DVD movie to DivX : the "best" solution?

Overview
Get and install the needed software
Rip the DVD video files to disk: SmartRipper
Encode the movie to DivX: DrDivX
Rip the subtitles: VobSub
Play the movie: Windows Media Player
DrDivX: the "best" solution?

1. Overview

In mid 2003, most DVD software are mature and a lot of methods exist to transfer a movie from a DVD to a PC. Likely the easiest solution to transfer movie to a standard compliant VCD and SVCD is DVDx, to a DVD it's DVD Shrink and the choice for output is simple because based on legacy MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards. In the DivX world, MPEG-4 is still evolving and people start to have troubles playing their old DivX 3.x movies, particularly since DivX set top boxes appeared from China and Europe.

The DivX organization (DivXNetworks Inc. San Diego, California, USA) has successfully moved DivX™ technology to the digital video industry in the early 2003, setting a stable standard with DivX Certified™ Program and stable encoding profiles for every consumer usage (HD-TV, Home Theatre, Computer (PC and Mac) and Handheld). Major companies have joined the certification program such as Philips, Texas Instruments, ESST, Cirrus Logic, ALi Corporation and Sigma Designs.

Therefore you might now want to create your own movie library to carry on your laptop PC or to carry on recordable DVD (up to 4 titles on the same DVD and 8 by end of 2003 with upcoming 9GB recordable DVDs).

In this article I propose to establish the "best" DVD to DivX process:

quick to install and run
crash-free processing
long life playability
great quality
cheap or free.

2. Get and install the needed software

We're always looking for freeware but we can save time and money using a cheap software. This is true for DrDivX, indeed DivX codec is no longer free (DivX Pro Codec is $20) and DrDivX costs $50 including the DivX Pro Codec. Thus for the value we get, it's cheap.

DrDivX encodes video and we need first to transfer movies (VOB files) from the DVD to the disk, eventually uncrypting (processing DeCSS and DeMacrovision). This is done easily with SmartRipper, a freeware.

We need to extract the subtitles which is done quickly with VobSub, a freeware.

Original SmartRipper is distributed in a .rar archive and must be unzipped with WinRAR but I created a ZIP archive to make it easier for you.

DrDivX and VobSub are installed with usual Windows install wizards and SmartRipper must be unzipped in a folder of your choice.

SmartRipper and VobSub are freeware available from labDV, and access is free for all.

DrDivX and DivX Pro codec are available from DivX.com as a 15-days-trial and if you're convinced you'll buy it for $49.99 :

Please buy DrDivX from here (click on the image above) so a few (4.99) bucks will go to labDV and encourage us.

3. Rip the DVD video files to disk: SmartRipper

Insert the DVD movie in your DVD drive, to ensure unlocking you can play a few seconds with you DVD player software.

Open SmartRipper (double-click on the .exe file), it may display an alert window telling no ASPI driverfound, just click OK to ignore it.

With Movie rip method, SmartRipper will select the larger Program chain, assuming it's the movie, you can check its duration to match the movie length.

Select the folder of your choice:

Don't enable stream processing so you keep all audio tracks and subtitles for further extraction by DrDivX and VobSub:

Click on Start and wait the end of the process, which may take about half time of the movie:

At the end you'll find the resulting files in the target folder:

4. Encode the movie to DivX: DrDivX

That the main but easier step: open DrDivX and choose VIDEO FILE:

Browse the file system to choose the first VOB file produced but SmartRipper:

DrDivX automatically select all VOB files in the folder. Assuming you've given an empty folder to SmartRipper, you've nothing to do, let DrDivX choose all files:

It takes a while to open the whole VOB chain:

Now you select the Audio track, DrDivX provides you a button to play the audio and check you've selected the language you want:

Now you choose the output format. We strongly recommend you to select a Certification Level, this is the major advantage of DrDivX solution and ensure you'll be able to play the files in the coming years on any player. Eventually you can select High, Medium or Low quality, we recommend High (with 2GHz CPU it will take less than 4 hours to encode a 1:30 movie). If you haven't a specific usage, we recommend you select Home Theatre profile:

Then browse to a destination folder with the Select... button::

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