Tutorial: Beginner’s Guide to Ripping and Uploading Movies

Tutorial: Beginner’s Guide to Ripping and Uploading Movies

Ok, I've decided to make a tutorial about the entire process of ripping, converting and uploading movies. Now I realise that there is a thousand and one different ways of doing this with many different types of software and I certainly don't claim to know the best or easiest way, however this is the way I do it and it has worked very well for me after having done this dozens of times.


There are 5 main sections to this tut. They are:

• Section One: Ripping a DVD to your harddrive
• Section Two: Encoding it to avi format
• Section Three: Taking screen captures and other info for the post
• Section Four: Splitting the movie into chunks ready for uploading
• Section Five: Uploading to rapidshare.com via Rapid Uploader


What this tut does NOT address (at least this version anyway):
• Ripping TV Episodes
• Correcting out-of-sync audio
• Correcting wrong aspect ratios
• Irregular dvd copy protection
• Advanced encoding and converting options
• Uploading to non rs file hosts



If you use this tut, you will need the following programs (all latest versions). 3-4 mirrors are provided for each program:


DVDDecrypter 3.5.4.0 (859KB)

Code:

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/DVD_Decrypter.htm http://rapidshare.com/files/11335989/SetupDVDDecrypter_3.5.4.0.rar http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9TMNYH6B

Auto Gordian Knot (AutoGK) 2.40 (9MB)

Code:

http://www.autogk.me.uk/index.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=1 http://rapidshare.com/files/11339275/AutoGordianKnot.2.40.Setup.rar http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UI0GGE01

Image Grabber II (1.5MB)

Code:

http://rapidshare.com/files/11336444/Image_Grabber_II.rar http://www.megaupload.com/?d=W4MAZY66

AVI2Clipboard 2.18 (1.4MB)

Code:

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/AVI2Clipboard.htm http://rapidshare.com/files/11336841/AVI2Clipboard-2.18.zip http://www.megaupload.com/?d=P0XG6GCC

WinRar 3.62 (983KB)

Code:

Dead

Rapid Uploader 1.1 (689KB)

Code:

http://rapidshare.com/files/11353206/RapidUploader.rar http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JEL6RW7O

OR All the programs in one file (14.2MB)

Code:

http://rapidshare.com/files/11357008/Entire_Tut_Pack.rar http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DGM23YME

After you have downloaded the above and installed them, you can proceed.

Note 1: If you already have older versions (but not too old) of the above programs, it should be fine.
Note 2: When installing, there are no special options or anything you need to worry about, just keeping clicking Next.




Section One: Ripping a DVD to your harddrive



• First step is to insert the DVD into the DVD drive. For this tut, the example I will be doing is the movie Con Air (1994) with Nicolas Cage.

• After a while, the autorun Windows box will appear asking what action you wish to take. Select Decrypt DVD Video and click OK.







• If the box doesn't appear, simply open DVDDecrypter and it will automatically select the dvd drive with the dvd in it.

• You will see a list of all the dvd files, made up of .ifo .vob and .bup files, on the right side of the program. Since we are only interested in the movie and not the menu's or extra's etc, select Edit along the top menu and click Select Main Movie Files.

• Only the files related to the main movie will be highlighted. DVDDecryptor will automatically select the destination of the rip based on which harddrive has the most remaining space left. You can of course click the little folder and choose your own destination, keeping in mind there should be at least 7GB of space available.

• Click the large button in the bottom left (the one with a pic of a CD, a green arrow and a harddrive) to begin the rip.








• The program will now begin ripping the movie onto your harddrive.







• It depends on the movie but for Con Air, it took about 13 minutes. When it is done, it will display a message box stating the Operation was Successfully Completed and that's the end of the first section.








Section Two: Encoding it to avi format



• First, open up AutoGK.

• Click the folder icon next to Input file and locate the folder DVDDecryptor ripped the movie to.

• Now select the file that ends with the .IFO extension and click Open.







• Now specify an output file (by clicking the little folder and clicking Save).







• Under Audio tracks you can choose which to include and which to exclude. I only want the English 6 channel track so I don't have to do anything. You can also include subtitles but again this doesn't interest me.

