing some 3d specific tutorials,
but until then you will have to wait (unless someone wants to finance my
little excursion!)</p>
Just to let you guys know, I have some more tutorials in the pipeline,
so stay tuned and I should have another out by the end of this week or
sooner!</p>


Recommended Tools
2010-06-27T00:00:00+00:00
Here is a list of some of the tools that I both use and talk about on a
regular basis. I have found that a number of my readers have asked me
time and time again for a general reference page for a variety of the
tools out there. The fact is, there are a LOT of programs out on the
interwebs that deal with video, audio, subtitles, and everything else
you can imagine.</p>
This page is updated pretty regularly, so all of the links should work.
In addition, I will be adding more and more tools as time passes, so be
sure to check back regularly!</p>
Decoding Tools§</a>
</h3>
LAVFilters§</a>
</h5>
An excellent alternative to FFDShow, LAVFilters is a streamlined
DirectShow decoding filter set, with support for 10-bit decoding and
hardware acceleration via DXVA, NVidia CUVID, and Intel QuickSync. While
it may not offer the post-processing options that FFDShow does, it's
decoding support and speed are excellent. Linky.</a></p>
FFDShow§</a>
</h5>
Similar to LAVFitlers, FFDShow is a DirectShow decoding package that
supports a multitude of video codecs (even more than LAVFilters). It
offers additional features such as post-processing, noise removal,
sharpening, an much more. Linky.</a></p>
Haali's Media Splitter§</a>
</h5>
Another one of those dynamite tools that everyone should have installed.
This splitter is most often used when playing back MP4 and MKV files. If
you are having problems playing back an MP4 or MKV file, then I suggest
you install this ASAP. Linky.</a></p>
General Encoding Tools§</a>
</h3>
Avisynth§</a>
</h5>
This program is actually an advanced scripting language specifically
designed for working with video (and some audio). It is very powerful
and can be a little intimidating for some in the beginning. The fact is,
most people never write a single line of code when using it! A lot of
the time, any of the encoding GUI's that you are using will handle all
of the details for you. All they need is to have the program installed!
But, if you are curious about some of the more advanced things you can
do with video (and believe me, they can get VERY advanced) then by all
means look at the documentation that comes installed with the program.
You won't be disappointed. Linky.</a></p>
General Encoding GUI's§</a>
</h3>
MeGUI§</a>
</h5>
MeGUI has been around for a long time. It's still actively developed,
and has a plethora of features available. I have done several guides on
its use here on Adubvideo, so a quick search should find you plenty of
things to get started. I still use this program on a weekly basis and it
just seems to be getting better and better. Some say that it has a
learning curve to it, but I've never had any problems whatsoever.
Linky.</a></p>
HDConvertToX§</a>
</h5>
As the name implies, HDConvertToX can convert just about anything to
just about anything else. It's not quite as pretty of a GUI as say
RipBot or MeGUI, but it can certainly get the job done. Its got some
nice features such as automatic anamorphic signalling and chapter
extraction, plus you can tweak the heck out of the entire encoding
process. Again, I seriously recommend this program if you are doing a
lot of encoding (as it supports presets). Linky.</a></p>
RipBot§</a>
</h5>
Definitely one of the prettiest of all of the encoding GUI's available,
RipBot is designed with a specific user set in mind. New users. It
abstracts away a lot of the more advanced video compression options and
simplifies many of the intricacies of video conversion. I use it from
time to time, when encoding with specific constraints. It has a number
of presets built in for specific devices (think iPod/iPad and
Blu-ray/PS3's) and just plain works. Great for the quick encodes.
Linky.</a></p>
Handbrake§</a>
</h5>
Loved by many in the community for it's cross-platform support and
preset system, this encoding package may be the most used out of all
those above. The reason is that there are tons of tutorials about its
use all over the net (including my own</a>). It runs on Windows, Mac and
Linux, and offers excellent anamorphic encoding support, in addition to
pre-built presets for many Apple products and several video filters
(deinterlace, decomb, deblock, etc...). It's not my favorite program in
the world, but it sure gets the job done for many newcomers to the
encoding world. Linky.</a></p>
Blu-ray Specific Tools§</a>
</h3>
BD Rebuilder§</a>
</h5>
This was one of the first Blu-ray ready packages to hit the encoding
scene. Created by the author of DVD Rebuilder (still one of the best DVD
encoding packages available in my opinion...) it offers a relatively
complete encoding solution for those who want to backup their Blu-rays
to Blu-ray or AVCHD disks. In recent versions, there has even been
encoding support added for iPad-compatible MP4 files and other external
devices. Currently free while in beta testing, get it while it's hot!
Linky.</a></p>
BDtoAVCHD§</a>
</h5>
BDtoAVCHD is an excellent video encoding GUI for converting Blurays and
AVCHDs to MKV or a compressed form of Blurary or AVCHD. It's entirely
self contained and requires no additional dependencies, unlike
BDRebuilder's requirement of FFDShow and Avisynth. The GUI is clean and
easy to use and quite feature complete. It even supports 3D processing!
Linky.</a></p>
MultiAVCHD§</a>
</h5>
Another big encoding package designed specifically for Blu-rays, this
"little program that could" really can do pretty much anything with
Blu-rays. It can re-author (strip something out and still keep the
menu's), encode to SD-DVD (so that you can play the movie in your
standalone DVD player), or just create a sweet HD menu setup for all of
your favorite clips. With support for over 250 different video titles,
this program will encode and compile a Blu-ray or AVCHD compatible disk
with little configuration. I've done a few tutorials using it in the
past (here</a> and here</a>). Linky.</a></p>
VSO Bluray to DVD§</a>
</h5>
This is a simple to use little program that pretty much does what it's
title says it will. It converts a Blu-ray to a standard DVD. I use it
for quick conversion jobs, as it's interface is straight forward, and
conversion only takes a few hours, with the output looking sharper than
several other programs that I have tried. Here is a download link</a> or
visit the website here</a>.</p>
Ripping Tools§</a>
</h3>
AnyDVD HD§</a>
</h5>
I've been using this decryption package for a long time, and it hasn't
NOT worked on anything I've ever thrown at it. With regular updates and
a very active user community, I'd recommend this program quicker than
you can say "AnyDVD HD". Linky.</a></p>
DVDFAB§</a>
</h5>
Another heavy hitter when it comes to the decryption scene. This program
has been running in direct competition against AnyDVD for ages, and its
proven to be a healthy competition. Newer versions offer Blu-ray support
and there is even a free version available (with one caveat: the free
versions decryption routines are one month behind the paid version).
Linky.</a></p>
I will be adding more tools and sections over time, so be sure to check
back if you are curious!</p>


A Quick Update
2010-06-08T00:00:00+00:00
Just a quick update to all of my readers. I'm not dead.</p>
Well, now that we got that out of the way, here's what's going on:
finals. I'm currently in the middle of finals at my University, so I
have had time for little else. But don't worry! I have a lot of guides
planned that I hope to be posting up here soon enough, it's just going
to take a little while.</p>
In addition, I recently bought a Mac, so for all of those Apple fan boys
out there, I hope to bring you some more Mac focused tutorials in the
coming weeks. I'm still experimenting and discovering new tools, so I am
welcome to any suggestions for specific software that I should look
into. If you are curious about a specific piece of software, or you just
love a program to death, post it in the comments and let me know. I'm
always curious to learn more.</p>
Well, I've got to run and get my study on, so until my next post (should
be in week or so) I'll catch you guys later!</p>


Setup a Proper Decoding Chain in Windows 7
2010-05-16T00:00:00+00:00
Well, after I completed my original decoding chain guide here</a>, I
realized that I needed to specify a few things with respect to the
intricacies of Windows 7. Thus, this post was born.</p>
</span>
Okay, the reason why you may want to reconfigure the defaults on Windows
7's decoding options is because they are either not working for your
current setup with your encoding software (BD Rebuilder or MeGUI for
example), or you are just darn curious. Either way, here's how to get
started.</p>
First off, download the Windows 7 Preferred DirectShow Filter Tweak Tool.</a></p>
The title is a bit of mouthful, isn't it? From now on, I'll just be
calling it Filter Tweaker.</p>
Step 1)§</a>
</h3>
Unzip and run Filter Tweaker. You will be presented with a screen like
the one below (64-bit users, you will see a window with 64-bit decoders
as well).  I highly recommend that you run through this list and ensure
that all of your decoders are assigned to FFDShow.</p>
**Note:**For those of you on a 64-bit machine, you should install the
64-bit version</a> of FFDShow.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 2)§</a>
</h3>
This isn't really a step as much as an important consideration. While
scrolling through that list that I showed above, make sure that the
VC-1</strong>entry is set to use FFDShow as its main decoder. When you are
done, click the Apply</strong> button.</p>
This step is important, because if you followed my first "Setup" guide
(link at the top of this page), then you should already have FFDShow set
to use the WMV9 codec when processing VC-1 video. This additional step
in Filter Tweaker is necessary to wrestle the control of the VC-1
decoder away from Windows and give it to FFDShow.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 3)§</a>
</h3>
You will now be taken to the Media Foundation</strong>page that I have shown
below. You can pretty much leave it at default, but I have posted it
here for reference. If everything is set as you desire, click the
Apply</strong> button again.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 4)§</a>
</h3>
You should now be on the More tweaks for Windows 7</strong> page. I chose to
disable any built-in windows components that dealt with my decoders as I
think they are all crap. I want to give full control to FFDShow, as it
is the greatest decoder package available. You can do whatever you like,
but I have had absolutely no problems disabling everything as I have
shown below.</p>
When you are ready, click Apply</strong> once again.</p>


    
    
    
    

Conclusion)§</a>
</h3>
Well, that is about all of the extra tweaking that you have to do in
order to get things running extra smoothly on a Windows 7 machine.
Thankfully, a program such as Filter Tweaker exists and makes the whole
process so much easier.</p>
If you have any questions, or what to express your opinion, please post
in the comments.</p>
Enjoy your problem free decoder setup!</p>


Setup a Proper Playback Chain in Windows
2010-05-08T00:00:00+00:00
Since more and more people have been coming to this site, I have
received a number of requests asking me to write a guide for setting up
the software which is often used in many of the encoding programs that I
have detailed in previous posts (ex. BD Rebuilder, multiAVCHD,
HDConvertToX, etc...).</p>
In truth, it's all quite simple to setup. Most of it is just download
and install. However, some of the programs required need a little more
configuration to get them working properly. That's why this guide is
here.</p>
</span>
First off, let's decide which programs we need.</p>

Avisnth:</strong> Necessary for pretty much any encoding software. It's
essentially an advanced scripting language built specifically for
video. Don't worry though, you won't have to learn the language. We
just need the support files.</li>
Haali's Media Splitter:</strong> This is necessary to "split" (aka. open)
a number of file formats that you often see floating around on the
internet. Mainly MP4, MKV, and M2TS files.</li>
FFDShow:</strong> This bad boy does a majority of the brute-force
decoding work. With this installed, you can decode pretty much any
video you can shake a stick at.</li>
</ol>
These are what I often call the "Big Three". I say this because
practically every program I know makes use of them in one way or
another. The rest of this guide will be all about installing and
configuring these wonderful pieces of software so as to ensure a 100%
working playback experience.</p>
I have been using these software and this setup configuration for years
(on both Windows XP and Windows 7) so I know that it works. Let's hope
that this guide will solve all of your decoding problems!</p>
Update:</strong> After reading this tutorial, take a look at this additional
guide</a> for specific Windows 7 features.</p>
Step 1)§</a>
</h3>
Download all of the necessary software. Here are some quick links to the
download pages.</p>
Avisynth:</strong> Download</a></p>
Version 2.5.8 is fairly recent and has proven to be quite stable, so I
recommend you use it.</p>
Haali's Media Splitter:</strong> Download</a></p>
Note:</strong> As described in this Doom9 thread</a>, the latest version of
Haali's Media Splitter have a bug where VC-1 encoded video in a m2ts
container (often seen on Blu-rays) is not properly split. I recommend
using the 1.9.42.1 build until these issues can be resolved. There is a
beta build</a> that theoretically has most of these issue resolved, but
remember it's beta so if you encounter any problems, use the stable
1.9.42.1 build</a> mirrored by Jdobbs (the author of BD Rebuilder).</p>
UPDATE:</strong> As of May 20, 2010, Haali has released a new version of the
splitter which fixes a number of bugs (including the VC-1 in M2TS bug).
It even added support for WebM!</p>
FFDShow:</strong> Download</a></p>
I've had no problems using the latest version, but if you want to feel
safe, go ahead and use the "beta" release that they have posted, which
is probably more stable than most "stable" software that I have used.</p>
Step 2)§</a>
</h3>
Install Avisynth. This is a very straightforward process and I will not
be including screenshots, as the defaults are perfectly fine for any
installation.</p>
Step 3)§</a>
</h3>
Install Haali's Media Splitter. Again, the default install should be
fine, but here is a reference screenshot for the default installation
settings.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 4)§</a>
</h3>
Begin installing FFDShow. There are several configuration options
available throughout the process, so I'll post screenshots of each step
as we go.</p>
When you first begin the installation, it will ask you the normal
installation questions (like destination directory). The options are
perfectly safe to leave at default.</p>
Eventually you will encounter a screen like the one below. As you can
see, the installer will automatically detect our Avisynth install. If
you had Virtualdub or DScaler installed, it would detect those as well.</p>


    
    
