3. Ripping DVDs in H.264 Format
While Windows Media Video is a fine format, the
future of digital video is clearly H.264. In fact, with Windows 7
natively supporting H.264, any previous rationale for holding off is
quickly vanishing. H.264 is a modern, high-quality version of the
MPEG-4 standard, and H.264 videos are compatible with iPods, iPhones,
the Apple TV, the Xbox 360, Microsoft's Zunes, and a range of other
devices. On the PC, H.264 also works fine with Apple QuickTime and
iTunes, and with free media player software like GOM Player (www.gomlab.com/) and VLC Media Player (www.videolan.org/vlc/).
And of course, H.264 video is now compatible with the Windows 7
versions of Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center. (Curiously,
it's still not compatible with Windows Live Movie Maker and Windows DVD
Maker, however.)
To rip to H.264 format in Windows 7, you have a
variety of options. You can use the aforementioned CloneDVD or the very
similar Nero Recode, which is part of the Nero suite (www.nero.com/). Both of these tools work similarly, but for H.264 we prefer and recommend the open-source HandBrake tool (http://handbrake.fr/),
which has wonderful presets that work fine for the PC, Xbox 360, iPods
and other Apple devices, the Zune, and just about anything else that's
H.264 compatible.
Here's how you can rip a commercial DVD movie to your hard drive in H.264 format:
Insert a DVD movie into your optical drive.
Launch HandBrake. (Note that this application should be run with administrative privileges.) This application is shown in Figure 5.
Choose
the VIDEO_TS folder on the DVD. To do so, click the Source button in
the HandBrake toolbar and then the final entry in the pop-down menu.
(It's the one below DVD/VIDEO_TS.) HandBrake presents a Reading Source
dialog while it gets information about the DVD movie.
Once
this process is complete, HandBrake tries to guess which title is the
correct one to rip, but you can manually choose the correct title on
the DVD via the Title drop-down menu, as shown in Figure 6.
Generally speaking, the main DVD movie you want will be the longest
video on the disk. Select it if it isn't already auto-selected for you.
Click
the Browse button next to the File text box in the Destination section.
In the Save As dialog that appears, navigate to the location on the
disk where you'd like to save the resulting file. Then, give it a plain
English name and click Save.
NOTE
Typically, H.264 video files utilize the.mp4
file extension. However, if you choose any of the Apple-oriented
presets described below, HandBrake will use a more iPod-friendly.m4v
file extension instead. This is fine: the underlying file isn't any
different and.m4v files work just fine with Windows 7's Windows Media
Player and Media Center, and with the Zune and Xbox 360 as well. (Of
course, these files—and normal.mp4 files—work fine with all Apple
hardware and software too.)
Select
a preset from the list of Presets on the right of the application
window. While you could choose a device-specific preset such as iPod,
iPhone, or Xbox 360, it's best to simply choose the Universal preset,
which encodes videos at a very high resolution (typically 720 × XXX or
higher). These files are excellent for archival purposes, but they also
offer excellent compatibility between iPods, iPhones, the Apple TV,
Zunes, the Xbox, and, with Windows 7, the PC. You can choose optional
video settings by clicking the Video tab. For example, you can enable
two-pass encoding to obtain a somewhat higher-quality video file,
though such files also take longer to rip (twice as long, in fact).
In
the Picture Settings tab, make sure "Automatic" is selected under the
Crop section. This ensures that the movie is cropped to the correct
aspect ratio.
Finally,
make any other changes you might need. For example, you can visit the
Audio & Subtitles tab to change the audio track or add subtitles.
Note that subtitles are hard-coded into the movie file, so only add
them if you really need them.
Click the Start button to begin encoding.
H.264 video encoding, like that of WMV, is very much
dependent on the performance characteristics of your PC. A decent PC
with a dual-core CPU should be able to rip a DVD in roughly half the
time it takes to watch the movie. (That is, a two-hour movie can be
ripped in about 60 minutes.) Newer quad-core CPU-based PCs can rip DVDs
in as little as 30 minutes, however. The more processor cores you have
at your disposal, the faster it will go.
Once you've created a movie in this
fashion, you can copy it to another PC, an Apple or Zune portable
device, or a digital media receiver (including the Xbox 360 and Apple
TV). You can also use it in Windows Live Movie Maker or Windows DVD
Maker projects.
