Newbie Section

Don't be afraid to admit that you're new to this stuff... everybody had to start with the basics some time.

First of all you should get a decent PC - although you can use almost any PC to make the conversions it'll just work faster and better and you'll have less overall problems. So get a Pentium 3 or an Athlon processor above 500Mhz, a 20+GB major brand 7200 rpm hard disk - Maxtor and IBM are pretty good - a quality ASUS mainboard - accept no less - 128MB or more RAM, a decent modern graphic card - NVIDIA RIVA TNT and above (TNT2, Geforce 256, Geforce GTS 2) have worked flawless for me, they have about the best driver support and are also very decent 3d accelerators and a decent DVD-ROM - check this page for drives that can be made regionfree. As soundcard I suggest a Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live. The exact type does not matter, they're basically all the same and most importantly they support 48KHz sampling.

Also.. I hate brand computers. I always assemble my computers on my own because they work much better and if something is broken it's easy to find a replacement. Also.. there's no chance of any component being cheap shit and since I decide what components to put in I can make sure that I have good support for everything. If you don't know how to assemble a pc and don't have a friend who would do it then have it assembled in the store.

The next important choice is the operating system: Don't accept anything less than Windows2000. Windows 9x and Windows ME are CRAP!!! Even some Microsoft executives say that Windows ME is nothing more than a toy operating system - check The Register for the story. Besides the operating system you probably want to have a decent DVD player. Both PowerDVD and WinDVD have worked flawlessly for me and therefore I suggest you get one of those. An alternative is the RealMagic Hollywood Plus hardware card.

Now this is crucial: Install Windows2000 from scratch - no updates, no overwriting of the older stuff... make sure your hard disk is empty then install it. Then install the most recent drivers for your hardware - Liveware 3.0 for Windows 2000, the latest Graphic Card drivers, Drivers for your modem, network card, Hollywood+ and whatever else components you may have. It's also suggested that you only have one DVD software player on your computer since they all have their own playback filters and they might screw with each other. Don't install too much software, only the stuff you really need. The more apps you have to more unstable your system gets - although Windows2000 almost never crashes it will get slower and the more apps you have to more dlls, vxds and other useless components you have lying around that might interfere with your ripping software. 

You may also try after setting up your soundcard and graphics card to just install the ripping software - the DivX codec is about the only thing you really have to set up unless you use commercial software like the Panasonic Plugin, CCE, LSX, etc - and then try to make the first rip.

You might also consider making an image of your harddisk so you won't have to reinstall all the time but you can simply put the image back on your harddisk and you'll have a fresh system. 

Ripping

There are certain command line based utils that are being used and described on this site. These utils are: VobDec, mpeg2avi, ac3dec, vstrip, aviac3split, Synch.exe, vidtoasf, decodevob and bbTools. To run these utils you can't just double click on them in Explorer, you will either have to start a command prompt (press Start, Run, command (for Windows98) or cmd (for Windows2000)) and run the program there (usually when you type the program name without any options it'll give you a list of the command line options, or you can enter : "programname -?" or "programname /?" or "programname -help" to make it show all the options. Needless to say that you have to be in the same directory as the program resides. To learn more about command line stuff I suggest you get a good book or just type help and read what it says. The other solution is to use a GUI: Graphical User Interface. For instance VobDec GUI and cladDVD are GUIs for VobDec. There are no GUIs for aviac3split, Synch.exe, vidtoasf, decodevob and bbTools!

The best program to make your rips as a newbie is FlaskMpeg. Set it up exactly as described in my guides - follow them to the letter!!!! - and everything should work fine. Clearly.. when you didn't get a new PC or didn't reinstall Windows there might be zillions of problems. Some of them are described in the FAQ so before asking questions it's imperative that you read the FAQ. A moment ago I was checking the DVDDigest forum again and about half of the questions asked there could be avoided if people would simply bother to read the FAQs that are available on the net and the readme files. Readme files are another very frustrating subject for me. Nobody cares to read them, although that's exactly what they're here for. If you have a problem that is not answered in any of the FAQs - hardly possible - then go to the readme file first before asking questions. Some time you really have to chew thru those files because they're a hard read but if you intend to become a rip pro one day there's no way around that. All the good guide writers out there have read those files!! 

It has happened to me zillions of times that somebody asked me something that was already answered in my guides or that he had a problem because he simply didn't carefully set the program up. Please spare me the frustration and make sure you triple-checked everything before asking any questions. 

Also: From my experience I'd say that at least every 3rd error that happens when somebody is ripping is due to a screwed up configuration. Even Windows2000 requires periodic reinstalls without prior deleting of every file associated with it (so in other words the c:\windows, or c:\winnt directory has to be erased completely). I've been in the PC business for 8 years now and in the old days I had to reinstall Windows 3.1 every 3 weeks or so and now with Windows2000 I'm up to about 2-3 months but I still do it. Some day something is bound to screw up your system. The more frequently you install software the more likely it is to happen. The more hardware you have into your PC the more frequently it's bound to happen. 

FlaskMpeg periodically has some issues like disappearing codecs, plugins not being available, etc. All these errors are being described in my FAQs. I also can't stress enough that although it now works for me, selecting the mp3 codec to compress your audio in FlaskMpeg is a really bad choice. You can try it but as soon as you get an asynch file don't bother anymore but go with raw PCM sound. I've already mentioned it several times in my guides but some people still don't listen. Also: mpeg2avi is bound to get asynch... be prepared to synch manually - which is a time consuming, and very frustrating task. And if we're talking bad choices: Converting the audio to 44.1KHz in FlaskMpeg is also one. And now you should also understand another reason why to use Windows2000: Windows9x/ME screws up with files larger than 2GB, Windows2000 works fine up to about 4GB, sometimes even more. Since raw PCM already takes more than a Gigabyte for a movie and the video only part may be even larger it's important that your operating system can handle that.

Concerning decryption: Use only VobDec and accept no substitute. The 2 best GUIs for that program are offered in this site, they usually work but if they don't you have to do it the hard way, meaning run vobdec in the command prompt. There's a link to the VobDec FAQ in the guides at the appropriate position which explains how to run VobDec in a command prompt. Also make sure that you've read the VobDec readme.txt file when you have to go to the command prompt.

And last but not least: I've ripped more than 60 movies, all successfully synch and in perfect quality at the end. I've even managed to rip films that had changed titles keys in the middle of a vob files, multiangle movies when there was still no multiangle-capable programs out there, etc. The only thing I never did was to rip movie with a MPEG-2 audio or PCM track. I have one of the first kind but none of the latter. I've heard that VOB Tools are capable of extracting a PCM track, but then you have to load it into a wave editor with the appropriate format - apparently it's stored in Network order (Motorola order) instead of Host order (Intel order) then save it as a wav in order to load it into VirtualDub.

That's about what I have to say to you. Take your time to follow all the steps in the guides. It may take you longer before you can start ripping then with other guides but it'll avoid you much frustration.

Good luck

Doom9