    
    

Since these options are fine, go ahead and click Next</strong>.</p>
Step 5)§</a>
</h3>
Next up are the audio configuration settings. I normally have my
computer setup to play all of its audio through my stereo speakers, so I
chose to use the 2.0 (stereo)</strong> option. Many of you will either
Disable Mixer</strong> or choose a 5.1 setup. I trust that you will know
which setup is right for you. If not, post in the comments and I will
help you to choose.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 6)§</a>
</h3>
Okay, you will continue on for a few more screens (all of which you can
just leave at default), and then your installation will end on this
screen. Click the Run video decoder configuration</strong> checkbox, as we
want to configure some more decoder options before we are done.</p>
Click Finish</strong>.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 7)§</a>
</h3>
This is a section of the main FFDShow window that will pop up after
clicking Finish</strong> in the FFDShow installation window. I have shown
below what a normal decoder setup looks like. Again, you can leave these
particular options at default.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 8)§</a>
</h3>
Scroll down the list until you see the VC-1</strong> option that I have
highlighted below. This is a very important option, and is often the
root cause behind a lot of decoding problems with BD Rebuilder. The key
to success is to have this option set to WMV9</strong>, and to have the
latest version of Window Media Player installed. If you have Vista or
Windows 7, you will probably be okay with your default Windows Media
Player.</p>
However, if you are using Windows XP, you may want to upgrade your
player. Windows Media Player 11 has been known to work flawlessly.</p>
For those of you who are curious, VC-1</strong> is the encoder used on a
large portion of Blu-rays. VC-1</strong> and H264</strong>are the two primary
codec (COmpressor / DECompressor) standards used in today's modern
media.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 9)§</a>
</h3>
Last, but not least, scroll to the bottom of the list. You will see a
decoding option labeled RAW</strong>. This needs to be set to YV12</strong> as I
have shown below.</p>
Well, not exactly. The reason I have this option turned is because
AVIsynth requires a YV12</strong> (a particularly popular colorspace)
decompressor. If you already have something like Xvid</strong> installed,
then you should be fine. If you have no idea what I just said, then
configure the RAW</strong> option like I have done below.</p>


    
    
    
    

Conclusion)§</a>
</h3>
That's it! We are done!</p>
You should have a fully working decoder "chain" that will allow you to
play everything from Blurays to MP4 and MKV videos to Avisynth scripts.
A majority of the encoding software out there (MeGUI, BD Rebuilder,
MultiAVCHD, RipBot, just to name a few...) all use Avisynth and
FFDShow's decoders in some way. By properly configuring your decoding
setup, you will save yourself a lot of wasted time and headaches in the
future.</p>
If you have any questions, feel free to post in the comments and I will
answer them as soon as I can.</p>
Enjoy!</p>


Convert Blu-rays to iPad with BD Rebuilder
2010-04-26T00:00:00+00:00
Here's another one for the books! The great author of BD Rebuilder has
just added another excellent feature to the already stellar Blu-ray
backup program. iPad conversion</strong>. That's right, you read the
correctly. Now, with just 1 extra click, you can convert your Blu-rays
to an iPad friendly format. Let me show you how.</p>
</span>Step 1)§</a>
</h3>
Before you begin make sure that you have ripped your Blu-ray to your
harddrive</a>.</p>
Start up BD Rebuilder. Make sure that you have all of its necessary
programs installed (Avisynth, Haali's Media Splitter, FFDShow). You
should see a window like the one below.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 2)§</a>
</h3>
Navigate up to the Mode</strong> menu up at the top of BD Rebuilder's main
window. Select the Movie-Only Backup</strong> option from the drop down menu.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 3)§</a>
</h3>
Now, click on the Other Movie-Only Output</strong> menu entry, like I have
shown below.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 4)§</a>
</h3>
You should see a window like the one below. Enable the iPad MP4 HD</strong>
profile that I have highlighted at the bottom, and then set your desired
CRF value. The CRF value is essentially a quality vs. size ratio. The
lower the CRF value, the greater the quality and filesize. The higher
the CRF value, the lower the quality and filesize. You get the idea.</p>
You can either leave the CRF at default, or enter your own preferred
value. When you are finished, click Save</strong>.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 5)§</a>
</h3>
You should now be at the main window again. Use the Source</strong>path to
select the folder that contains your Blu-ray's BDMV folder, and the
Working</strong>path to select your output/workfiles directory.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 6)§</a>
</h3>
When all is said and done, the BD Rebuilder will look something similar
to the following screenshot. When you are ready, click the big and
beautiful Backup</strong> button.</p>


    
    
    
    

Conclusion)§</a>
</h3>
As you can see, BD Rebuilder greatly simplifies the whole conversion
process for you. Feel free to experiment with any of the parameters and
let me know how it works out for you in the comments!</p>


Blu-ray to DVD with multiAVCHD
2010-04-11T00:00:00+00:00
Well, this is the video companion to my original post here</a>. I highly
recommend that you watch the HD version in full screen if you can, as
it's way better than on the page, or watching the low-res version. If
you have any questions, feel free to hit up the Doom9 thread</a> or post
in the comments on this page.</p>
**Note:**Feel free to right click the video and change the stretching
method if the video looks distorted to you.</p>


  
  
  
  
Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>


New Screencast for Blu-ray to DVD using multiAVCHD
2010-04-11T00:00:00+00:00
Okay, I had a number of requests for a screencast version of my
original Blu-ray to DVD using multiAVCHD post</a>. So, being the awesome
person that I am, I created one</a>.</p>
</span>
It is my hope that this screencast will clea up any questions that you
may have had. multiAVCHD really is a wonderful program, and continues to
get better practically every day.</p>
I will continue to test multiAVCHD's features, and produce tutorials
that detail it's many capabilities. One feature that I really would like
to test out is it's "Blu-ray re-author" mode (which, rumor has it, BD
Rebuilder may also support in the future).</p>
Well, I hope you enjoy the video, and enjoy the rest of my tutorials!</p>


Burn AVCHDs and Blu-rays with IMGBurn
2010-03-30T00:00:00+00:00
Well, since I already covered how to burn single layer DVDs</a> using the
free burning software, IMGBurn</a>, and I have been doing some tutorials
on converting</a> your Blu-rays to AVCHD and other Blu-ray based
material, I thought it was time to cover burning AVCHDs and Blu-ray
disks.</p>
</span>
Well, let's get started. I assume you already have at least a
BDMV folder you want to burn (and a CERTIFICATE folder if you are
burning to a Blu-ray disk).</p>
First, start up IMGBurn (obviously).</p>
1)§</a>
</h3>
You will see a window like the one below. Click on theWrite
file/folders to disc</strong> button.</p>


    
    
    
    

2)§</a>
</h3>
Now, in the left hand corner, you will see a window area labeled
Source</strong>, like I have shown below. Click on the folder icon that I
have highlighted to locate your BDMV (and if you are burning a Blu-ray,
your CERTIFICATE) folder.</p>


    
    
    
    

3)§</a>
</h3>
You should see your folder loaded in the source window now. Remember,
since I'm burning an AVCHD in this case, I will only have one folder. If
I were burning a Blu-ray (BD-R, BD-RE, etc) then I would include the
CERTIFICATE folder as well.</p>
If you include the CERTIFICATE folder in a AVCHD compilation, you run
the risk of confusing your Blu-ray player and producing a non-playable
disk.</p>


    
    
    
    

4)§</a>
</h3>
Now, click the big Calculator</strong> button. What this will do is calculate
the size of your compilation and analyze our source, which leads up to
step 5.</strong></p>


    
    
    
    

5)§</a>
</h3>
IMGBurn is smart. IMGBurn is so smart that it will detect that you are
trying to burn a Blu-ray based disk and will automatically set a number
of settings for you, like the UDF revision (which should be 2.50 or
2.60).</p>


    
    
    
    

You can see what I'm talking about by clicking on the Options</strong> tab
and looking where it says UDF</strong>.</p>


    
    
    
    

6)§</a>
</h3>
Next, choose your destination drive. Since I only have one burner drive
in my computer, this has already been set correctly for me. Choose
whichever drive you desire (as long as it's the one with your blank disk
in it).</p>
You may have noticed that I have the Verify</strong> option enabled. This is
mostly through force of habit, but I find it useful as it helps me to
ensure that a burn was successfully completed. Feel free to leave it off
if you don't want it.</p>
When you are ready, click the big start button that I have highlighted
below.</p>


    
    
    
    

7)§</a>
</h3>
Again, since IMGBurn is so smart, it may have noticed that we have not
given our compilation a name. And, being the smart little program that
it is, it will probably suggest a title like the one below. Feel free to
edit your title, or just click OK.</p>
Note:</strong> If you don't do anything, IMGBurn will automatically click
Yes</strong> for you in about 23 seconds, as you can see in the far bottom
left corner of the alert window.</p>


    
    
    
    

Conclusion)§</a>
</h3>
Well that about covers it! With this guide, you should now be able to
burn AVCHDs and Blu-ray disks whenever you want! Happy burning to you!</p>


Converting Blu-ray to SD DVD using multiAVCHD
2010-03-26T00:00:00+00:00
As some of you may remember, I wrote up a tutorial for converting
Blu-rays to standard DVDs (that can be played in a regular DVD player)
using AVStoDVD</a>. Well, I've found a "better" way. The secret is
multiAVCHD</a>.</p>
</span>
**UPDATE:**There is now a video screencast version of this tutorial, as
can be found here</a>.</p>
multiAVCHD is a fantastic program for the conversion of multiple video
sources (AVI, MP4, MKV, Blu-ray, HDDVD, DVD, etc) to several different
output formats varying from standard Blu-ray to AVCHD to (the one we've
all been waiting for)SD-DVD</strong>.</p>
SD-DVD is what many of us think of as the standard
what-you-buy-for-your-kids-in-Walmart DVD. It's completely compatible
with any standard DVD player and is very portable. It is encoded with
the MPEG2 codec instead of the new MPEG4/AVC codec that is used in your
PS3 or Blu-ray player.</p>
Well, enough blabbering. The main reason why multiAVCHD is so great for
dealing with Blu-ray to DVD conversions is that it was specifically
designed to handle Blu-ray content. AVStoDVD is not. AVStoDVD is great
for handling AVI to DVD conversions with menus for example, but it's
Blu-ray support is a little lacking. And that's okay, because that is
not what it was made for.</p>
multiAVCHD on the other hand is a very robust conversion application
that is both free</strong> and actively supported by the developer, Dean
Kasabow. He has helped me through my Blu-ray troubles, and now I hope to
do the same for you.</p>
Okay, let's get started. First make sure that you have ripped</a> your
Blu-ray to your hard drive.</p>
Note: One thing that multiAVCHD does not (yet) support for SD-DVD output
is menus. But, the fact of the matter is that most of us don't really
care about menus when we are only going to be watching the main movie
anyways. If you want to create your own menus, use AVStoDVD</a>, else
multiAVCHD is just fine.</p>
Note:</strong> multiAVCHD requires the usual suspects: Avisynth, Haali's
Media Splitter and FFDShow. Make sure you have them installed and
working before using the program.</p>
1)§</a>
</h3>
Start up multiAVCHD. You should be a window like the one below. If it
alerts you about an update that is available, go ahead and download it.
Like I said, the author is very active and new features are added almost
daily.</p>


    
    
    
    

2)§</a>
</h3>
First off, we are going to configure our output settings. Swing on over
to the Settings</strong>tab and select your MPEG2 encoder as I have shown
below. In this case, I went ahead and chose the QuEnc 1-pass</strong> profile
but feel free to chose which ever one you want. The HCenc 2-pass</strong>
profile may yield a better quality result but can also take longer. In
the latest version, HCenc 1-pass</strong> was also added. It is about 2x
faster than HCenc 1-pass</strong>, and is still very high quality. Choose
whichever you want.</p>


    
    
    
    

Now, swing on over to the Author</strong> tab, and select your desired TV
System output. In this case, I'm running an NTSC setup, but for those of
you in PAL country (mostly Europe), you will want to change this.</p>


    
    
    
    

3)§</a>
</h3>
Okay, now we want to load our source. The way that is recommended by the
author is to use the AVCHD / BDMV / DVD folders</strong> button. This way,
multiAVCHD can scan all of the playlists in the BDMV.</p>
Why do we want the playlists, you may ask? We want the playlists because
they offer a more dependable support of input files (as you can see in
the comments) and they support cases where the main movie is split up
over multiple m2ts files.</p>
Once you have selected your BDMV folder, multiAVCHD will spend some time
analyzing your input files. When it is done, remove any unnecessary
playlists (such as extras, or special features) using the Remove</strong>
button in the input files area.</p>
An alternative way:</strong> In the top left corner of multiAVCHD you should
see a button labeled Add video files</strong>. Click it, and navigate to your
Blu-ray folder and select the m2ts with the largest size, as I have
shown below. This tends to be a little faster than the playlist method,
as it doesn't have to scan the whole BDMV folder and it's playlists, but
it can be less dependable. The author recommends that you use the
playlist method, but I use the Add video files</strong> method from time to
time when I know I won't have any problems with my source.</p>


    
    
    
    

multiAVCHD will scan and analyze your input file and display it in the
source window like below. You can also see that your input has been
added to the overall compilation by looking at the Compliation</strong> area
and seeing the name of your file or movie (00010</strong> in this case).</p>


    
    
    
    

