Auto DVD Backup
v1.6

by Johnny Owl

Disclaimer

This program is provided "as-is" and the author will take no responsibility for any problems or accidents that might happen in the process of using his program (be it loss of computer, loss of work, loss for words).

Any brand names mentioned are the property and copyright of their respective owners. No infringement of any kind is intended.

This program is solely intended to create backup copies of the DVDs you own, for personal use. Any duplication of DVDs you don't own is illegal and strictly prohibited.

Overview

Auto DVD Backup is a tool for converting a DVD to DivX format easily. It can compress most of the original content (main video, multiple audio streams, subtitles, chapter menu) and the result (ready to be burned on 1 or 2 CD-Rs) can be played back with any Windows PC equipped with the DivX codec (for video playback), the Ogg Vorbis DirectShow filters (for audio playback - optional) and VobSub for DirectShow (for subtitles playback - optional). ADB, technically speaking, is a GUI for many different programs.

DVD's video is converted from MPEG2 to MPEG4 (DivX), DVD's audio is converted from AC3 to OGG and DVD's subtitles are RARed.

In order to offer, among with video, multiple audio streams, chapters, etc. ADB sets up BSPlayer, which supports all these neat functions, for playback.

Key features:

System requirements:
  • Windows 98/ME/XP
  • Any today's CPU will do the job (Pentium + MMX is a must)
  • At least 64MB RAM
  • Hard disk with PLENTY of free space
  • DVD-ROM (12x speed or more recommended)
  • CD recorder (optional, to burn your movie on CD)
Software requirements:

Operation

First of all, if you're going to use PowerDVD, you'll have to tweak some of its settings to make sure ADB will work properly:

PowerDVD version  
3 run it, go to configuration (Ctrl-C), in the General tab deselect Play automatically upon inserting disc, in the Capture tab select Capture to Clipboard as Default capture mode and at last, in the Screen tab, select Run Full Screen and Keep Screen Aspect Ratio. Press OK and close PowerDVD (Ctrl-X)
4 run it, go to configuration (Ctrl-C), in the General tab deselect Play automatically upon inserting disc and press Advanced... button, select Capture to Clipboard and Current video window size, press OK, in the Video tab select Run full screen and Keep aspect ratio. At last, press OK and close PowerDVD (Ctrl-X)
5 run it, go to configuration (Ctrl-C), in the Player Setting tab deselect Play automatically upon inserting disc and press Advanced... button, in the Snapshot tab select Capture to clipboard and Current video window size, press OK. In the Video tab select Run full screen. At last, press OK and close PowerDVD (Ctrl-X)

Once ADB is loaded, setting Video parameters is the first stage. ADB can: 1) acquire them semi-automatically through PowerDVD 2) let you select them manually or 3) let you do the manual Resize/Crop, after you have ripped the DVD.

In the first case, select PowerDVD executable by clicking on browse..., insert your DVD and click on start. PowerDVD will be started and DVD reproduction will commence: now you'll have to capture a frame of your DVD (by pressing the C key on your keyboard or the "snapshot" button on your PowerDVD bar) that's sufficiently bright at the edges (white preferably) so that ADB can spot the video "border" and use the same setting throughout the movie. This is necessary to remove from compression the possible black bars of widescreen films (at the top and at the bottom of the screen). After capturing, control will return to ADB.

In the second case, select the Aspect ratio of your DVD from the combobox: something like this is usually printed on the back of your DVD's case. If the presets don't fit your needs, you can also enter a custom crop string (in the manner of Tsunami's Parameter Kalkulator) by pressing the custom... button.

Second stage is DVD rip, that is, the copy of the very data of your DVD to hard disk. For a full DVD it takes about 20-30 minutes and from 4.7 to 8.5 gigabytes of free hard disk space.
Select a folder for your DVD rip by clicking on browse... (you can create a new folder before). Then, select the single chapter(s) you want to copy by pressing enter... (useful for test purposes), or just leave it empty to copy everything. After that, click on auto start. Video parameters will be saved in your rip folder and control will return to ADB once the DVD rip has finished. At the end of the rip, you can modify the name of your DVD in the Info frame, if the default one isn't very descriptive. More important, pay attention to the Length in minutes: SmartRipper rarely fails, but if it seems wrong, you can change it, in terms of seconds. Chapter times will be modified accordingly.
It's also possible to load a previous rip (made with ADB v1.1 or higher): simply select the folder which contains it. Video parameters are also loaded.

