Ripping letterbox movies... Need help!!!

[rhysome]

I'm looking for advice on how to preserve my letterbox DVD movies which are higher than 16:9 and 4:3 ratio. For instance, movies like Castaway and Gladiator, which are letterbox, are warped even in the 16:9 ratio. Can I fix this? What I mean is Rip DVD's in their original letterbox aspect ratio? What good is archiving my DVD's and wasting drive space if all my characters look like they lost half their bodyweight and are 10 feet tall? Just basically need to make my rips look like they do when using my DVD player. My video and audio quality is excellent, it's just this aspect thing that is troubling me.

Equipment and software:

Hitachi 16x DVD
Smartripper
DVD2AVI w/ TNGCenc

Any advice would be so greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Rhysome
ryanzome@netscape.net

[Enchanter]

Are you looking to watching them in their original DVD format or DivX?

[setarip]

Using Flask (I continue to use v.0.594PX3) instead of DVD2AVI (with which I personally have no familiarity) will allow you retain/create letterbox format.

Let us know of your success ;>}

[rhysome]

Re: to both answers (thanks!)

Specifically, what I want to do is record them onto my harddrive and view them as avi - and still maintain the option of putting them on CDR media to watch in one of my DVD hardware players - my entertainment room DVD player supports VCD and SVCD but I gues my ps2 does not - oh well.


In regard to the other post - I am totally unfamiliar with flask - could you please tell me how I may obtain this software and if it easy to use?

Ideally, I want to preserve the movies in their most accurate state regardless of filesize (I have tons of hardrive space - 240Gb's)

Thanks again!

Rhysome
ryanzome@netscape.net

[Enchanter]

...view them as avi - and still maintain the option of putting them on CDR media to watch in one of my DVD hardware players ...

That is simply not possible. Either you have the small-sized (still high-quality) DivX AVI file or you have the bigger MPEG (VCD). You can't have them both. And DVD players, PS1/2 or anything that is not a PC cannot play DivX files yet. Maybe in the future, but definitely not now.

You can get Flask and its patches & guide here: http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/do...flaskmpeg.html

As Setarip suggested, Flask 0.594 still beats its newer 0.6 sibling in overall performance (and user satisfaction) I can vouch for that.

[rhysome]

Re: I checked out flask...

The program information for flask suggests that it does what DVD2AVI does - turn the VOB files into mpeg's - Does it have some sort of addon to preserve the letterbox format? I've been using SmartRipper and it seems to always default to 16:9 when creating the VOB's.

Sorry about that last post - I meant mpg's not avi, sorry. You are absolutely correct. My fault.

I just want the option to create VCD's or SVCD's that will play in my other DVD players but maintain the true-blue letterbox format. Someone in here said flask can preserve the format.

Is this do-able?

Rhysome
ryanzome@netscape.net

[setarip]

"Does it have some sort of addon to preserve the letterbox format?"

At least through v.0.594 (read my previous post :"I still use v.0.594PX3") and probably v.0.6xx, that ability is BUILT-IN to Flask (in the "Global Project Options").

[Erci]

When I tried out flask it always gave me bad quality compared with Gordian Knot and Nandub. Now I always use GKnot and nadub when ripping my dvd:s.
First I rip it with smartripper or vStrip if it's a hard movie. Then I use DVD2AVI to convert it to a .dv2 file. Then I use Gknot to do all my cropping resizing and to choose the right aspect ratio. I never had any probs with this so I think you should give it a try.
I'm not sure that you can find GKnot here in digital digest but I guess so. But you can find the official guide at http://www.doom9.org/gknot-main.htm
and if you can't find GKnot here you can find it at doom9.org.
The quality get's very good. So I sugest you give it a try and let us know how it works out.

//Erci

[rhysome]

RE: Flask

I downloaded and installed flask .594 (not .6) and I get errors every time I try to rip. I'm using windows 2000 and I get Dr. Watson errors in the event viewer. Not sure what is happening. I DO see the letterbox option and I think that is really cool so I guess I'm doing something wrong...

system:
P4 2Ghz 478-pin (512k cache)
512Mb ECC Rimm
ATI Radeon 7500 All-in-wonder
4 Seagate 80GB harddrives
Abit th7II raid motherboard

smartripper seems to work just dandy but doesn't seem to give me the option of letterbox like flask does - but i can't get flask to work. I'll keep plugging away... I'll be happy to post a jpg of the error or whatever you guys need..

rhysome
ryanzome@netscape.net

[Enchanter]

You can follow Erci's suggestion of using GordianKnot and nandub actually. The learning curve is steeper, but the quality is better than Flask. However, if you're not comfortable with learning something new yet, keep trying to get Flask to work.

Yes, a picture of the errors you're getting would help.

p.s. Nice system specs. I wish I had the money to have that many harddrives.

[rhysome]

RE: take a look at this...

i have a jpg image attachment of the window in smartripper - you'll notice I've put one arrow pointing at the aspect ratio and another at the Letterbox = 'No' area.

You can see I chose Castaway. Anyone knows that this movie is letterbox so how can I make smartripper show Letterbox = 'Yes" ?

You can see I have tons of drivespace and if I do decide to rip, the video and audio quality are excellent. But the movie is letterbox and it get scrunched to 16:9 - that's what's bugging the heck out me. Now I know one of you folks has had this problem before, and although I have the latest and greatest equipment, I figured this would be a cinch. It is more technical than I thought with a ton of info.

I checked into the other programs that were posted but the one seems to use smartripper and DVD2AVI which I'm already using. Just not getting out of it what i want - true blue high fidelity letterbox mpg's!

rhysome
ryanzome@netscape.net

[Enchanter]

I'm not that very familiar with all Smartripper's settings as the one I've been using ever since I started out works very well. Use the Files section and rip out the VOB, IFO and other files that you want. Since you have so much space, just rip out everything into your HD first.

From there, you can use Flask to Open DVD (aka IFO file) and you can start cropping and resizing so that you get the aspect ratio you want. Can't get anymore difficult than that.

[Erci]

Maybe it could work if you use vstrip instead.... Much harder to learn though but I've read some nice guides in doom9.org. Maybe you want to check it out and see if it rips the letterbox.

//Erci

[rhysome]

RE: my final analysis

My dear friends,

I've tried every setting in Smartripper and Flask that is available. I even tried to just backup the DVD and convert from there. No dice. As of this moment, there is no program that I know of that will rip a DVD with a VOB output in letterbox format. I am defeated! It seems the best is still Spartripper with DVD2AVI as opposed to flask which gives me tons of errors and is just about the flakiest program I have ever had the displeasure of working with.

I'm still looking for a program that I can insert my DVD, rip the DVD in the format I choose (letterbox option definitely necessary), and then convert to mpg.

I'm stumped, I'm tired, and I've run out of options.

Thanks all for the help. If I find a program that does do what I'm looking for, I'll post it here.

I'll check back daily to see if anyone came up with anything. If anyone needs my system specs, they are in this thread.

Rhysome
ryanzome@netscape.net

[Enchanter]

...Spartripper with DVD2AVI ...

So does this combo work for you? This is what I'm using anyway.