4)§</a>
</h3>
Now, click on your source in the compilation area. You only have to
click once, and then wait as multiAVCHD loads your properties.</p>
Ex.</strong> I clicked on the "1. 00010" and multiAVCHD popped up the window
below.</p>


    
    
    
    

5)§</a>
</h3>
In recent versions of multiAVCHD, support for multiple audio and
subtitle tracks has just been added. In this case, I kept my HD DTS
audio and removed the other two, since I knew that the first track
contained the main (english) audio track for my movie, and the rest were
foreign languages.</p>


    
    
    
    

To edit your subtitle tracks, simply swing on over to the
Subtitles</strong>tab and add (external subtitles) or remove subtitles as you
see fit. Currently, external subtitle tracks take priority over internal
subtitle tracks. What this means is that an external subtitle track will
appear first in your subtitle selection menu when playing the output
DVD.</p>
6)§</a>
</h3>
Now, we need to set out title for SD-DVD output. On the right side of
the window, you should see the Transcode</strong> button as I have
highlighted below. Click on it.</p>


    
    
    
    

7)§</a>
</h3>
You should now see a window like the one below.</p>


    
    
    
    

On the bottom right, you will see a drop-down box. In the screenshot
above it is set to Blu-ray/AVCHD compliant</strong>. Set this to Create
SD-DVD title</strong> as I have done below.</p>


    
    
    
    

8)§</a>
</h3>
Now, we are going to choose our output size. Then encoder area should
now have changed to display your desired MPEG2 encoder name (QuEnc in my
case). Click on the Bitrate Suggestions</strong> button as I have
highlighted.</p>


    
    
    
    

You will now see a list of output sizes and bitrates. Since I want to
encode [burn][] my output to a single layer DVD, I select the DVD-5
option from the list and click Use</strong>.</p>


    
    
    
    

9)§</a>
</h3>
Now, at this point we are pretty much done with the transcoding window.
However, some of you may want to hardcode an external subtitle onto your
output. To do this, use the drop-down box on the bottom left of the
transcode window like I have shown below. Again, since I don't want to
hardcode a subtitle onto my output, I have disabled this feature, but
it's there if you need it.</p>
Once you are done setting up your transcode parameters to your liking,
go ahead and click Apply</strong>.</p>


    
    
    
    

10)§</a>
</h3>
Okay, it looks like we are almost done. Two things that I like to do
while I'm still in my title's properties window is to give it a name in
the Title Name</strong>field, and then to save the current project using the
Save</strong> button down in the bottom right. Save the project file some
place that you will be able to remember later (like your Desktop) so
that it will save you some time in case a problem occurs.</p>
Once you have configured your title properties correctly, you can safely
close the properties window and return to the main program.</p>


    
    
    
    

11)§</a>
</h3>
Okay, the hard part is done, I promise! Now, in the bottom left of the
main window, there is a little field called the Output Suffix</strong>. I
usually fill this in with some clever short hand so that if I happen to
do a bunch of encodes and save them to the same directory, I will be
able to quickly tell which is which because the root folder will contain
my clever distinguishing phrase.</p>
Well, THAT and I like to be thorough in my projects. Do what you will.</p>


    
    
    
    

12)§</a>
</h3>
Well, that about covers it. Now we are just going to go ahead and save
one more time (because it never hurts!) and start the encode.</p>


    
    
    
    

13)§</a>
</h3>
After pressing Start</strong> you should see a window like the one below. As
you can see, multiAVCHD supports a plethora of output options, but in
this case we only want the SD-DVD</strong>option. Again, in the interest of
being thorough, I go ahead and give my compilation an appropriate name.
Then push the button and sit back and enjoy the ride!</p>


    
    
    
    

Note:</strong> Depending on how you have multiAVCHD configured, you may get a
nice preview of your output while the encode is running. I personally
disable the preview, but that's entirely your option.</p>
Quicktip)§</a>
</h3>
As the author has pointed out to me, if you are comfortable with the
default choices of multiAVCHD, you can safely load your source files and
jump to Step 11</strong>if you are so inclined. multiAVCHD will prompt you to
fit your compilation to DVD-5 (single layer DVD) and mark your title for
transcoding to MPEG2 automatically. In addition, it will adjust the
output resolution and select the first audio and subtitle tracks for
your output automagically. Cool huh?</p>
Again, this is if you trust in multiAVCHD to make the right decisions
(which there is no reason why it shouldn't) or if you don't want to
adjust any of the output options by hand.</p>
Enjoy!</p>
For those of you who want to read up on / get support for multiAVCHD,
you can access it's Doom9 thread [here][http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=143744].</p>


Using AnyDVD through DVD Decrypter
2010-03-24T00:00:00+00:00
Recently I had a reader ask me if it was possible to use AnyDVD</a> and
DVD Decrypter together. This way he could use DVD Decrypter's IFO mode
with the decryption processing being handled by AnyDVD. As a matter of
fact, this is very easy to do, and I'll show you how.</p>
</span>
First off, as a precaution, make sure that AnyDVD is shutdown. This probably
isn't necessary, but any time I'm messing with my disk drivers, I like
to be sure I won't be breaking anything. To do this, simply right click
on the little AnyDVD fox icon at the bottom right of your screen and
click Exit</strong>.</p>
Good to go? Okay, then let's move on.</p>
1)§</a>
</h3>
Start up DVD Decrypter. At the top of it's menu, you will see a option
called Tools</strong>, like I have highlighted below. Click on it.</p>


    
    
    
    

2)§</a>
</h3>
Now, scroll down and press the Settings</strong> option.</p>


    
    
    
    

3)§</a>
</h3>
You should now see DVD Decrypter's main settings window. Don't be
overwhelmed by the number of tabs and options! Sure, DVD Decrypter has a
plethora of options, but we only want the ones under the I/O</strong> tab
today.</p>


    
    
    
    

4)§</a>
</h3>
Okay, now, right off the bat you should see a region called
Interfaces</strong>. Under this region, select the ElbyCDIO</strong> driver. This
is the device driver that pipes directly from AnyDVD and one that will
appear completely clean to DVD Decrypter.</p>


    
    
    
    

5)§</a>
</h3>
Now, swing over to the CSS</strong> tab. Make sure that CSS Cracking
Method</strong>is set to None</strong>. Then make sure that Detect Mastering
Errors</strong> is unchecked. The reason that we do all this is because AnyDVD
will handle any issues with CSS (Content Scrambling System) or mastering
errors, and we don't want DVD Decrypter to pick up on a false positive
from AnyDVD.</p>


    
    
    
    

6)§</a>
</h3>
Next, we are going to cleanup on some ISO options in case you decide to
rip in ISO mode. To do this, click on the ISO Read Mode</strong>tab. As you
can see, I have unchecked all options except for Create MDS File</strong>.
Again, this because AnyDVD handles all of the other options and we don't
want to be interfering with it's process.</p>


    
    
    
    

7)§</a>
</h3>
Last, but not least, click on the General</strong> tab for some last minute
cleanup. Be sure to uncheck Remove Macrovision Protection</strong> and
Check for Structure Protection</strong> for the same reasons that I have
already mentioned (AnyDVD handles them).</p>
**Aside:**Macrovision protection was originally introduced on the old
VHS tapes as a sort of signal interference. Basically when a user wanted
to copy a VHS, the copier would include the Macrovision signal which
would produce a variety of different distortions on the copied VHS. Icky
stuff isn't it?</p>


    
    
    
    

8)§</a>
</h3>
Now, simply save your settings by clicking **OK.**If you ever want to
change your settings back, you can simply use the Reset to Defaults</strong>
button in the bottom left of the settings window. All you have to do is
close DVD Decrypter, start AnyDVD back up again, and then open DVD
Decrypter and you should be good to go! DVD Decrypter will remember it's
settings from now on, so you only have to do the above steps once
(thankfully!). Enjoy your now deadly combination of DVD decryption
software!</p>
If you have never used DVD Decrypter before, take a look at my guide
(screencast!) here</a> if you are curious about this fabulous (and
free!) software.</p>


DVD FAB Passkey: An alternative to AnyDVD HD
2010-03-19T00:00:00+00:00
From the makers of DVD FAB</a> comes the new transparent decryption
software, DVD FAB Passkey. This is a direct competitor to AnyDVD HD</a>,
as it operates transparently in the background and supports both DVDs
and Blu-rays. This means that you don't have to rip the disk first
before using it.</p>
</span>
Since DVD Fab Passkey is currently in beta release, it is free to use! A
download link can be found here: DVD FAB Passkey</a>.</p>
For those of you who are unfamiliar with AnyDVD HD, or "on-the-fly"
decryption software in general, let me explain.</p>
Most decryption software operates by reading the disk in your DVD or
Bluray drive and then transferring the data to your hard drive. This is
called "ripping". Especially in the case of HD content (such as Blu-ray)
this can take up a lot of space, often 30 gigabytes or more. In
addition, this whole ripping process takes serious time, often 1 hour or
more when ripping a Blu-ray. Ripping a DVD can often take only 15
minutes, but that depends on the software and your computer.</p>
The advantage "on-the-fly" decryption software is that it does not
require you to rip your disk before playing or otherwise using its data.
You can play files directly on from the disk, using software like
PowerDVD or ArcSoft Total Media Theater (both of which are payware).
There is also the free alternative Media Player Classic Home Cinema</a>,
but this can only play the main movie files and doesn't support some of
the advanced features of Blu-ray such as menus or BD-Live!</p>
"On-the-fly" decryption software acts as a 3rd party filter between your
DVD or Blu-ray drive and your operating system. Once the disk has been
scanned and decryption has completed, your movie looks like any other
disk to Windows or your favorite video player. It is because of this
that you can use your encryption-free drive as a source for software
such as BD Rebuilder</a>.</p>
For those of you who still want to rip a disk to your hard drive, but
want the advanced decryption features of DVD Fab Passkey, I plan on
having a tutorial up this weekend. Enjoy the free software!</p>


Convert Bluray to DVD with AVStoDVD
2010-03-06T00:00:00+00:00
A few readers have been asking me about creating DVD version out of
Blurays. Since I happened to be working on that very problem just
recently, I thought I'd whip up a tutorial on how to convert your Bluray
rips to DVDs using the free AVStoDVD</a>. It's a bit long, but it covers
a lot of the strengths of AVStoDVD, including menu creation!</p>
</span>
Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and assume that you've already
ripped</a> your Bluray to somewhere on your hard disk. If you haven't
done this already, jump to it!</p>
Step 1)§</a>
</h3>
Start up AVStoDVD.</p>
Before we start adding any video files to the main project, we need to
edit our project preferences, which will save us some serious time later
and give us a chance to specify our output format for our DVD.</p>
Click on the Preferences</strong> button that I have highlighted below.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 2)§</a>
</h3>
Once the AVStoDVD Preferences</strong>window has opened, click on the
Paths</strong> tab, and edit the Default Output Path</strong>to your liking.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 3)§</a>
</h3>
Now, under the Encoding</strong> tab, make sure that your AVS Source filter is
set to A2DSource.</strong> Next, choose your video encode profile. In this
case, I decided go for the HCenc 2-pass profile, as I find it gives
better quality when aiming for a specific filesize then the other two
profiles.</p>
Lastly, set the AC3 Audio Encoder</strong> to QuEnc</strong>, as this was the only
audio encoder that I could get to work with our HD audio input on a
consistent basis. You can try experimenting with the other profiles if
you are so inclined.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 4)§</a>
</h3>
Now, click on the Audio / Video</strong> tab. If you live in a NTSC-based
country (ex: United States) then set your DVD Video Standard</strong> to NTSC.
If you live in a PAL-based country (ex: most of Europe), then set your
standard to PAL. You can pretty much leave the other settings at default
or copy my own, as shown below.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 5)§</a>
</h3>
If you click on the Authoring / Burning</strong> tab, you can edit your
default audio and subtitle languages, in addition to setting a chapters
interval if your source doesn't have a chapters list or if your source
has a chapter list that cannot be read by AVStoDVD. Last but not least,
check the Save current Preferences as default</strong> box. This will force
AVStoDVD to remember you setting for future projects, which can really
save you some time if you are encoding several Blurays. When you are
done, click OK</strong> and return to the main window.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 6)§</a>
</h3>
Now that you have setup your main project preferences, choose your
desired output DVD size. In this case, I'm shooting for a single-layer
4.7 GB DVD, but feel free to choose differently.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 7)§</a>
</h3>
Now, select your output structure. In this example, I'm aiming for just
a folder that contains the DVD structure, which I can then burn</a>
later using IMGBurn. However, if I wanted, I could have an empty DVD in
my disk drive and tell AVStoDVD to automatically burn it using IMGBurn
when it has finished. Definitely a handy feature.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 8)§</a>
</h3>
Now it's time to add our source! Click the source import button as I
have highlighted below.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 9)§</a>
</h3>
Navigate to where you have ripped your Bluray disk on your harddrive.
Navigate down into the STREAM</strong> folder and select your main movie
stream. This is usually the file with the largest size. As you can see
my main movie is over 30 GB so it's pretty obvious which stream I need
to select. If your still unsure, open up the stream in your favorite
video player (mine's Media Player Classic Home Cinema) and check to make
sure it's the file you want.</p>
When you are done, click OK</strong>.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 10)§</a>
</h3>
Now, AVStoDVD will read your input file and present a window like the
one below, which details all of the audio tracks it found in the file.
Simply place check boxes in the audio streams that you want to include
on the file DVD and then press the small X in the upper right hand
corner. Again, it never hurts to preview the stream before hand to make
sure that you know which audio track you want, but it is usually safe to
assume that the top track is the main audio track.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 11)§</a>
</h3>
You should now see the main window with an overall detailing of your
source, including the video and any audio track(s) that you
have chosen to include.</p>
**Optional:**If you would like to include subtitles in the final output,
make sure that they are already pre-ripped before adding them to the
project. To add them to the project, simply click on your video file and
select Subtitles->Add Subtitles</strong>. Select your subtitle file and it
will be imported into the project.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 12)§</a>
</h3>
If you cannot see the Advanced Project Settings</strong> dialog, press the
Settings</strong>button at the top of the window.</p>
Now that you have added all of your desired files to the project, it's
time to give it a name. Under the DVD Label</strong> section, enter the name
of your project ("The Dark Knight" in this case for obvious reasons).</p>
While your at it, check off any of the other options that you find
useful. As you can see, I have enabled MultiThreaded Encoding</strong> since
I have a multicore processor and it adds a nice speed boost. Also, I'm
going to go ahead and have AVStoDVD delete any intermediate files for
me, so I don't have to deal with them later.</p>
Note</strong>: MultiThreaded Encoding</strong> is on by default, so leave it be
unless you have a good reason to disable it.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 13)§</a>
</h3>
Okay, these next few steps are optional. We will be creating a menu for
the project. If you don't care about a menu then go ahead and skip to
Step 18.</strong></p>
Still with me? Okay, let's start up AVStoDVD's Menu Wizard.</strong> To do
so, go to Options->DVD Menu->Menu Wizard</strong> or just press F6</strong>.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 14)§</a>
</h3>
You will see a window like the one below appear. For the most part, you
can leave the defaults, but feel free to tweak anything if you want. For
example, I want to change my Menu Template</strong> from the default Menu
in Black</strong> to the cool Blue Rain</strong>. I do this by clicking on the
Template</strong> tab and selecting Blue Rain</strong> from the Menu Template</strong>
drop-down box.</p>
After you have changed whatever you wanted to change (or if you are
satisfied with the defaults) press the >>Run Editor<<</strong> button.</p>


