64 MA XIMUMPC DECEMBER 2005
how (^2) IMPROVING YOUR PC EXPERIENCE, ONE STEP AT A TIME
Rip Your DVD
The easiest way to convert your media to Divx Media is to simply drop the files
onto Divx Converter and select an encoding profile. Because not many portable
devices support Divx 6 yet, we recommend the Home Theater profile, which
encodes standard DVD resolution video (720x480) at a bit rate of 1250KB/s.
If you drop a handful of media files onto Converter, it will allow you to encode
them as individual files or create a single Divx Media file with an automatically
generated menu.
It won’t do this with VOB files—instead, it will simply create one file from all
the consecutive VOBs. In order to take advantage of some of the more advanced
features of Divx Media—including compression of an entire DVD with menus and
all—we’ll need to use InterVideo’s DVD Copy 4.
Divx Converter of-
fers drag-and-drop
batch queuing and
conversion for
your media files.
From the Source menu option, you can select either your
optical drive or your media files—including VOB files ripped
from DVDs.
If you want to convert your DVD-Video to
Divx Media—in order to stream movies from
your Media Center PC, for example—you’ll
need to rip the contents to your hard drive
with a DVD-ripping application, which is
technically illegal. That’s why freeware rippers
such as DVDDecryptor and SmartRipper
are being clubbed on the Internet like baby
seals. You can still find them with some
Googling effort, but make sure your antivirus
auto-protection is activated, and check for
spyware after installation.
Slysoft’s AnyDVD (www.slysoft.com) takes
a different approach than most rippers: It
decrypts DVD-Video on the fly so the copy
protection is rendered essentially invisible to
you, and you can copy the VIDEO_TS folder,
where the DVD content resides, by simply
dragging it to your hard drive.
Don’t bother with the AUDIO_TS folder
or anything else you find on the disc—all the
contents of the DVD-Video, including menus,
video, and audio, are contained within the
VIDEO_TS folder.
2
Using the DIVX Converter Application
3
Select Your Source Files
(^45)
Select Your Target Directory
DVD Copy 4 will not copy
CSS-encrypted commercial
DVDs, so we’re going to
assume you’ve already
copied and decrypted the
VIDEO_TS folder to your
hard drive using AnyDVD or
a similar app. Launch DVD
Copy 4 and begin the three-
step conversion process
with the Source menu. Click
the file-browser button,
navigate to the VIDEO_TS
folder on your hard drive (or
to your optical drive with an
unencrypted DVD), and click
OK to select it.
Next, we’ll tell DVD Copy 4
where to output the results
of our work. The application
can write to a folder on your
hard drive or burn directly
to CD or DVD when it’s
done with compression.
We intend to store our
compressed video on an
external hard drive, so we’re
going to select that drive
using the file-browser button
in the Target menu.
CAUTION!
One more time:
Circumventing
the encryption on
commercial DVDs is illegal!
If you don’t like that, let your
Senator, Representative, or legal
guardian know.