14 DAY TRIAL // Let's say you have a DVD camcorder, you've recorded some important events and now you want to convert them into AVI format. What are you going to do? The following guide will teach you how to achieve this task in a few minutes (except the conversion process, which is done automatically and takes between 30 minutes and 1 ? hours, depending on how fast your computer is and the video codec used). The following guide can also be applied to DVD-Video movies.
Needed tools
Before you start, copy the DVD-Video to your hard drive. Now, you need to install Avidemux (2.3.0 is the latest stable version), which is one of the fastest and best video editors/converters you will find these days (did I mention FREE?), and of course all the multimedia codecs. I guess you have Automatix2 installed; if not please take a look here. Open Automatix2, go to 'Codecs and Plugins' and check the following:
? AUD-DVD Codecs ? MPlayer and FF plugin ? Multimedia Codecs
then go to 'Media Players and Editors' and check AviDemux. Click the 'Start' button and let Automatix2 do its job, you will know when everything was installed and you can close it.
Open your DVD in Avidemux
Open Avidemux, go to 'File -> Open' and search for your DVD-Video folder that you've just copied to your hard drive.
You should know some things about the files in that folder (VIDEO_TS), because it's better for you to know what you are doing than just doing it like a robot. All the files that contain a DVD (MPEG-2) video have the .VOB (DVD Video Object) extension, and these are the files you are interested in. But NOT all of them, as the VIDEO_TS.VOB file always contains the DVD Menu, so the main video you want to convert can be found in the VTS_01_1.VOB, VTS_01_2.VOB files. The files with the .IFO extension contain all the information about the video files, information about chapters, subtitles, audio streams etc. The .BUP files are just backups of the .IFO files.
Open the VTS_01_1.VOB file in Avidemux. You will be asked if you want to index it; click 'Yes'. Then Avidemux will detect the other VOB files from the same set and it will ask if you want to append them, so click 'Yes' if you want to convert the whole movie, or click 'No' if you want to convert just this one file. Avidemux will start to index your files, it will take about one minute, and when it's done you'll see the video in the main window.
Configure the video codec
In the left side of the Avidemux's main window, you will notice the 'Video', 'Audio' and 'Format' sections. Let's start with the 'Video' section, click the 'Copy' button (drop-down list) and select a codec. I suggest the following codecs:
? x264 - for a faster encoding, smaller file size and best picture quality. But you can't see the resulted video on a home DVD player, only on your PC. ? Xvid4 - for compatibility with any standalone DVD player, but it will take about 2-3 times longer to convert the video.
I've chosen the x264 video codec for this guide. Click the 'Configure' button after you've selected the codec and configure the codec like in the pictures below.
In other words, click the 'Motion & Misc' tab and select the '7B - Ultra High (RDO on Bframes)' option under the 'Partiton decision' section and the 'Exhaustive search' under the 'Method' section. Then, if you want to reduce the noise of the video, you can increase to 1 or 2 the 'Noise Reduction' option found on the right-bottom part of the window, in the same tab. Click OK when you're done.
Configure the audio codec
To configure the audio codec, click the 'Copy' button (drop-down list) and select the desired audio codec, from the 'Audio' section. Hold on, don't select just any codec yet, because here I strongly suggest you to select the 'FFm AC3' codec. Why? Because I?ve tried 'Lame' (MP3) and the sound is of very low quality in the final result. But, if you don't care about the sound and you just want a smaller AVI file, you can select the 'Lame' codec.
However, if you do care about the sound and you want to have the best possible sound on your video, remember that your original sound is AC3 and you should keep it that way. Click the 'Configure' button after you've selected the 'FFm AC3' codec and select a desired bitrate from the drop-down list. Please select the same (or better) bitrate as your original audio. My camcorder records audio at 256 kbits, but because this one is not in the bitrate list, I've chosen the 384 kbits one.
Video/Audio Filters
Video filters
If your videos are recorded in the 16:9 format, the you should consider applying a resize filter. Click the 'Filters' button (in the 'Video' section) and select the 'Resize - Picture resizer ported from Avisynth' option and hit the + button (at the bottom of the list). A window will appear, please enter the Width 616 and Height 352 and click the OK button (NOT Apply). You will see the filter in the empty side of the window and you can click the 'Preview' button to see how the final video will look like.
Please take a look at the video filters, if you want to create artistic videos or you just want to modify the video in any possible way. Avidemux has a lot of filters and does a wonderful job.
Audio filters
The AC3 codec has also some filter options, so please click the 'Filters' button (in the 'Audio' section) and if you know what you're doing, change the settings to suit your needs. I've selected the 'Dolby Prologic 2' option from the 'Mixer' section (bottom) for my audio track, but you can do other stuff, like resample the sound, convert the FPS or change the Gain.
Ready,Set,Go!
The 'Format' section should remain on AVI (default). To start the video conversion please click the 'Save' button (File -> Save -> Save video...), select a folder where you want to save the file, type a name for the final AVI file (type also the .avi extension after the desired filename) and hit the 'Save' button. A new window will appear to show you some options and the current progress of the conversion.
When the conversion is finished, you will be notified that the conversion process was successful.