    
    
    
    

AVStoDVD will go about generating your initial menu structure, and give
you this handy little progress bar for a few seconds.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 15)§</a>
</h3>
You will be presented with the Menu Editor</strong> window. If you change the
Mode</strong> to Edit</strong>, you will be able to change around the menu and
edit it to your taste. The most important section of this window is the
DVD Menu Items</strong> dialog.</p>
Most of the items are pretty self explanatory, but let's say that I want
to edit the Play All Button</strong>. To do so, I simply select the Play
All Button</strong> from the DVD Menu Items</strong> list. Then, I drag and drop the
button to a new position that I find fitting, the center in this case.
Next we will change the thumbnail and title label.</p>
The program author (Mr. C) suggests turning on HL Links</strong> to get a
better understanding of the DVD menu navigation. To do this simply press
the HL Links</strong>button near the center of the window, next to the
Lock</strong> button.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 16)§</a>
</h3>
Okay, let's say that we want to change the thumbnail displayed on our
menu. Click the Edit</strong>button like I have shown.</p>


    
    
    
    

You will be presented with a window like the one below. Simply move the
slider and press the play button until you find a frame that you like
(note: this can be slow, depending on your computer). When you have
found a frame that you like press the little |</strong> button, as I have
shown. This will mark the frame as your desired thumbnail. Exit out of
the window to return to the menu editor.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 17)§</a>
</h3>
Now, last but not least, let's get rid of that nasty little number under
the Thumbnail. Select Title Label</strong> from the DVD Menu Items</strong> list
and edit the number under the Label</strong> dialog, as I have shown.</p>
If you have edited your menu to your desire, simply go up to
the Menu</strong> menu, and select Exit</strong>. AVStoDVD will ask you to
confirm, simply press OK</strong>, and you should return to the main window.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 18)§</a>
</h3>
If you have setup your project like you want (it never hurts to double
check, right?), then save the project! This will save you loads of time
later if an error occurs in the encoding process.  To do so, simply
press that Save</strong> button in the top left corner of the window and give
it a name for your project file to be saved as (ex. "The Dark Knight").</p>
Now, let's get encoding! To do so, simply click the Start</strong> button as
I have highlighted below.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 19)§</a>
</h3>
You will be greeted with one last confirmation dialog (it's the last
one, I promise!). Again, double check your settings are setup like you
want, and then press OK</strong>.</p>


    
    
    
    

Conclusion)§</a>
</h3>
Upon completion, you should see a familiar DVD folder in your output
directory (you know, the one with the VIDEO_TS folder and all that).
 Or, if you told AVStoDVD to automatically burn it for you, then enjoy
your swanky new disk.</p>
If you want instructions on how to burn the disk your self using
IMGBurn, see here</a>. Enjoy your new DVD!</p>


Burn Single Layer Video DVD's With IMGBurn
2010-02-21T00:00:00+00:00
Today I will be covering how to burn your  single layer video DVD's
using IMGBurn</a>. Usually you will do this after you have already
ripped</a> and compressed the DVD using some of the many programs out
there.  I will cover compressing DVD's in a later tutorial.</p>
</span>
First off, let me explain what constitutes a single layer disk for those
of you who may not know. Most DVDs produced these days are dual-layer,
meaning that they have two layers of information stored on them.</p>
This comes in juxtaposition to a single layer DVD, which can only have
one layer of information stored on it. Each layer can store around 4.31
GB of data. The upside to single layer DVDs is that they are much
cheaper to buy than dual layer DVD's. The down side is that more often
than not, when you are backing up your DVD to a single layer disk, you
are going to lose some video quality. However, most people think that
the trade off is more than fair.</p>
Okay, now that we have that out of the way, let's get into how we
actually burn</em> the disk! To do this, we will be using the free</strong>
IMGBurn, written by LIGHTNING UK! The same author of the old DVD
Decrypter, as some of you may remember.</p>
Let's begin.</p>
Step 1)§</a>
</h3>
Assuming you have already ripped and compressed your disk, start up
IMGBurn and select the "Write Mode" like I have done below.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 2)§</a>
</h3>
Now, we are going to use the folder selection button that I have
highlighted so select our source folder that contains our DVD files.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 3)§</a>
</h3>
Now, navigate to where your files are stored. It's good to have them
setup in a directory structure like I have below, but if you only have
the VIDEO_TS</strong> folder, that's fine. IMGBurn will recognize that your
are trying to burn a DVD and auto-generate the necessary folder
structure for you if necessary.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 4)§</a>
</h3>
Once you have selected your source, simply click the big calculator
button. If you only selected the VIDEO_TS</strong>folder as I mentioned
above, IMGBurn will ask you a few simple questions, all of which you can
say "yes" to. When you have finished you should see that your source
contains two folders, like I have highlighted.</p>
Now that you have done that, the worst is over, I swear! As you can see,
I have the Verify</strong> option selected. I do this because I'm slightly
paranoid about my disk burning, so at the end of a burn, I like to have
IMGBurn verify the burned disk against the data on my hard drive to make
sure that everything made it through the burn process. This is by no
means mandatory, just a good idea. When you are done, simply click the
big Folder to Disk</strong> button that I have highlighted below the source
area.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 5)§</a>
</h3>
If you have not already specified a Label for your disk, IMGBurn will
ask you to confirm a label selection. A label is just a simple line of
text that allows you to identify a disk when it is in your computer's
disk drive. Simply enter something clever, or let IMGBurn choose for
you, as I did in this case.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 6)§</a>
</h3>
Before the burning begins, IMGBurn will show a confirmation window like
the one below. Most of the time you can just click OK</strong>, but it never
hurts to read some of the info it's telling you to check for any
mistakes.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 7)§</a>
</h3>
Now, you just let the program run it's course. It will display it's
progress like the window below and send up a notification when it is
done. Enjoy your newly burned disk!</p>


    
    
    
    


Encoding Blu-ray's to MP4 with RipBot
2010-02-02T00:00:00+00:00
Since I haven't written anything in a while and I have been
experimenting with the awesome program, RipBot</a>. I thought I would go
ahead and write up how to use this awesome program to convert your
Blu-ray rips to something more manageable like a console (Xbox 360, PS3)
compatible MP4.</p>
</span>
Okay, let's get started then, shall we!</p>
Step 1)§</a>
</h3>
Make sure that you have ripped your disk to your hard drive using
something like AnyDVD HD</a> or DVD Fab</a>. If you need a tutorial, or
your not exactly sure on how to rip the disk, see the one that I wrote
here</a>.</p>
Step 2)§</a>
</h3>
Open up RipBot. If you are missing any of the necessary programs it
should warn you and give you a download link to a compatible version. It
takes the usual suspects (Avisynth, FFDShow, Haali's Media Splitter,
etc...)</p>
When you are sure that all of your dependencies have been satisfied,
click the Add</strong> button.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 3)§</a>
</h3>
The main configuration dialog window should open (below). Next to the
Video</strong> field, select the "...</strong>" button to select your video
source.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 4)§</a>
</h3>
You will be presented with a file selection dialog box. Navigate to the
directory that you ripped your Blu-ray in and navigate down until you
hit the Stream</strong> folder (like you see below). The main movie is
(usually) the largest .m2ts file, so we are going to go ahead and select
it as our source. Press Open</strong>.</p>
Note</strong>: Be sure that you are selecting the right file. Preview the
file before hand using something like Media Player Classic or your own
Home Theater software.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 5)§</a>
</h3>
RipBot will proceed to analyze your input video (this can take a few
minutes) and then present a stream selection window like the one below.
It's usually safe to leave it at defaults, but you can edit your stream
selections if you desire. Just know before hand what you are getting
into. When you are done, press Ok</strong>.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 6)§</a>
</h3>
After you have selected your stream settings, RipBot will go about
demuxing the necessary files from your source. This can take a little
while (sometimes an hour or more depending on your system) so be
prepared to wait. Go make some coffee...</p>
Note:</strong> Demuxing the necessary files can take up some serious space,
so make sure that you have plenty of free space on your hard drive
before even ripping your Blu-ray. HD material is HUGE and you don't want
to get stuck half way through.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 7)§</a>
</h3>
Once your streams have been properly demuxed, you can about editing your
encode settings.</p>
Okay, now here is where the interesting part begins. I'm going to assume
that you want to create an MP4 that is compatible with your Xbox 360 or
PS3. If so, you can leave part 1.</strong> alone. Otherwise, take a look at
the drop-down options and chose one that fits your needs. Or create a
custom profile by pressing on the little "...</strong>" button. It's your
choice.</p>
Next, choose your audio settings in section 2.</strong> Since this MP4 is
aiming to be compatible with an Xbox 360, I am encoding my audio using
the Stereo, AAC-LC at 128 kbps. I am doing this because the Xbox 360
does not support 5.1 audio using the (high quality) AAC compressor. The
PS3 on the other hand does support 5.1 AAC (when used with the PS3's PCM
5.1 output over HDMI to a capable receiver), so use it if you want.
Again, if your target is not going to be a console, I leave the settings
up to you. Leave a comment if you are curious about a specific setting.</p>
Choose your encoding mode in section 3.</strong> Since I wanted to shoot for
a specific file size, I went with a 2-pass encode at 1024 kbps. You can
see the size estimate in to bottom right hand corner ("1264 MB"). You
can use the default CQ mode, however you risk over shooting the
consoles' supported bitrate if you choose to low of a number (18 or
below).</p>
Last but not least, select your output directory. Make sure .mp4</strong> is
selected as your output format.</p>
Before we are done, lets shoot back to section **3.**and the
Properties</strong> button.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 8)§</a>
</h3>
The area below is what you will see after clicking the Properties</strong>
button on the previous window. Since most Blu-rays these days come with
black bars in the source, I have developed a habit of cropping them off,
as they don't really do me any good. However, if we are going to resize
later, or need the video to be a certain size, then keeping the black
bars is a good idea. As we will see later when resizing, RipBot will
automatically add in black bars for padding to attain a specific aspect
ratio.