You can go back to the Video parameters tab and check if everything has gone smoothly by pressing the preview button. If you see a stretched image or unnecessary black bars, you can try to select other Aspect ratios (here you go by trial and error). But now you can also go manual for greater precision (or if you didn't catch the parameters in the first place): press start manual Resize/Crop, play with the mpeg2avi's Resize and Crop settings (remember that the crop values must be equal or smaller than the resize ones) and when you've finished click Save settings. Then, press save to store them definitively.

If a wrong thing has been ripped or you want to rip extra dvd movie contents, you can go manual. Select your DVD rip folder as usual and press manual start. In SmartRipper choose the correct Title -> Program Chain -> Angle and the desired Chapters, click on the folder icon below Target, type rip and press enter, then click on Start and wait for the rip to finish.

Now, tick the Audio streams that you want to include in your final movie. The first one in Audio streams order will be played as default. Usually the more streams selected, the less video quality, because less space is reserved to the video. You can even select no audio. To preview a stream, select any vob file and the desired code and press preview. Press Q to stop previewing. Please note that this audio preview feature is experimental and won't reflect the final outcome of the movie.

Then, check the Subtitles that you want to include. The rule is the same, basically: the more selected, the less video quality.

The Chapters tab displays the chapter list extracted from your DVD. You can substitute the text "Chapter1, Chapter2, ..." with the actual title of the chapter. This is the chapter list of the first side of the movie "Armageddon", for example:

1=0 Program Start
2=9116 NYC Hit Hard
3=17150 Meet Harry Stamper
4=33413 NASA Briefing
5=41383 Building The Team
6=51059 The Physicals
7=57460 Training Begins
8=66002 Grace and A.J.
9=70003 Underwater Simulation
10=73752 A Day Off
11=81180 Shanghai's Surprised
12=85110 Launch Day
13=96726 The Countdown
14=102513 Rendezvous With The Russians
15=116581 End

The Options tab is quite important. Select the Media size for your final movie (just look at the CD-R jewel case, or click on custom to enter a custom size - min is 12, max is 2048 MB, you can also use the scrollbar to change it) and modify the Preferences at will (if you select Split work in two halves, two subfolders called part1 and part2, containing the burnable splitted parts, will be created in your work folder). Then, select a Work folder where the final files will be stored (you can create a new folder before).

If you're serious about quality, check out the Advanced tab:

For the DivX codec frame:
  • 1-pass mode is fast but not very accurate. 2-pass mode processes video content two times and takes roughly twice the time of 1-pass mode, but quality is much higher, and the results may be worth it.
  • PSY stands for Psychovisual Enhancements. These try to remove bits of video that the human eye can't see, just like MP3 does with audio. The four possible settings are off, Light, Normal and Strong. To avoid video artifacts, never go beyond Normal.
  • Bidirectional encoding allows for the use of B frames in the encoding. This option increases quality, and it's highly recommended, although may slow down playback on old computers.
  • GMC stands for Global Motion Compensation. It helps to improve complex scenes where zooming and panning are present. If your movie has lots of these kinds of scenes (zooming, panning) then select it. It may slow down playback on a slow computer.
  • Internal Resize/Crop uses the DivX codec's resize/crop routines instead of the mpeg2avi's ones. It's recommended: the internal routines are more flexible and treat color better than the latter (colors tend to fade a bit with mpeg2avi's resize). This option is necessary to deinterlace.
  • Deinterlace deinterlaces video content. What is deinterlacing? Take a look. You'll rarely need this function anyway.
  • Resize represents the resize method used by the codec. The four settings are: very soft (bilinear); soft, normal and sharp (bicubic). Generally, bicubic looks better than bilinear for DivX movies, although bilinear may be useful for very low video bitrates. In fact, sharper content needs higher bitrate.
  • Resolution represents the output resolution of the final DivX movie. Default value is 640. To retain the original DVD resolution, select 720. To fit very long or "complicated" movies in small disk space, you may want to select 512.
Bitrate presets:

For a fair trade-off between Resize and Resolution, choose the Bitrate preset that matches your current Video bitrate (displayed on the bottom right of the ADB window). For example, if your video bitrate is 650, select 500-1000, if it's 1600, select >1500, and so on.