• As you can see in the screen shot, just below the Output file, the movie goes for ~1 Hour 50 Minutes. As a general rule I like to use, if the movie is shorter than 1:50, I rip to 1 CD (700MB) size and if the movie is 1:50 and greater I rip to 2CD (1400MB) size.

• So for Con Air I will be ripping to 2 CD's. As this is the default setting in the Predefined size, I don't have to change it.







Side Note

Quote:

For a 2 CD encode such as this one, the default setting will be that the audio will remain original from the DVD, in this case 5.1 Channel AC3 surround sound, and not converted. For a 1 CD encode, the audio will automatically be converted to 2 channel MP3 at 128 kbps.

• If you click Advanced Settings you can see some...well...advanced settings. This doesn't concern us, as long as the Auto width, Auto and XviD settings are checked.







Side Note

Quote:

You could of course rip in DivX instead of XviD but I personally prefer XviD. Why? Three main reasons: • It arguably gives better quality and encodes faster than DivX • It's free, unlike DivX • It is the scene standard

• It is now time to start the encode. To do this, click Add Job then Start.







• How long it takes greatly depends on your computer specs. I have a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ and it took 2 Hours 20 Mins to rip Con Air and this is about typical for my PC.

• Various things will pop up (but in minimised state) during the encoding. You can just ignore these, but do not close them. You can check the progress of the rip by browsing through the log window. Once it is finished it will say Job finished along with the total time it took at the bottom of the log.

• For a copy of the AutoGK log from my Con Air rip, see here (6KB):

Code:

http://rapidshare.com/files/11345081/CON_AIR_D1A_agk.log http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5CS7B0R2 http://d01.megashares.com/?d01=2e6d5b1

• AutoGK will automatically split the 1400MB movie into two 700MB files. I would also recommend giving them a meaningful name, in this case I called the first CD:

C0n.Air.1997.AC3.6CH.DVDRip.XviD_CD1.avi

and the second CD:

C0n.Air.1997.AC3.6CH.DVDRip.XviD_CD2.avi


• By this naming convention, a person can see the name of the movie (Con Air), when it was made (1997), the audio type (AC3) and the number of channels (6 CH, for those with surround sound), the quality/source (in this case, a dvd rip) as well as what codec was used to encoded it (XviD) and of course what CD it is (1 or 2).


Side Note

Quote:

You may notice the file name is C0n.Air instead of Con.Air. This a completely one-off because "con." is actually a reserved DOS word.

• Before continuing, I would recommend you open the movie and watch a few random parts for a couple of minutes, just to ensure the rip went according to plan and that no audio is out of sync. Testing it now could save a lot of time later down the track.




Section 3: Taking screen captures and other info for the post



• Ok, everyone knows that a good post is post that contains screen caps and info. To take the screenies, we'll use a program called Image Grabber II.

• First open up Image Grabber II, go to File then Open File... and navigate to the first CD and click Open.

• You can manually take pics by sliding the slider and click the Manual Screen caps button. However to save time, click the monitor button and a box will appear asking for the Number of Frames to Extract. I usually take 15 so enter 15 and click OK.







• It will automatically capture frames and display them down the bottom. You can remove any by right clicking on them and selecting Delete. However it's auto selection is usually fine for me.

• Now select File in the menu and click Save File. You can play around with any settings like fonts and colours etc but the default is fine for me. Click Save and save the screen cap into a folder.







• Repeat for the second CD. There is now a series of miniature pics of the movie for downloader’s to have a look at which is also accompanied with the movie name, file size, resolution and duration all in the one image.







• I also like to include 1:1 screen caps, as in if the movie resolution is 672x288 then so will the pics size. I usually include 2-5 and do this so downloader’s can judge the quality and resolution.

• To get these you do the same as above but instead of clicking Save File..., you click Save Multiple... on the file menu and specify a folder to save all the pics to. Now each pic will be an individual image in the correct movie size.









• You can then host the pics. I use tinypic because it's nice and easy and hassle free:

Code:

http://www.tinypic.com/

• First click the Browse button and navigate to the image you wish to upload, click Open then click the Upload Now button.







• Now simply copy the second text box content and paste into your post.