    
    
    
    

</p>
Step 9)§</a>
</h3>
Now, of my final encode, I want a resolution of 720p (or 1280 x 720
pixels). You don't have to do this step if you don't want to. It's
perfectly reasonable to leave it at the original size (plus or minus the
cropping that you choose to do). I am resizing here to show you what is
possible, so take it or leave it at your will. As you can see there are
a plethora of built-in resizing profiles, ranging from HD-full to a tiny
little iPod. You can also choose your own output size using the custom
options!</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 10)§</a>
</h3>
Now on to subtitles. Since I don't want to include any subtitles in my
final output (as I speak English and the movie was produced in English)
I am going to go ahead and say "Do not use subtitles</strong>". On the other
hand, if you do want subtitles burned into your final video, you can use
the drop down menu to select your source subtitles that will be burned
in to your final encode.</p>
Note:</strong> Burning in subtitles means that they cannot be deselected on
playback. So only use this option if you want to have the subtitles on
all the time.</p>
Additionally, if you understand Avisynth scripting a little bit, you can
view the final output script by clicking on the Show Script</strong> button
that I have highlighted. Again, not necessary but a nice "advanced"
feature.</p>
It is a good idea to preview your output using the Preview Script</strong>
button before hand, however it's not mandatory. If you trust your
settings, go ahead and click OK</strong> or continue on to step 11</strong> for
details on denoising. When you return to the main window, check your
final settings and then press Done.</strong> This will add your video to the
queue and you can continue on to step 12</strong>.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 11)§</a>
</h3>
Some people may want to denoise their input video before encoding, and
this is the place to do it. Again this isoptional.</strong> Simply use the
small arrows at the bottom of the window to arrow over to the right
until you get to the page displayed below. Select your preset from the
drop down box, or use the Show Script</strong> button that I talked about
earlier to fine tune the settings your self. Remember, the latter option
is for advanced users.</p>
When you are finished, you can preview your script using the Preview
Script</strong>button, or click OK.</strong></p>


    
    
    
    

Step 12)§</a>
</h3>
At this point, I assume that you have all ready entered your desired
settings for everything and have clicked Done</strong> on the New
Job</strong>window. The window you see below is the queue detail. You can use
it to see which video encodes you have queued up, or add a few more.
When you add additional videos to the queue, most</strong> of the settings
from the previous video encode will transfer over (with some exceptions
in the Avisynth settings), so it never hurts to double check your
settings on a new job.</p>
When everything is said and done, go ahead and press the Start</strong>
button and then sit back, relax, and let RipBot do all of the hard work
for you!</p>


    
    
    
    

Conclusion)§</a>
</h3>
RipBot is a truly fantastic program and it takes a lot of the guesswork
out of high quality video conversion. I hope that this tutorial helped
you to be come more familiar with this wonderful program. Good luck in
your encoding!</p>
Note:</strong> I am not the developer of this program. This gets confused a
lot, so I'm just saying it here to clear up any misunderstandings.</p>


Backing Up Blurays with AVCHDCoder
2009-12-30T00:00:00+00:00
A few weeks ago I showed you how to backup your Blu-rays using BD
Rebuilder</a>. This week, I'll show you how to do it with an alternative
program, AVCHDCoder</a>.</p>
</span>
AVCHDCoder is a decidedly different program than BD Rebuilder. It's
feature set is much larger for one thing. For another, it can produce
Blu-rays from non-Blu-ray sources. This is highly useful in the creation
of AVCHD disks from home videos and the like. But that is for another
tutorial. Today we are just going to be backing up our precious
store-bought Blu-rays.</p>
Let's get started.</p>
Step 1)§</a>
</h3>
Make sure that you have Java installed and the usual suspects (Avisynth,
Haali Media Splitter, etc...)</p>
Step 2)§</a>
</h3>
Make sure that AVCHDCoder is inBDMV-mode</strong>.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 3)§</a>
</h3>
Load your source and select the main movie playlist using the Playlist
to convert</strong> drop-down menu. Press the Set</strong> button. Press Next</strong> if
necessary.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 4)§</a>
</h3>
You should now be on the Select Streams</strong> tab. Edit your streams until
they represent your desired output. In this case I want to do a full
resolution backup (1920 x 1080p), using just the first audio track and
the first subtitle track. You can adjust your own settings or use
similar versions of mine. Press the Add</strong> button when you are finished
to add your Blu-ray to the final composition.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 5)§</a>
</h3>
You should now be on the Output</strong> tab. Select your destination size (a
single-layer DVD in this case, because I'm cheap). Remember, a greater
destination size allows for a higher bitrate and thus higher quality
backup. However, make sure that you can properly handle your output
size. For instance, if you were to select the BD-25</strong> option, make
sure that you have a Blu-ray burner and a spare BD-25 disk lying around,
otherwise you will have to do your backup all over again.</p>
Go ahead and title your disk if you want to (it's good practice, but I
didn't show it in the screenshot below), then select your output
settings. I'm going to burn this disk using IMGBurn</a> when I'm done,
so I went ahead and selected the ISO option to keep things easy for me. 
Select your destination folder and check the Delete temp folder after
conversion</strong> option if you don't won't to keep your temporary files
(most people won't).</p>
Lastly, click the Add to Queue</strong> button to finalize your settings and
add the project to the encoding queue.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 6)§</a>
</h3>
Now, before you go ahead and start the encoding process, you may want to
adjust the encoder's priority. You can do this by going up to
Options->CPU Priority</strong>. Under normal circumstances when I am
encoding something, I want to set the priority to Normal</strong> (like you
can see in the screenshot). However, if you wanted to continue to use
the computer while the encode process was going on, you may want to set
it to something a little lower like Below Normal</strong> or Low</strong>. The
reason you may want to use Normal</strong> is that it can result in a faster
encoding process. It's your choice.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 7)§</a>
</h3>
Last but certainly not least, press the big, colorful Convert</strong>
button. Then sit back and enjoy the ride while your computer does all
the dirty work!</p>


    
    
    
    

Conclusion§</a>
</h3>
Once your encode has finished, you can burn your ISO (or files) to a DVD
or Blu-ray disk of your choice. There are a variety of programs out
there such as the (FREE!) IMGBurn or Nero that will be able to burn your
shiny new ISO file for you. Enjoy your very own Blu-ray backup!</p>


Encoding Videos for Your Motorola Droid
2009-12-22T00:00:00+00:00
Since I just happened to get this phone for myself recently, I have
become more and more intrigued about the possibility of adding videos to
this awesome device. There are multiple ways to do this (and perhaps I
will post them all eventually), but today we are going to use
Handbrake</a>.</p>
</span>
Step 1)§</a>
</h3>
Rip your source. I have several</a> tutorials</a> on how to do this, so I
trust you can do this on your own.</p>
Step 2)§</a>
</h3>
Load up Handbrake and select your source, like what I have done below.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 3)§</a>
</h3>
Now, we are going to create our own profile for easier conversions later
on. First, select the Ipod</strong> profile from the profiles list on the
right hand side. Under the picture tab, look at the Size</strong> area. If
your source is greater than 848 pixels wide (like HD material, such as a
Blu-ray or HD TV show), then enter 848 into the width box. With the
Keep Aspect Ratio</strong> checkbox selected, Handbrake should fill out the
height for you automatically.</p>
Now, if your source is less than 848 pixels wide (such as a DVD), go
ahead and enter a resolution that you feel is appropriate. It is usually
safe to stick with the source resolution (640 pixels wide in this
example), but you can use less if you like. Depending on the player that
you use, the picture will automatically zoom to fill the screen. I've
even seen it work just fine with a 320 pixel wide video before, so you
can use that if you want to save on space and don't care about the
quality loss.</p>


    
    
    
    

Note: Turn off "iPod 5g support", as your Droid is not an iPod and
this option is unnecessary.</strong></p>
Step 4)§</a>
</h3>
Shoot on over to the Video</strong> tab, and edit the bitrate so that if
falls in between 500-1500 kbps. 1000 is usually just fine, as you can
see here, but if you want to go more or less that is your choice. Just
remember that with more bitrate comes greater quality, but a larger file
size as well.</p>


    
    
    
    

Note: If your source is a DVD
folder, you may want to switch to the "Video Filters" tab and turn on
Detelecine</em>and Decomb</em>, as your source is probably telecined.</strong></p>
Step 5)§</a>
</h3>
Using the small Add</strong> button in the bottom right hand corner, add your
new profile and label it something appropriate (Droid in this case).
Now, you will be able to load and encode videos much faster since you
have saved your settings to a labeled profile for easy selection.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 6)§</a>
</h3>
Hit the Start</strong> button, and wait for your movie to encode. Most movies
will usually take around 40 minutes depending on how powerful your
computer is, so don't be surprised if it takes longer.</p>
When that has finished, mount your Droid using the USB cable that came
with the Droid. When you plug it into your computer, your Droid will ask
you if you want to mount the SD card. Press the Mount</strong> button. Now
you will be able to access your SD card via My Computer</strong>.</p>
Open up your freshly mounted SD card and create a folder called "Videos"
or something. Drag and drop your freshly encoded video into this folder
and your done! Simply unmount your SD card and disconnect your Droid.
You can access your videos through the "Gallery" application. Some
people also like to use an app like Act1 Video Player</a>. It costs
money, but some people love it. I leave that choice up to you, as I have
found that the default player works just fine for my needs.</p>


Backup Blu-rays with BD Rebuilder
2009-12-11T00:00:00+00:00
Update:</strong> This tutorial was getting slightly out of date, so I updated
it to version BD Rebuilder 0.37.05 (on 2/19/2011).</p>
Well, I've been getting more and more into Blu-ray backup</a> recently,
so I thought I would go ahead and post this nice tutorial and
screencast</a> combo! I'll be detailing how to do it with BD Rebuilder
today, and I will be adding how-to's for other programs in the future.</p>
</span>
Step 1§</a>
</h3>
Rip</a> your Blu-ray to a folder on your hard drive.</p>
Step 2§</a>
</h3>
Start up BD Rebuilder and you should see a main window like the one
below. Using theBrowse</strong> buttons, select your source directory. I'm
using my Dark Knight</em>Blu-ray in this example. Also, while your at it,
select your Working</strong> directory. This is where your temporary files
will be stored during the conversion process.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 3§</a>
</h3>
Now, since I want to backup my entire</em> Blu-ray (menus, extras, etc), I
want to check to make sure that I am in the correct backup mode by going
to Mode->Full Backup</strong>. There is one thing to remember here. A full
backup means that you are backing up everything</em>, so you have less
space for your main movie, which means a reduced quality overall when
you compress everything down. The alternative is to use the Movie-Only
Backup</strong> mode, which (as I'm sure you can guess) will only backup your
main movie. That means no menus, special features, or anything else.
This a very nice option, as it allows you to obtain the maximum amount
of quality possible for your main movie.</p>


    
    
    
    

 Step 4§</a>
</h3>
Swing on over to the Settings</strong> menu, and after making sure that your
Encoder</strong> is set to X264</strong>, go to your Encoder Settings</strong>. As you
can see, I have select my encoding priority to be Normal Priority</strong>.
The reason for this is that I want my encode to run as fast as possible.
I won't be using the computer during the process, so I don't care if
other applications slow down. Now, if I were going to be using the
computer, I would want to set my priority to Idle</strong>.</p>
Also take a look at myQuality</strong> settings. By default, Automatic
Quality Settings</strong> is selected, which is normally what you will
use/want. I have unchecked it for the sake of showing you the amount of
options available if for some reason you do not want to go the automatic
route. Usually I go ahead and stick with Automatic Quality Settings.</strong></p>


    
    
    
    

Step 5§</a>
</h3>
Next, maneuver your mouse over to the Output Options</strong>menu. This is
where we will be selecting our output size. As you can see, I have
selected the BD-5</strong> option. What this means is that I want to shrink
down my Blu-ray until it is small enough to fit on a single layer DVD.
BD-9</strong> will fit on a dual layer DVD, and a BD-25</strong>will fit on a
single layer Blu-ray disk. I personally can't afford to buy a blank
Blu-ray disk and Blu-ray burner, but if you can, by all means go ahead.
You also have the option of shooting for a custom size, but we don't
really need it in this case.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 6§</a>
</h3>
Now, let's go ahead and adjust the Setup</strong> of BD Rebuilder. Click on
the Setup</strong> menu and you will see a window like the one below. Pretty
much the only reason we are here is that we want to delete the
WORKFILES</strong> after everything is finished. This just cleans up the
temporary files after we are done. If you want a detailed explanation of
the other options, please refer to the screencast</a> (note: The
screencast was made with a slightly older version, so not all options
will be explained). Save your changes and return to the main window.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 7§</a>
</h3>
One particularly nice option about BD Rebuilder is that it supports
batch conversion. For example, if you have a handful of Blu-rays that
you wanted to convert, you could load up each one into BD Rebuilder and
adjust its individual settings. Then all you need to do is queue them up
using the Add Current Project to Bach Queue</strong> option (founder under
the File</strong> menu). That way, when you are ready to press the Backup</strong>
option, you will actually be backing up a multitude of Blu-rays, not
just one per session. I find this to be a very useful option.</p>


    
    
    
    

Step 8§</a>
</h3>
Last but not least, hit the Backup</strong> button! This will get your
conversion running into high gear. Now, in the case of a particularly
large Blu-ray (like mine), you may receive the following warning. All it
is telling you is that you have a large Blu-ray, and shrinking it down
to a BD-5</strong> may not give you the greatest quality. I know this, but
I'm still okay with that for now. Go ahead and click okay if you are so
inclined. BD Rebuilder will load up your files and start chugging long.
You can sit there and watch it if you want, but will will take several
hours and you probably have better things to be doing.</p>
When it is finished, your necessary files can be found under your
"Working Path" in a folder named according to your input source (ex.
THE_DARK_KNIGHT). Inside that folder will be the BDMV and CERTIFICATE
folders. Simply burn those two and you should be good to go!</p>


    
    
    
    

Conclusion§</a>
</h3>
All in all, it's not a difficult process. The more you use BD Rebuilder,
the more you get to appreciate its power and simplicity. If you guys
have any questions, go ahead and post a comment and we'll get you fixed
up right away!</p>
Note:</strong> For those of you having issues with VC-1 Blu-rays and Windows
7, I suggest that you read this</a> thread.</p>
If you have never burned a disk before, or if you a frankly just unsure
about what you should use to burn your new disk, I wrote up a burning
tutorial here</a>.</p>


Blu-ray Backup with BD Rebuilder
2009-12-11T00:00:00+00:00
An accompanying screencast to my post on BD Rebuilder and it's uses in
backing up Blu-rays.</p>
Note: I recommend that you turn HD on and use the Fullscreen option.</strong></p>


