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Seriously...this is crazy.
I just started getting into the whole DVD ripping & encoding thing a few weeks ago and had I not been as an obsessive person as I am, I would have became discouraged after a few hours of trying to get into this stuff.
My task at hand was a simple one...trying to back up basketball games which I record on DVD-RAM discs. In order to do this I learned that I have to rip it, encode it, and burn it. During this process I have encountered nothing but problems. Problem after problem after problem after problem after problem...
I think I've DL'd something like 25 programs, half of which I don't even know exactly what they do or why, but they do some miniscule task which should be done by one big program instead of so many small ones. But they all individually do something and half of them aren't even good at doing it. So I need them.
I apologize, let me start from the beginning. I recorded a basketball game on a DVD-RAM disc. I did a search on a good "ripping" tool and ended up finding Gordian Knot which is really just a bundle name I guess since it contains like 8 programs on its own. I don't even know how to get the robot4rip tool to work so I just stay away from that. I ran into a problem with DVDdecryptor because my DVD-recorder saves video's in one file called a .vro file. So I found out I had to decrypt it in ISO read mode or something like that rather than how the instructions told me to do in a different way. So this all took about a day to understand. Then I moved onto using the main Gordian Knot tool to convert the file.... Then I had to use another program after that for whatever reason. Then had to use VirtualDubMod to do something. Then Nandub to do something else with the audio. This all took about a week to learn and understand and I have alreaddy forgot how to do most of it...that's how complicated the process was.
Anyway, the final file was what mattered. Sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't... It seemed to be random in deciding when it wanted to make a file that worked. So then came the process of burning it to a disc. First I wanted to chop it up a little bit so I could get rid of commercials and so on. So I tried opening it in Adobe Premiere. Key word "tried." When I placed it in the timeline I couldn't get any audio or video. It would work in the source monitor, but just not the time-line. Almost like God himself was trying to stop me from accomplishing my task. So after another day or so of doing some google searches I learned that it was because I used to XVID codec to convert my file. I don't know why that should have mattered et al since the resulting file was a simple .avi which Adobe says it can recognize. But apparently it was another random problem thrown at me. So I just gave up on that process altogether after that.
The good news is that since then I have discovered Nero which has thrown a few problems at me also but at least I don't need so many useless but meaningful programs on here anymore. I found out I can use a thing on Nero to chop the video, then I can make chapters for it, a little menu with a cool background and burn it and bam, there's my new DVD and it even works on my DVD player! w00t.
But now a new problem...
I found out I can make up and use my own menu animations. How cool! But, how to chop up the small animations? I decided I would use a small clip from the game that I am trying to burn. I decide to use Adobe since I don't think I can use Nero's program for this. In order to import the game onto Premiere I had to rename the file from .vro to .MPEG because Premiere doesn't recognize .vro files. Understandable....so I did it. I found the clip that I would use and chopped it and exported it. I tested it in WMP and guess what....no audio. Yay, another roadblock. So now I'm stuck again. After further testing I've found out that Premiere won't recognize any audio except from .wmv's. Another random problem....
I tried using "Besweet" from the Gordian Knot pack to convert the audio but this goofy program does nothing. I'm serious. It doesn't do anything. I've read on this and other forums where people use it. I know it's a conspiracy because this program doesn't to a freak'n thing. I opened it and it asks whether I want to open the Wizard or GUI.....uh, wizard. I click and drag a file into the wizard list thing. I tell it what I want to convert the audio from and to. Then I'm left with a big screen at the top of my minotor that gives me some script gibberish and an exit and save option...........WTF?!? So I opened the other BeSweet GUI program and I can't even begin to understand that thing.
Back to the question at hand though. Is there an easier way to do all of this? Honestly, I have lived most of the better part of the last month on my computer just trying to learn this stuff. I've come to the conclusion that I am either the biggest moron on earth or you really have to know your stuff to be successful at what should be simple dvd ripping/encoding/burning. I have never even spent this amount of brain power and time on a single college course. I feel like I'm on my way to earning a degree.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 16. November 2005 @ 18:49
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