HELP: Specifically Ripping Dragonball DVD's

[Drabaz]

I know a few people here make some great DBZ amv's, such as CastorTroy and our very own VegettoEX. I was wondering if I could get your advice on how to rip Dragonball DVD's. I'm not a newbie when it comes to ripping DVD's. I've read the entire section on animemusicvideos.org on how to rip a DVD, but I still can't seem to get it to look good. Maybe I'm just dumb and can't comprehend so many directions from the amv.org site.

Since we here are using the same exact footage and same exact DVD's (North American DVD releases), I was hoping someone here would be as kind as to show me how they rip their Dragonball DVD's. Preferably the North American Dragonboxes. That would make it so much easier on me trying to figure out what settings I have to use.

I know that people also color correct the footage to make it look even nicer. I'm sure that's a whole nother subject on it's own that would take a lot of practice to master, but if you have any tips, I would appreciate it.

Any advice from anybody is welcome. If you knowing what I do currently to rip my DVD's is necessary in helping me, then I will be glad to tell you. I'm currently not at my home computer where I do my ripping and editing, so I can't do it now.

Pictures would be great too. I hope I'm not asking for too much. I'm just sick of my videos not looking the best that they can.

[funrush]

I actually would love some help with this. I was thinking of making an AMV too but I don't know how to rip a DVD.

[Castor Troy]

Thanks!

The NA Dboxes can be ripped with DVD Fab since they incorporate newer protection. The guide on amv.org helped me quite a bit when I started learning, so give it some patience and you'll understand it.

[Drabaz]

Aww Castor, that's the only answer you have for me? Being directed back to amv.org was the one answer I didn't want lol. But I'll go back right now and read it over again. I was just hoping that since we're all using the same exact source material, somebody could tell me how exactly they did it so I know I'm doing it right.

[VegettoEX]

There are just sooooooo many factors that go into it, that it's almost impossible to give "an answer".

The thing to keep in mind is that video is stored on a DVD in VOB files. These files contain video (MPEG-2), audio (usually AC-3), and sometimes subtitles. The goal is to get the VOBs decrypted and copied to your local storage, and then use the video within them in some other way.

What a lot of the advanced video editors (the people, not the programs) do is something called "frame-serving", where another program acts as the middle-man to say, "Hey, I'm looking at this VOB. Let me tell you what the video looks like, and ignore all this other stuff." It then serves up that video to your editing program of choice.

For me, that's AVIsynth talking to Premiere. I toss the VOBs into DGIndex, which creates a project file (*.d2v) and a text file (*.avs) that AVIsynth uses to serve the video to Premiere -- instead of opening the VOB in Premiere, I'm opening a text file that points to the video.

This allows for some cool stuff. You can, in the text file, crop out any black borders, resize the video, deinterlace, and even do some things like color correction. All of it's done with just lines of code! Hurray!

You very rarely will edit the actual VOB files when working with DVD video. They're not meant for editing -- they're meant for playback.

Yes, there's a lot to learn, and most of it will be trial by fire. What's lossless vs lossy? Why are these files so big? Do they need to be? Why can't I edit this in real-time? Can I switch it out for something smaller? What the Hell is 720x480, anyway, since that's neither 4:3 nor 16:9? Why does this moon, which is supposed to look like a circle, look like a squashed potato? What's a frame rate? Why is my video stuttering? Why are these horizontal lines across my video?

Have fun .

[Drabaz]

What a lot of the advanced video editors (the people, not the programs) do is something called "frame-serving", where another program acts as the middle-man to say, "Hey, I'm looking at this VOB. Let me tell you what the video looks like, and ignore all this other stuff." It then serves up that video to your editing program of choice.

That's pretty interesting. I never knew you could do that with VOB files. I thought VOB files were pretty much useless since you can't directly transfer them to a video editing program. (Since they're meant for playback only.)