  
  
  
  Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>


How To Stream Audio/Video to Your PS3, Xbox 360, and more!
2009-11-12T00:00:00+00:00
Well, it's time to give a little update, since it's been so long
(oops....). Since I have been messing with video streaming in my
apartment recently, I thought I would publish an article on how to
stream music, videos, images, and more from your Windows PC, Linux PC,
or your Mac. It's all possible through the wonderful use of
PS3MediaServer</a>.</p>
</span>
Despite the name, PS3MediaServer (PMS) now supports a
plethora of devices, with more added all the time. The current stable
version only supports PS3's and some Xbox 360's, but the development
versions all support everything from the new Sony Bravia TV's to a host
of other UPNP</a> streaming devices. For the rest of this article we
will be talking about the current stable version (1.10.5)</p>
Overall, setup is simple. If you have a home network, preferably Gigabit
LAN, you should be headed in the right direction. I have also gotten
WiFi (802.11 G) to work as well, but the greater bandwidth that Gigabit
LAN offers is preferred.</p>
1)§</a>
</h3>
Make sure that your PS3 or Xbox 360 is connected to your network. I know
it seems obvious, but even I didn't plug in the cable once.</p>
2)§</a>
</h3>
Next, start up PMS (assuming you have installed it, of course). You
should see a screen similar to the one below. Since I have an Xbox 360
connected to my network, it recognized my Xbox. If I had a PS3, it would
recognize the PS3, etc. In new (beta) versions of PMS, support for a
number of devices has been added so chances are you would see the
corresponding device in this window.</p>
If you tab over to the Traces</strong> tab, you will see a log similar to the
one below. This is mostly there for you (the user) to be sure that
everything is working correctly and that there are no errors. For the
sake of this tutorial, you can pretty much ignore the General
Configuration</strong> tab if you want. It's all pretty self explanatory, so
you can come back to it if you want in the future.</p>


    
    
    
    



    
    
    
    

3)§</a>
</h3>
Now, in the Navigation/Share Settings</strong> tab, you will want to select
your source directory(s). This is where all of your videos are stored
that you want to serve up to your PS3, Xbox, etc. In this case it is my
Videos</em> folder on my E:</em> drive. Use 1</strong>to navigate to your desired
directory.</p>
Next, and you don't have</em> to do this, I check 2</strong>: Hide #Video
Settings# Folder</strong>, as it can get kind of annoying when you are
navigating directories with your device. Do what you want here.</p>
Lastly 3: Save</strong> the configuration file so that PMS can serve up the
changes to your network. Also, click Restart HTTP Server</strong> if it
bothers you, but it isn't necessary in this tutorial.</p>


    
    
    
    

4)§</a>
</h3>
The Transcoding Settings</strong> area is the most important in my opinion.
Here you can select how big of a buffer you want to use, the quality of
the output video, etc.</p>
First off, use 1: Video Quality Settings</strong> to select your maximum
bandwidth (25 Mbits in this example because I am on a wifi network).
Note that you do not</em> have to do this, but I think it is good practice
so as not to saturate your network. HD material can take up to 50 Mbits,
so if your network can support it, go for it! For those of you who don't
care, you should have no problem using zero (no limit).</p>
Next up is to select your profile. Use the drop-down list to select a
profile that works for your setup. In this case, I'm using the profile
that offers me good quality on a wifi network. You can play around with
each profile until you find one that offers you the best
quality/bandwidth balance. For those (lucky!) of you who are on Gigabit
networks and have powerful enough machines, go ahead and go with the
crazy quality setting!</p>
Remember, each profile also depends on the power of the computer doing
the conversion. I have a quad-core, so I have little trouble transcoding
to any profile, but that may not be your case. Again, experiment and
find the best that works for you.</p>
Lastly, use 2: General Settings</strong> to set your buffer size. This
depends on the amount of ram you have in your system. Personally I don't
remember why it's set to 250 in this picture, but it is usually safe to
stick with the default 600, unless you have less than 1 GB of RAM. Also,
make sure that you are using all</em>of your cores when transcoding, unless
you have a good reason, as it can reduce performance if you don't.
Nobody likes choppy video!</p>
Then again 3: Save</strong>.</p>


    
    
    
    

5)§</a>
</h3>
Time for the final tweak! Under Video File Engines</strong> select MEncoder
(this is the most often used encoder) and set it to something similar to
what I have below. Notice how I have **Enhanced multicore....**turned
on? This will only work for people who have a multicore system. Most of
you probably will, but if you don't, make sure that this is unchecked</em>.</p>
Small note: if you have a lot of interlaced video on your computer
(chances are you don't</em>) then check the Deinterlace Filter</strong>
checkbox.</p>
As to the Switch to tsMuxer</strong>...option, use this only if your device
supports .ts files. My rule of thumb is this: If I'm streaming to a PS3,
check it. Else, leave it unchecked.</p>
Okay, that about does it. And remember 2: Save!</strong></p>


    
    
    
    


How To Encode Videos For Ipod Using EncodeHD
2009-08-31T00:00:00+00:00
This may be the simplest way in existence to encode videos for your iPod
Classic/Touch/Phone etc. The secret is EncodeHD</a>.</p>
</span>
1)§</a>
</h3>
Okay then, let's get started. First off, run the program (duh). You will
be presented with a screen similar to the one below.</p>


    
    
    
    

2)§</a>
</h3>
In the top left corner, go to the drop down and select your desired
profile.</p>
There are multiple profiles available, but for this tutorial we will
stick with the iPod Classic profile, as that is the device that I own.</p>


    
    
    
    

3)§</a>
</h3>
Next, simply drag and drop any files that you want to encode onto the
white area. Another option is to use the small "+" symbol in the upper
right-hand corner. Pressing it will present you with the customary file
selection menu that many of you are used to.</p>


    
    
    
    

4)§</a>
</h3>
When you have all of the files that you wish to encode queued up, simply
press the start button and you will see a progress bar jetting along
like the one below.</p>


    
    
    
    

When everything is finished, enjoy your freshly encoded vids!</p>
Small Tip:</strong></em> If you want to encode a bunch of videos and have them
all end up in the same folder, use the Specify Output Folder</strong> option
to set a destination.</p>


Basics of MeGUI's Avisynth Creator
2009-08-17T00:00:00+00:00
Okay, I thought I would go ahead and post this little explanation of
MeGUI's excellent Avisynth Creator tool. It's a fantastic tool, and not
just with respect to use with MeGUI. I (and many others, I'm sure) have
used the Avisynth Script Creator to create scripts for their personal
use in a number of different situations. It is a nicely versatile tool
with a number of useful features varying from Anamorphic encoding to an
interlacing detector. Well, let's get started.</p>
</span>
First, start MeGUI and go to Tools -> AVS Script Creator. You will see
a window like the one pictured below. This is the main window were the
magic starts brewing!</p>
Options§</a>
</h3>


    
    
    
    

Right away, I'm sure many of you can already guess what most of this is
for. For those of you who can't, or those of you who just feel like
reading something here is an explanations of each option:</p>
Video Input§</a>
</h4>
Yep, you guessed it. You select the input file here. You can select
pretty much anything from a vob to an avi to an mkv here. Once you have
selected your desired file, you should receive a preview window of your
input clip. You can close it if you want, or just move it out of the
way.</p>
Input DAR§</a>
</h4>
This little box just shows the input D</strong>isplay A</strong>spectR</strong>atio of
your source. Useful for those of you who know what that means, but not a
big deal for those of you who don't.</p>
Clever (TM) Anamorphic Encoding§</a>
</h4>
Ah, one of the sweet features of MeGUI. This little box simplifies
encoding anamorphic clips immensely. It offers 5 drop-down options:</p>

Resize to mod16:</strong> Pretty simple. When creating an anamorphic
video, this will force any output video to be mod-16 compliant. This
means that the width and height will both be equally divisible by

No remainder. So, if you do any cropping (usually of black bars)
and your cropped output is not mod-16, MeGUI will automatically
resize to mod-16 for you, fixing any funky problems.</li>
</ol>
</li>
Overcrop to mod16:</strong> Again, a pretty simple idea. This is similar
to #1, but instead of resizing after you have finished your
cropping, this option will increase</em>your crop values to result in a
mod-16 output. This is my personal favorite, as I usually prefer to
lose a little bit of the perimeter of the image instead of resizing
the whole output. Saves time and results in a better quality output.</li>
Encode non mod16:</strong> This is almost like turning off Clever
Anamorphic Encoding option in the first place. The main difference
is that the output DAR (Display Aspect Ratio, remember?) is still
signaled to the encoder (which is a good thing). In fact, that
signaling is often the most important part. If the signaling is not
sent to the encoder, your encodes will not playback their proper
aspect ratio, thus defeating the whole purpose of anamorphic
encoding. Every option in the Clever Anamorphic Encoding drop-down
will signal the aspect ratio, so you don't have to worry about that.</li>
Crop mod4 horizontally:</strong> All this option really does is make sure
that any cropping you do is mod-4 with respect to the width. So, say
if you crop 3 pixels from the right of your source video, then this
option sees that 3 is not mod-4, and crops an extra pixel from the
right to make it safely mod-4.</li>
Under crop to mod16:</strong> This acts similar to Overcrop to mod16</strong>,
just in reverse. So essentially, after you have finished cropping,
if your crop values are not mod-16, MeGUI will decrease</em>your
cropping values to reach a mod-16 value. Get it?</li>
</ol>
Avisynth Profile§</a>
</h4>
This is a quick selection box for loading your favorite Avisynth
profile. If you click on the "Config" button, you can see what I am
talking about. It's a pretty self explanatory little setup, but if you
guys want me to write up a post about it, I would be more than happy
too. Just let me know in the comments section. You can usually leave
this option alone if you don't know what it is or how to use it.</p>
Crop§</a>
</h4>
Ah yes, this little option. Well it's this really new-fangled
uber-delta-super cool way to...crop. Okay, you get it. Each box
represents the number of pixels to be cropped from the top, left, right,
and bottom of your source video. If you have the preview window open
(and if you don't, just press the "Re-open original video player"
button), you can get a live preview of your cropping values. Freakin'
awesome, ain't it? For those of you who are super lazy, you can even use
the "Auto Crop" button to automatically detect and crop black bars from
your source video (which are most often seen in DVD sources). Just be
sure to check that the "Auto Crop" didn't crop too much of your source,
as it can screw up a little some times (hey, it ain't exactly a perfect
science, so give it a break). Although in all honesty, it's pretty
accurate about 95% of the time.</p>
Resize§</a>
</h4>
And here you get to transmorgify your video to what ever resolution you
like!! (Queue evil laugh). Okay seriously, you can use this option to
resize your video to another output resolution if you are so inclined.
Most of the time I don't use this (you all know how I feel about
resizing), but if you are encoding for an iPod for example, this little
option can be dead useful! It will even "suggest" a mod16 resolution for
you if you are so inclined (I'm usually not, but who cares). Use it if
you want to, otherwise keep it disabled.</p>
Apply Auto Preview§</a>
</h4>
You need this checked if you are going to be live-previewing your
cropping/resizing like I talked about earlier. It's usually on by
default, so only turn it off if you don't want it. It's a pretty
harmless option, so don't fret over it too much.</p>
Filters§</a>
</h3>
Okay, next up is the Filters</strong>section. This is where most of the magic
happens.</p>


    
    
    
    

Look at all o' them cool options! Let's start at the top shall we!</p>
MPEG2 Source / AVI Source / DSSource / DGx Source§</a>
</h4>
Right oh! These tabs at the very top act on a per-source-filter basis.
It should be pretty self explanatory actually. For the most part, the
defaults are fine. For example, I always leave Color Correction</strong> on,
but leave Mpeg2 Deblocking</strong> off (which is default anyways). When
dealing with AVI's or MKV's/MP4's, you may want to look at the AVI
Source / DSSsource</strong></em>tab if you are having trouble loading your file
correctly. Again, all options should be pretty self explanatory. The one
exception is the Prefer DSSource2...</strong> option. This is used when you
have Haali's Media Splitter installed, and want a frame accurate
DirectShow source with no audio. Actually, I would recommend DSSource2
in that instance as it can really help with sync issues, or when dealing
with Variable Frame Rate material.</p>
Deinterlacing§</a>
</h4>
Admittedly one of the cooler features of MeGUI is it's "automagic"
deinterlacing routine. What this do-hickey does is analyse your input
file for interlacing patterns, and suggest proper
Deinterlacing/DeIVTCing techniques. I have to disclaim, however, that it
isn't always 100% accurate. Obviously, the best option is to analyze
your source material by hand, but who has time to do that? Usually
MeGUI's recommendations are pretty spot on (except when dealing with
really tricky material), and should work fine in most cases. Just test
the output script first by playing it and see if the output has any
artifacts or anything of that sort before encoding.</p>
Most people just use the big rosy Analyse</strong></em> button, but if you
happen to know the source type and field order, you can greatly speed up
the process. Of course, if you already do know these tidbits of info,
then chances are you already know how to handle the
deinterlacing/deIVTCing process yourself.</p>
One last note, **don't forget to check the "Source is Anime"</em> checkbox
before you press Analyse</em> when dealing with anime content.**Otherwise,
you run the risk of getting some really false readings when you analyze
your material.</p>
Resize Filter§</a>
</h4>
This is where you can select your resizing filter. If you know what your
doing (or even if you don't), you can use this drop down box to select
your preferred resizer. The defaults are just fine, but play around with
the options if you have some time to find something you like. I'm a
little partial to Spline64resize myself.</p>
Noise Filter§</a>
</h4>
Again, pretty self explanatory. I don't use this option that much, as I
prefer to select my own denoiser (since I have tested so many and know
which ones I like). You are more than welcome to give the four options a
spin for yourself. You can even see which denoiser is used for which
setting by selecting a particular profile and then clicking on the
Edit</strong> tab and looking at the denoiser line.</p>
Subtitles§</a>
</h4>
Use this option if you want to "hardcode" or "burn in" your subtitles
into your source material. Useful for encoding videos for devices that
don't support soft subtitles, such as an iPod or your grandmother's
ancient PC.</p>
Edit§</a>
</h3>


