DVd to Divx

[davidd]

My children have a lot of DVDs, my children are small and don't really kow how to look after DVDs..

So we built an Xbox media centre with a big disk in it to store them all.

I can use DVDcrypter and dvd shrink to rip the disks with no problem but they are still pretty big so I thought I'd try ripping them to Divx to make the files a bit smaller without losing much quality.

I have a copy of apollo DVD ripper
www.dvdtox.com/
and the latest divx codec

Whilst it creates the divx with no issue the sound is every so slightly (and very annoyingly) out of sync.

Anyone got any foolproof method of ripping a dvd to a divx?

Thanks

David

[SneakyNeil]

I've never found *one* thing that handles everything perfectly encoding wise, one might get the sound out on certain files, another might crash on other files - I think the thing to do is have a couple of things handy so that if one doesn't produce the right output you can just try the other one. Allways check the output as well before you settle down to watch something. Check the aspect ratio, smoothness of video, and the sound volume/sync at the beginning, middle & end. It's most annoying to get settled, fire on, lights dim, beer open only to find there's been an encoding snafu! It's second only to the feeling a toddler gets when he drops his icecream

[FourWheelDrift]

davidd said:

Whilst it creates the divx with no issue the sound is every so slightly (and very annoyingly) out of sync.

If the audio is out of sync get hold of a copy (it's free) of VirtualDUB.

And adjust the Audio Interleaving - Audio Skew Correction by a few hundred milliseconds, then use the preview to test if you have it set properly, just change it by +/- 100ms each time either positive or negative. You can then save it off, you'll have to set the video to direct stream copy or it'll re-encode the video as well and take ages.

[Plotloss]

If you've got a big disk why bother format converting them?

Just leave them on there uncompressed.

[davidd]

Plotloss said:

If you've got a big disk why bother format converting them?

Just leave them on there uncompressed.

Fair point, however if I back up my games I cannot compress them, I'm also using the box as a NAS device to backup my photos so I want to pack as many films in as I can.

I must say the XBMC is possibly the most useful gadget in the house, even our 18month old can use it!

D