• Now to get the technical info about the movie. With AVI2Clipboard installed it is simply a matter of right clicking the movie and selecting AVI2Clipboard on the menu.

• You can do this one of two ways. First is click Save to Clipboard (Normal) and it will copy the info to the clipboard as text so you can paste it into your post.

• Second is instead click View AVI Information then press Print Screen so you can take a screen shot of the info (and paste it in ms paint or something and save it as a .jpg) and put it into the post as an image. I usually display this info as image rather than text for the simple reason that I think it looks neater.

• Repeat for the second CD.










• For my posts I include a link to the movie at imdb:

Code:

http://www.imdb.com/

and also the plot (also taken from imdb). This is so the person knows what the movie is about and has a link to where they can get even more information if they want to.

• I also put the movie poster/dvd cover in for aesthetics. You can find posters by just googling the movie name or going to wiki or

Code:

http://www.cdcovers.cc/

Section Four: Splitting the movie into chunks ready for uploading



• You're now already to go, you just have to split and upload it. Now, one the most common file hosting sites in the world is rapidshare.com and they have a limit of 100MB per file so the movies have to be split. To do this, we will use WinRar.


Side Note

Quote:

If you're thinking of splitting a file with HJSplit or similar, DONT! Programs like those do not provide any sort of error checking, crc's or error repairing and they do not perform diagnostics or testing. WinRar does. If you download the split parts of a movie and they have been split with HJSplit and one or more parts have become corrupt during the download process (which is not uncommon), there is very little you can do except re-download all the parts again because you don't know what the matter is. With WinRar you at least have options that can salvage a perfectly working video from corrupt files or at least tell you exactly which file is the problem so you only have to download that part again.

• First step is to open WinRar. Go to Tools at the top menu and select Wizard.







• Check Create a new archive and click Next.







• Now select the file we want to split, which in this case is the first Con Air CD.







• Select a destination for the parts and I would recommend changing the name of the archive to something a bit more cryptic than just the name of the movie. For this example I've used the initial's of the movie "CA" plus CD 1. I do this to lessen the chance of having the links reported.







• On the next screen, click Set password... if you wish to have a password for the movie. This is of course optional but I always set a password mainly to prove that it is in fact my own upload and not just taken from another warez site.







• Now in the drop down box on the same screen, select Zip100: 98078 kb so that the archive will be broken into 100MB chunks. After that, click Finish and the process will begin.







• Once it's finished, repeat the same for the second CD and you should end up with 16 files.







• I would also recommend at this point the you extract the movie from the parts to test it and make sure nothing went wrong with the splitting or password. This will save you a lot of time if you find out something did go wrong after uploading all the parts. Now it's just a matter of uploading the files and you're done.




Section Five: Uploading to rapidshare.com via Rapid Uploader



• Now obviously for this section, you have to have a rapidshare premium account. First step is to open Rapid Uploader. It's a stand alone program that will create it's own history and settings files. Because of this, it is recommended you place it in it's own folder.

• Click the Settings tab then the Login tab and under Login-Type check Premium Account (or Collector's Account if that's what you have).

• Now enter your rapidshare account user name and password before clicking the Click here to finalize this option.







• Back on the Upload tab, click the Add button, navigate to the 16 rar files we made earlier and open them. If the uploads don't start automatically, click the Upload button then Upload on the menu.







• You can of course play around with the other Rapid Uploader options and settings to find what best suits you. Once all the files have been uploader, you are now ready to post.



Side Note

Quote:

As I've said previously, this is just a beginner’s guide. Once you do a few rips and gain a bit more confidence with not only the software but the entire process, you can start playing around with a few settings and options here and there. Sometimes there is a lot of trial and error involved but doing practice rips will let you see how the results turn out. If some rips don't turn out how you expected, don't become discouraged and keep trying and take satisfaction in the fact someone somewhere in the world might one day download and watch what you have put your time and effort into. Again, as I said at the start, this is the process I take BUT this whole process is just one of many ways that can be taken to achieve the same end result. If you're confident and patient enough try other types of software and processes for yourself and see what works best for you.

If you have any questions, problems, suggestions, comments or wish to hurl abuse at me, feel free to PM me or post here.


Happy ripping and uploading!