    
    
    
    

The Edit</strong> tab shows what
your final script will look like. You can edit each line by hand if you
so desire, or leave it right at default. Each line is labeled
corresponding to its function in the script, so it should be very clear.</p>
Load DLL§</a>
</h4>
Use this button to navigate to a desired plugin for direct loading into
the script. You will know what this is if you know about plugin loading
in Avisynth. Otherwise, don't stress over it. It's just a "Make your
life slightly easier when scripting" option.</p>
[UPDATE]§</a>
</h5>

Examples of external plugins include RemoveGrain.dll, awarpsharp.dll,
mvtools2.dll, fft3dfilter.dll, etc... But Avisynth plugins are for
another tutorial.</p>
</blockquote>
And so we have come to the end! You can either save your script and get
encoding, or give it one last preview before your done! It's your
choice! Happy encoding!</p>


X264 Defaults Changing, Plus a Few More
2009-07-10T00:00:00+00:00
Well, it has been a while now hasn't it? Okay, well lets start off with
some "industry" news. It appears that Dark Shikari over on the Doom9
forums has announced that the defaults</a> for X264 (the free
implementation of the H.264 encoder standard</em>) are infact changing. The
reason most often stated is "to make it faster and easier for users to
select encoding options".</p>
</span>
The new, tentative, defaults are as follows:</p>
--subme 7 --bframes 3 --weightb --8x8dct --ref 3 --mixed-refs --trellis 1 --crf 23 --threads auto --no-psnr --no-ssim</code></p>
As stated by Dark Shikari:</p>

Logic behind this change: x264 should be by default High Profile and
generate relatively high quality, but not entirely max itself out; it
should be a reasonable speed/quality tradeoff. UMH is probably a bit
too costly speed-wise to set as the default.</p>
</blockquote>
The "UMH" that is he is referring to, for those of you who don't know,
is a form of motion search called Uneven Multi-Hexagon. It generally
offers very good results, but at a large cost in speed.</p>
In addition to changing the default options, there will be three more
command line flags</a> that are being added to simplify the encode
process. Read: Make it easier and faster to select "good" settings for a
particular video source.</p>
1) Preset§</a>
</h3>
The first flag is that of the --preset</code> flag. The preset flag will
offer 7 new options, each of which offers a quick selection for desired
encoding selections.</p>
Here are the 7 options:</p>
ultrafast</em>:</p>
--ref 1 --scenecut 0 --nf --no-cabac --bframes 0 --partitions none --no-8x8dct --me dia --subme 0 --aq-mode 0</code></p>
veryfast</em>:</p>
--partitions i8x8,i4x4 --subme 1 --me dia --ref 1 --trellis 0</code></p>
fast</em>:</p>
--mixed-refs 0 --ref 2 --subme 5</code></p>
medium</em>:</p>
<defaults></code></p>
slow</em>:</p>
--me umh --subme 8 --ref 5 --b-adapt 2 --direct auto</code></p>
slower</em>:</p>
--me umh --subme 9 --ref 8 --b-adapt 2 --direct auto --partitions all --trellis 2 </code></p>
placebo</em>:</p>
--me tesa --subme 9 --merange 24 --ref 16 --b-adapt 2 --direct auto --partitions all --no-fast-pskip --trellis 2 --bframes 16</code></p>
2)</strong> Profile§</a>
</h3>
Next to be added is the --profile option</code>.  This option will override
all settings except for two, select cases: encoding interlaced or
lossless material. If you attempt to encode either interlaced content or
lossless content while setting a --profile</code> option, the encoder will
exit with an error. The reason for this is that interlaced and lossless
content require very specific settings and proper encoding would be
hindered under normal circumstances.</p>
The profiles being offered are baseline, main and high. You can see this
Wikipedia article</a>for more information about each profile.</p>
To summarize, each profile offers a range of encoding settings that aim
to fulfill specific requirements. This often has uses when encoding for
specific devices, such as a standalone Bluray player, or an iPod. Again,
read the article if you are still curious.</p>
3) Tune§</a>
</h3>
The --tune</code> option was introduced so as to be able to quickly "tune"
specific x264 settings towards a particular source type. For example,
the setting that offer similar quality for both film and animation can
be vastly different. The main items adjusted by the --tune</code> option are
the AQ, psy-RD/trellis, and deblocking strength. In addition, b-frames
and reference may be adjusted but there is still some minor dispute on
the specific settings.</p>
Currently the two options available are:

film:</em></p>
--deblock -1:-1 --psy-rd 1.0:0.15</code></p>
animation:</em></p>
--ref (previousref==1?1:MIN(previousref*2,16)) --deblock 1:1 --psy-rd 0.4:0 --aq-strength 0.6 --bframes 5</code></p>
What that last bit of code on the --ref option does is compare the
desired refs that you set, and if you chose 1, it will chose 1, or the
minimal value of your desired reference frames times 2 compared against
16 references frames. So, if  I were to call x264 with the following
options:</p>
--ref 6 --tune animation</code></p>
Then my final encode settings would result in a total of 12 reference
frames, since 6 * 2 < 16.</p>
That about wraps it up. If you want more information on any of these new
changes, simply click the links I posted earlier in the article, as Dark
Shikari goes into greater and greater detail about what each option
means and how it will affect your encodes. Feel free to post any
questions or comments!</p>


How to convert Blurays with HDConvertToX
2009-05-29T00:00:00+00:00
Okay, since I myself have been getting more and more into Bluray backup
and the like, I will be posting a series of articles on Bluray
conversion, both to MKV and to Bluray/AVCHD. This article is a tutorial
on converting a Bluray disk that you have already ripped</a> to your hard
drive. The only tool necessary is HDConvertToX</a>!</p>
</span>
Okay, let's get started.</p>
1)§</a>
</h2>


    
    
    
    



    
    
    
    

First of all, click the "Open File</strong>" button and navigate to where
your Bluray is located on your hard drive. Select the .m2ts file with
the largest file size (usually above 10 gigabytes). Click "Open</strong>".</p>
In addition, HDConvertToX is equipped with "Drag and Drop</strong>"
functionality, so if you have your source directory already open, you
can simply drag the largest .m2ts file onto the "Open File</strong>" field.</p>
2)§</a>
</h2>


    
    
    
    

Next, in the "Use Best Decoder</strong>" dropdown, select "Force
DirectShowSource2</strong>". The reason for this is that it will use your
native DirectShow decoder installed on your system, so if you have
CoreAVC or FFDShow-Tryouts installed, you will be able to use
multithreaded decoding for faster performance. If you do not have a
multicore system, or you don't know what that is, then stick with the
defaults.</p>
3)§</a>
</h2>


    
    
    
    

Next, click the "Analyze file</strong>" button. It should take roughly 30
seconds to finish analyzing your input file and collecting the
information that it needs. Just let it do it's thing, you'll be fine.</p>
4)§</a>
</h2>


    
    
    
    

Once the analysis has finished, you will see a nice grouping of
information layed out for you. Most of it is just nice to know, so you
can feel free to ignore it if you like.  HDConvertToX (HDC) is even
smart enough to calculate cropping values for you! So no need for those
pesky black bars. Feel free to edit these values to your preference, or
use the "Visual Crop</strong>" tool to adjust the cropping values to your
liking.</p>
Many users recommend that you check the auto-calculated crop values
using the Visual Crop</strong> tool, as it can be incorrect at times.</p>
5)§</a>
</h2>


    
    
    
    



    
    
    
    

Next, click on the "Video</strong>" tab. Change your "Encode Using:</strong>"
dropdown to match your desired codec and container. For me, it's X264
in MKV</strong>. Choose what you like ( and use ) most often. In addition, set
your desired file size. In this instance, I select 4482 MB</strong>, which is
roughly the size of a DVD. I find it's a nice file size choice for my
Bluray backups, and affords me fantastic quality with proper encoding
settings.</p>
Which brings us to the encode settings! The built in slider is pretty
self explanatory, but I have always liked the "Extreme Quality</strong>"
option. It's certainly slower, but I am a quality buff. Feel free to
choose your favorite profile here.</p>
Note: Since I was backing up this disk for playback on my PC, I left the
rest of my settings at default. If you want to use this file in a
hardware device such as Popcorn Hour, select the "NMT (Network Media
Tank) Compatibility</strong>" option. You may have to adjust your encoding
settings as well, but I don't own a Popcorn Hour, so I couldn't tell you
any more. Refer to the HDC thread I linked to in the beginning of the
article for more information.</p>
6)§</a>
</h2>


    
    
    
    

Next up is the audio. I prefer to leave my audio in it'soriginal</strong>
channels, which is different than HDC's defaults. Use the drop down's to
enter your settings for audio codec, bitrate, channels, and bitrate
managment (cbr, abr, vbr). Everything else can be left comfortably at
default.</p>
7)§</a>
</h2>


    
    
    
    

Now, navigate to the "Audio & Subs Selection</strong>" tab. As you can see in
the above screenshot, I have select my DTS Master audio track, and a
second, 2 channel track which contains the director's comments. For good
measure, I have included some english subtitles as well. Since I
don't like to have my subs "hardcoded</strong>" (or "burned") into my video, I like to mux my
subtitles into my final container. That way I can turn them off and on
whenever I want! After you have selected your tracks, you can pretty
much leave everything else at default.</p>
8)§</a>
</h2>


    
    
    
    



    
    
    
    

We are almost done! First, click on the "Save File ...</strong>" button in
the top left corner. Navigate to your desired output directory, and name
your file something appropriate ("Output" in this case). Press
"Save</strong>".</p>
9)§</a>
</h2>


    
    
    
    



    
    
    
    



    
    
    
    

Final steps! Press the "Add to Queue</strong>" button. You will see a list of
all the commands and their corresponding parameters displayed that will
be executed to complete your conversion. When you think everything looks
good, go ahead and hit "Start Queue</strong>"!</p>
Done!§</a>
</h2>
After who knows how many hours, you'll have a shiny new MKV file
containing all of your desired tracks waiting for you! Nice process, no?</p>


AnyDVD HD Settings Explained
2009-05-11T00:00:00+00:00
As per a reader's request, I have put together this explanatory list of
the different settings of AnyDVD HD</a>. I tried to cover every single
setting that I could think of, so peruse and learn something!</p>
Feel free to leave a comment, and let me know if it helped you!</p>

Status Window:§</a>
</h3>


    
    
    
    

This window describes all available drives installed on your system, and
any information about a disk in that drive.</p>
Video DVD:§</a>
</h3>


    
    
    
    

Navigation§</a>
</h5>
Remove annoying adverts and trailers</strong></p>
Pretty much does what it says. Instead of being forced to watch trailers
and any other video clips that a production studio wants, you can enable
this option to skip to the main content.  Where you jump to in the
content is governed by the two sub-options, with the option to jump
straight to the main movie</strong>, or the main menu</strong>. Choose whichever
you desire, or disable if you don't care.</p>
Show Dialog to set Video DVD settings for each individual drive</strong></p>
This allows you to set specific settings on a per-drive basis.
Essentially, every time you insert a new disk, a dialog box will appear,
asking if you want to change any specific settings. I usually leave this
off.</p>
Video DVD - Settings§</a>
</h4>


    
    
    
    

Default Region§</a>
</h5>
This drop down box is used to set your base region code. It's normally
best to leave it set for your</strong>current region (ex. I live in the US,
so I set it to region 1). You can usually leave this at default.</p>
Feature Removal§</a>
</h5>
This is a handy area to remove all manners of "features" (read: copy
protection) from your disks. The standard is to leave all of these at
default.</p>

Software Region Code:</strong> Removes the software region code from the
disk</li>
**Hardware Region Code:**Forces your drive to possess a specific
drive region.</li>
**Region Code Scripts:**Removes any nasty region code scripts from
your disk</li>
Analog Protection System:</strong> Removes the most basic form of copy
protection, Macrovision Protection</strong>. This was originally found on
VHS tapes.</li>
Prohibited User Operations:</strong> Removes PUO's. Basically, all of
those annoying "features" that prevent you from skipping the
previews straight to the menu when you press the "Next" button on
your controller. Usually, when these are still on the disk, when you
try to do something that your disk "prohibits", you will receive an
icon in the corner of your screen that looks like anything from a
hand to stop sign. I really like this feature, as it lets me skip
right to where I want to go, no need to wait.</li>
PC-Friendly (Autorun on Video-DVD):</strong> This prevents your disk from
installing any software when you first insert it into your PC. Very
nice feature.</li>
Copy Protection based on unreadable Sectors:</strong> Removes protection
such as Sony's ARccOS</strong>protection, which inserts a number of what
are called "dummy sectors" onto your disk. These sectors choke up
older disk rippers, like DVD Decrypter for example.</li>
</ol>
AI Scanner§</a>
</h5>
This drop down offers 3 different modes of operation. Essentially, the
AI Scanner acts as a form of "smart decryption". What it does is analyze
your disk for any abnormalities, possible structure protection, etc. If
it finds any, it does it's best to clean it up. Leave it at default.</p>
Video DVD - Subtitles§</a>
</h4>


