If you’re reading this post then you either don’t like my AviSynth/DGIndex method or you don’t like scripting in general. Either way, welcome. This method has much more mass appeal. It’s simplicity is almost ridiculous. Will I stop using the scripting method? Not on your life.
Shall we?
Preparation
Not really anything to prepare.
Software
Handbrake
Download and install Handbrake. Nothing groundbreaking here. It’s lightweight and easy on the eyes. After it’s installed, run it.
1. Click Browse and select the folder that contains the ‘AUDIO_TS’ and ‘VIDEO_TS’ folders of your DVD rip.
2. Select the Title. (Hint: look at the length of each one listed if there is more than one)
3. Click Browse and select a destination folder for the file-to-be. Make sure to select ‘AVI’ in the bottom drop-down of that Browse dialog window.
4. Pull down the Encoder menu and select XviD.
5. Pull down the Audio Encoder menu and select MP3.
6. Pull down the Crop Select Option menu and select No Crop. (I don’t trust ‘Automatic’ here)
7. Under Size, type ‘320′ in the Width field. Height will be filled in automatically.
Click on the Video tab and follow the next screen shot.
8. Under Advanced Encoding Settings, populate the check box if you want to enable 2-Pass Encoding. Personally, I don’t feel it’s necessary but to each his own.
9. Under Quality in the Avg. Bitrate field, put in anything between 300 and 700. You can go lower or higher, but again to each his own. Zen supports up to a combined audio/video bitrate of 1.0 Mbps so use your best judgment.
10. Under Framerate, select what corresponds with your DVD rip. Generally, movies are 23.976 and most TV shows and television-based material is 29.97.
Click on the Audio & Subtitles tab and follow the last screen shot below.
11. Under Audio Tracks, pull down the Track 1 menu and choose your preferred audio stream. Note: If there’s more than one, look for English (AC3) (Dolby Surround) and select it if available. If you don’t see that option, no biggie.
12. Pull down the Track 1 Mix menu and select Stereo.
13. Under Audio Quality, choose your preferred Bitrate and Sample Rate with the pull-down menus.
Click Start in the upper-left corner and go have a beer. You’ve earned it.
April 12, 2008 at 2:16 pm
13. Under Audio Quality, choose your preferred Bitrate and Sample Rate with the pull-down menus.
Do you recommend the sampl setting of 160/48??
April 17, 2008 at 11:14 pm
when I transfer widescreen dvds to mp3, the black bars appear. Can I change the aspect ratio so my zune screen is full? If so, what numbers do I type under size? (older movies which are not wide screen fill my zune screen perfectly)
appreciate your help, Nicolas
May 13, 2008 at 4:31 am
Can you please do a settings article (or figure out which profile) for the Xilisoft converter?
June 3, 2008 at 4:45 pm
I was abble to convert it but I can´t use foward and backward with this files zen says there is a problem with the resolution of this video, any tip to this problem
Thank you very much for your help