If there's so many factors then I must be doing something wrong lol. The basics of what I do is:

Get VOB files from DVD Decrypter.
Transfer the VOB files to a Converter. (I think the one I use is called dubmod. Again, I'm at work so I'm not sure.)
In dubmod, I add a deinterlacing option to the footage. (Which probably doesn't work because I still see interlacing in my footage.)
I also change the compression before saving the converted file.
Then that's it. The footage in converted to a format that I can use to edit in Sony Vegas.
Then once it's in Sony Vegas, that's a whole nother thing on what settings to use when I want to finally render it.

I've been editing Dragonball AMV for years now. At least 10 years. I've been through so many trial and errors in that time. And yet I still feel like a noob when it comes to getting my footage to look the way I want it to look. I thought there was a simple process in ripping footage to be able to use it in a video editor.

I was hoping to get an answer like:

Take DB DVD and rip it with DVD Decrypter, with these settings.
Then put the VOB files in such and such converter and use these settings.
Whatever else inbetween, with these settings.

But if it's not as simple as that, then I guess I've been doing it wrong for years and there's a lot more for me to learn. Thanks for the info.

[VegettoEX]

One thing to keep in mind with the Dragon Box sets is that all of the episodes are encoded progressively at 23.976 fps -- there isn't any interlacing to get rid of. There's a lot to learn in there about frame rates, 3:2 pulldown, editing progressively (if your editing program will even let you), etc.

You can dump the VOBs into a program and have it spit out some other files to edit with, but you don't need to -- it's doubling-up on the space (if not by a large magnitude, since you're creating lossless versions of what's already compressed video).

The idea is to keep things in as raw and un-touched a format (minus things like removing any black borders, deinterlacing if necessary, etc.) before editing. Otherwise, you're doing the equivalent of duping VHS to VHS to VHS before editing, which removes clarity each step of the way (unless you're doing all lossless conversions, but again, you're wasting disc space by doing that... which isn't necessarily a problem if you've got a few TB to spare, and you'll want to export lossless versions of things like advanced editing from After Effects that you bring back to the main timeline).

Yeah. Editing. Fun.

[Drabaz]

Very interesting. Not having to convert a file will definitly increase the space on my computer. I'm currently struggling to keep 1 gb left on my hardrive lol. I'll definitly try this in the near future. I may even try using a different video editor too. The problem is that once you get used to using a video editor, it's really hard to get used to another one. I started out using WMM, then switched over to Sony Vegas. I dabbled a bit in Premiere, but never decided to stick with it. Then in school, they made us use Final Cut Pro. I'm not a fan of Final Cut, but they say that's what the professionals use.

[SSJSteve]

I'm having the same problems as you, Drabaz. I use DVDFab to rip which is an excellent programme, I select "DVD Copy" and it rips the footage I want straight to VOB, from there I put it straight into Sony Vegas and it's ready to be used.

By the sounds of it I'm not doing things wrong, the quality in Sony Vegas is perfect but after Rendering it looks bad (I'm sure I could use DivX to Render but I'm not sure what Codecs to use). I would love to have one perfect way of ripping, editing and uploading. There's so many different ways which makes it kind of difficult.

[BluezaBladeNZ]

If you're having trouble working with the video inside the VOB, there's another method that's also convenient. There's a freeware program called HandBrake which can essentially rip DVDs to other formats and has no quality loss at a high bitrate. This also has 2:3 Pulldown telecine as well so it's very useful for progressive 23.976fps material. I've used this for my Ocean Dub Dragon Box remaster and there's barely any difference in quality, even when re-encoded back to MPEG-2.

[Drabaz]

Another question, I remember somebody here (probably VegettoEX) a long time ago saying that you have to render your project in the same settings that the source footage has. Makes sense. But, where do I find out what the settings are for the source footage? I think I tried right clicking the DVD on "My Computer" and looking there once. It ended in failure lol. I now know, thanks to Mike, that the American DBoxes have 23.976 fps. But for future reference with other DVD's, where do I find those kind of settings out?