    
    
    
    

Subtitle Transparency§</a>
</h5>
Does exactly what it says. Essentially, it allows you to modify the
direct subtitle transparency on the fly. Why you would want to do this,
I don't know, but it's there if you want it.</p>
Video DVD - CSS Keys§</a>
</h4>


    
    
    
    

CSS Key Archive§</a>
</h5>
This is a bit of an older feature. Essentially, instead of decrypting
your disk's CSS keys every time you play a disk, it stores each key on a
per-disk basis. This allows for a faster lookup, but again, it's an
older feature. All modern computers can handle the decryption in a few
seconds, so you won't even notice the difference in time. I suggest you
leave it off, as it's just unnecessary.</p>
Video HD DVD§</a>
</h3>


    
    
    
    

Settings§</a>
</h5>
This section is the main guts for settings that deal with decrypting HD
DVDs. Yes, it's a dead format, but some of us jumped on the bandwagon
fast, and got us some cheap disks,  so we need something to decrypt 'em!
Anyways, here is what each setting does.</p>

Enable HD DVD support:</strong> Pretty self explanatory.</li>
Remove first play title from HD DVD:</strong> Basically, jumps right to
your main content (usually the main menu or main movie). The first
play title means a video clip that plays once, during the first time
you have ever played the disk.</li>
Remove user prohibitions from HD DVD:</strong> Exactly like the
Prohibited User Operations</strong> above, but with respect to HD DVD's.</li>
**Remove parental restrictions from HD DVD:**Remove's any parental
protection from a disk. You can use this if you don't care about
your kids seeing the disk, or if you don't have kids. Some people
may want to disable this feature.</li>
Remove highest XPL file (New Universal titles with PowerDVD
Ultra):</strong> A quick fix for a couple of problematic disks put out by
Universal when they are played with PowerDVD Ultra.</li>
**Remove all menus from HD DVD (Studio Canal titles with PowerDVD
Ultra):Another quick fix for some Studio Canal Disks and PowerDVD
Ultra.</strong>

**</li>
</ol>
Files§</a>
</h5>
Governs where on your computer you want to store any of the excess files
and scripts that can be left over from a rip. You can either delete
everything when you are done, or just leave it at default.</p>
Video Blu-ray§</a>
</h3>


    
    
    
    

Settings§</a>
</h5>
The main Blu-ray section of AnyDVD. Basically, controls all protocol for
the decryption of Blu-ray disks. Go here if you ever want to change
anything that corresponds to the decryption of your Blu-ray disks.</p>

Enable Blu-ray support:</strong> Again, pretty self explanatory.</li>
Prohibited User Operations:</strong> Same principals as corresponding DVD
and HD DVD settings.</li>
Removing anoying adverts and trailers:</strong> I'll give you one guess.</li>
Disable BD-Live:</strong> This little feature turns off Blu-ray's "Live"
feature. Basically the "Live" feature is equivalent to jacking into
the internet with your Blu-ray player and downloading "additional
content". Use if you want to.</li>
</ol>
Blu-ray Disk Region§</a>
</h5>
Removes Blu-ray's equivalent of DVD's Region Code Encoding. This is
normally used for ripping disks that are from other regions (ex. You
bought a disk from over seas), and can be used at your discretion.</p>
Audio CD§</a>
</h3>


    
    
    
    

This is a nice, but little known/used feature of AnyDVD. Basically, it
removes what little copy protection it can from any audio CD's that you
insert into your computer while AnyDVD is running. Useful for some new
releases from Sony BMG and others.</p>
Drives§</a>
</h3>


    
    
    
    

A handy little section to control several aspects of your disks, such as
speed and which drives to enable decryption on.</p>
Speed§</a>
</h5>
Enables you to govern the speed in which you rip specific types of
disks. In the old days, when drives were still expensive, this feature
was handy, as you could throttle the speed of your rips. This throttling
enable you to conserve power and extend the life of your drive.
Nowadays, with drives so cheap, it's a little pointless. Use it if you
want.</p>
Drives - Selection§</a>
</h4>


    
    
    
    

Pretty simple, just check the box next to which ever drive you want to
allow AnyDVD to handle.</p>
Program Settings§</a>
</h3>


    
    
    
    

This section details the settings for the overall running of AnyDVD
itself.</p>
Settings§</a>
</h5>

Enable AnyDVD</strong>:I'll give you two</em> guesses!</li>
**Autostart:**If checked, the program runs on Windows startup.</li>
**Safe Mode:**According to Slysoft, this activates a "high
compatibility" mode. Enable this if your computer behaves strange
upon the installation of AnyDVD.</li>
Hide Icon:</strong> Hides the AnyDVD fox icon in the lower right of your
screen. This is NOT recommended, but you can check it if you want.</li>
Automatically check for new AnyDVD version:</strong> Again, self
explanatory. AnyDVD connects through the internet to Slysoft's
servers and checks if there is a newer version available or not.</li>
**Show information window for new media:**If enabled, when a disk is
inserted, AnyDVD brings up an information window concerning the
details of this disk, and how files were modified to remove any copy
protection.</li>
Show Balloon Tip while AnyDVD is scanning disks:</strong> When checked, a
little Balloon Tip pops up in the bottom right corner of your
screen, saying that it is "Analyzing the disk!" and other useful
information.</li>
Disable power saving while using AnyDVD ripper:</strong> Prevents your
computer from entering standby while ripping a disk. Which is a real
PITA when it happens, by the way.</li>
</ol>
Program Settings - External Program§</a>
</h4>


    
    
    
    

Kind of an interesting feature, but AnyDVD can start programs or run
scripts when a disk is inserted into your drive. Useful if you want to
change the refresh rate of your monitor automatically for example.</p>
Language Selection§</a>
</h3>


    
    
    
    

Simple enough. Just select your desired language, and the whole program
reconfigures to display everything from program options to balloon tips
in your desired language.</p>
Information§</a>
</h3>


    
    
    
    

Displays information about AnyDVD, such as the version and the name of
it's creator. It also displays information about your license, which I
have bleeped out for obvious reasons.</p>


How to rip DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray with AnyDVD
2009-05-03T00:00:00+00:00
Okay, since I know a lot of people visiting this blog are completely new
to backing up their media, I thought I would take a couple of minutes to
sit down and talk about one of the easier ripping programs to use.</p>
</span>
That program is AnyDVD</a>.</p>
Now, it's not free. It's about €79.00 or $105.00 for a 2 year
subscription (yeah, I know, expensive huh?), but that varies as they
have sales all the time. However, for something that is simple, easy to
use, and readily updated, it's a decent deal.</p>
AnyDVD adds a sort of decryption layer to your operating system. What
this means is that when you place a disk into your disk drive, AnyDVD
will "intercept" the disk, scan it, remove all the protections it can
find/handle, and present a "clean" disk to the operating system.</p>
This then means that you can completely drag and drop the files from the
disk onto your desktop and you have fully decrypted files just sitting
there in your folder for you. Well almost. Sometimes there comes a time
when you actually need to perform a full on rip</strong>*,*and for that you
need to use the "Rip to hard disk" option of AnyDVD.</p>
Here is how you do it, and for those of you who like screencasts, click
here</a>.</p>
1)§</a>
</h2>
First, place the disk into your disk drive. Make sure that AnyDVD is
actually running</strong>. You will see a small window appear like this:</p>


    
    
    
    

2)§</a>
</h2>
After it has finished scanning your disk, the bubble will fade away. You
can check to make sure that the disk is actually decrypted by hovering
your mouse over the fox icon. You will see something like this:</p>


    
    
    
    

Note:</strong> The "On: 1" part is telling you that you have 1 disk that is
ready and decrypted sitting in your drive.</p>
3)§</a>
</h2>
Next, right click on the fox icon. You will see a menu like the one
below. Click on the "Rip Video DVD to Hard Disk" option.</p>


    
    
    
    

4)§</a>
</h2>
Once you have clicked the "Rip Video DVD to Hard Disk" option, you will
be presented will a small, simple dialog box. Select your output
directory by clicking on the folder icon like so:</p>


    
    
    
    

5)§</a>
</h2>
You will be presented with another dialog box. Use it to navigate to
your desired folder.</p>


    
    
    
    

6)§</a>
</h2>
Next, click the "Copy DVD" button.</p>


    
    
    
    

7)§</a>
</h2>
The rip begins!! You can abort at any time if you so desire, and at the
end of the progress bar, you should have a full fledged, working copy of
your disk waiting on your hard drive.</p>


    
    
    
    

That's it! Simple huh?</p>
AnyDVD</a> really is an excellent program for what it does. It
doesn't have a lot of feature bloat, and can be incredibly fast.</p>


Ripping with AnyDVD
2009-05-03T00:00:00+00:00
Here is an accompanying screencast for this post</a>. It outlines the
basics of ripping a backup for a DVD, HD-DVD, or Bluray disk with only a
few clicks.</p>


  
  
  
  
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</video>


DVD Decrypter Explained
2009-04-26T00:00:00+00:00
This here is a general tutorial to all things DVD Decrypter. I tried to keep it simple and cover most of the basics,
so if it runs a little long, forgive me. It’s just that DVD Decrypter is such a fantastic program!</p>


  
  
  
  Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>


DVD Decrypter Explained Announcement
2009-04-26T00:00:00+00:00
Okay yall, I have a new screencast for you!</p>
This weeks topic is -DVD Decrypter!</strong></p>
</span>
Now, some of you may be scratching your heads or rolling your eyes, but
hang with me. A majority of newcomers to the video world often come from
the field of DVD editing and personal backup. However, more often than
naught, they are completely clueless as to how to go about backing up
their DVD's. This screencast is an indepth explanation of the usage of
DVD Decrypter and it's various modes, along with some side information
about DVD structures in general.</p>
If your are curious, check out the screencast here.</a> Or just click on
the nice big picture.</p>


NAB : Day 1
2009-04-20T00:00:00+00:00
Well, for those of you who are as much into video as I am, you may have
noticed that NAB</a> is in full swing again.</p>
For those of you who don't know, NAB essentially a trade show of sorts,
were all of the big names in the video industry can come out and strut
their stuff. The company that I interned with this last summer, NVISION
Inc, will also be making an appearance under the name of Miranda</a>
(who bought them up just this last year).</p>
Companies in many of the following fields will be in attendance:</p>

Codecs</strong></li>
Encoders and/or Decoders</strong></li>
Audio/Video Routers</strong></li>
Master Control</strong></li>
Streaming Media</strong></li>
Media Distribution (think Bluray/DVD)</strong></li>
and a whole host of others...</strong></li>
</ul>
Here</a> is an interesting article from Ben Waggoner (one of the
developers of Microsoft's VC-1 codec) that I came across. It details
some of the recent developments of Microsoft's Silverlight package, such
as the addition of supporting CDN's (Content Delivery Networks), 
compression tool vendor support, DRM (digital rights management) service
provider support, and last but not least, Microsoft's new
"Smooth-Streaming".</p>
Well, that's all that I have for you guys today! Enjoy!</p>


Loilo Video Editor Review Screencast
2009-04-19T00:00:00+00:00
Just uploaded a new screencast reviewing LoiloScope</a>. A very cool and
interesting program, with excellent performance and fun editing
environment. Check out the screencast here.</a></strong></p>


LoiloScope Video Screencast Review
2009-04-19T00:00:00+00:00
In this screencast we will take a look at a cool new video application
from Loilo, a Japan based software company.</p>
Summary:</strong></p>
Pros:</em></p>

Incredible Performance</li>
Very Intuitive Interface</li>
Decently Priced for an introductory product</li>
</ul>
Cons:</em></p>

Small number of video effects</li>
Still a couple of major bugs</li>
</ul>


  
  
  
  Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>


MeGUI One Click Encoder Intro Screencast
2009-04-19T00:00:00+00:00
After seeing so many new users of MeGUI struggling, I decided to post a
quick introduction video to the One Click Encoder feature of MeGUI.</p>
Check out the vid here.</a></strong></p>


MeGUI One Click Encoder Introduction
2009-04-19T00:00:00+00:00
After seeing many people struggling and complaining about how
"complicated" it is to use MeGUI, I thought I would go ahead and through
a quick tutorial together showing you how to use one of the main
encoding features of MeGUI.</p>


  
  
  
  Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>


Videos
2009-04-19T00:00:00+00:00
Here you will find a listing of all the videos we have ever created,
ranging from tutorial screencasts to program reviews. Feel free to
browse around and enjoy!</p>


About
2009-03-29T00:00:00+00:00
Adubvideo aims to be a place where everyone can come and learn (and
possibly share information) about the wonderful world of video. I hope
that you will learn a lot, and that you enjoy the wonderful and exciting
world of video as much as I do!</p>
Legal Stuff</strong></p>
This site is for video information purposes only. We do not in any way
endorse or support any and all acts of piracy or theft. This site was
created for reference and learning and any illegal acts are highly
looked down upon.</p>
Privacy Policy</strong></p>
As a website we collect no</strong>information concerning your name, address,
or credit card information. The only information logged is that of your
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