Please note that there is no general formula. No two movies are alike, for every movie has its own compressibility, since the variables that play a role in the encoding process are many more, such as the average "darkness" of the movie, the predominance of low motion (static) vs high motion (action) scenes, and so forth: this means that, if you want the absolute best video quality with low bitrates (1 CD), you'll have to experiment with various video settings, each time. But generally, if you get high bitrates (if you go for 2 CDs) then you'll get pretty good quality, no matter what the settings are.

For the BeSweet frame:
  • Stereo mode applies simple stereo downmix to the audio, while DPL mode applies Dolby Pro Logic (Dolby surround) compatible downmix, and DPL II applies Dolby Pro Logic II compatible downmix. Just select Stereo, unless you're lucky enough to have a DPL/DPL II compatible device attached to your computer's audio out.
  • Dynamic Compression is actually Dynamic Range Compression. The four possible settings are off, Light, Normal and Heavy. Normal is the default value, recommended for general use. Select off if you want to retain the full dynamic range of Dolby Digital sound and you have big loudspeakers, or Heavy if you intend to play the final movie with a notebook computer.
  • OGG quality represents average audio quality. The possible settings are low (0.001 / 64kbps), normal (0.100 / 80kbps) and high (0.300 / 110kbps). Normal is adequate to most circumstances.
  • Normalize audio applies maximum audio gain. This is always recommended.
  • Convert to 44100 Hz may be useful for old computers with legacy soundcards.
For the mpeg2avi iDCT frame: You can select the iDCT algorithm that best matches your CPU. Quality difference is minimal, by the way.

Now you're ready to go. Open File menu and select Save and Run project or just press F12. ADB will close and a batch file in a new MS-DOS window will open. This process will take many hours, depending on PC speed.

When the process is done, open work folder and double click bplay.exe to start playing the movie manually. Right-click on the screen to show the player menu. To change/hide subtitles, press F on your keyboard, then right-click on the green arrow icon (taskbar).

You can then burn the content of work folder with any burning software, in Data CD mode.

Version History

v1.6

  • DivX 5.0.5 PRO support
  • ADB Splitter finally fixed
  • DVD length is now changeable
  • Added "Resolution" and "Bitrate presets" to Advanced tab
  • Cosmetic changes
  • Various bugfixes

v1.5

  • Preliminary DivX 5.0.3 PRO support
  • ADB Splitter fixed
  • Added "manual Resize/Crop"
  • Added "internal Resize/Crop" and "Deinterlace" to Advanced tab
  • Various bugfixes
v1.4
  • ADB Splitter bundled within the package and automatized
  • Added single chapter(s) copying
  • Added "manual start" button to customize DVD rip
  • Cosmetic changes to Media size selection
  • Major bugfixes
v1.3
  • Added "Subtitles" tab for auto subtitles handling
  • Added audio "preview" button
  • Added "reset to defaults" button to Advanced tab
  • Added direct project editing capabilities
  • Internal changes to predict filesize more effectively
  • Various bugfixes
v1.2
  • Compatible with Windows XP
  • Redesigned Video Parameters tab, now with additional "preview" button
  • DVD name is now changeable
  • Added "Advanced" tab for further video/audio customization
  • Various bugfixes
v1.1
  • Started from scratch with standard interface and tabbed dialogs
  • Video upgrade to DivX 5 PRO
  • Audio upgrade to Ogg Vorbis
  • Project saving in batch format
  • Various bugfixes

Known Bugs

  • If you experience a crash while changing audio stream in BSPlayer, you'll need to uninstall the latest Ogg Vorbis DirectShow filters and install the version you can find here

Please click here to submit bug reports.

Donate

If you like this program and you find it useful, please donate. Doing so will encourage me to continue to improve it in the future. Furthermore, if you do donate, you'll receive a nice complement to ADB, as a bonus.

More info at: http://www.johnnyowl.com/adb


Signed, Johnny Owl
August 2003