ebc's MPG/VOB to AVI encoding guide using Gordian Knot

[ebc]

Here is a simple guide written by me, showing how to encode an mpeg2 or vob into an avi (divx or xvid) using Gordian Knot. You can of course use AutoGK but this guide is for if you want to do something a bit more advanced with your encoding and AutoGK just isn't doing what you want it to do.

If you have any questions or problems you can write them in this thread and I'll do my best to help you with a solution.

Eventually I'll do some more advanced guides and get into more areas of Gordian Knot and encoder settings. Also a guide for converting TS files to Avi. But to start off with this is a basic guide on encoding something with Gordian Knot.

Download Gordian Knot from here, you'll need both the Rip Pack and the Codec Pack so that you have all the right codecs for Gordian Knot to use.

I'm going to assume that you have already gotten the vobs or the mpeg that you want to encode already.
So I'll go straight in to the steps needed to encode the file.

First of all you gotta make sure you run both Nandub and VirtualDubMod before running Gordian Knot:


This is to get rid of their annoying messages that come up on the first time you run them. Sorry I can't screenshot it but you'll see it if it's the first time you've run these programs. Close them both Once that's been taken care of and go ahead and open Gordian Knot.

The first screen:

Click Step 1 to open DGindex, this program is used to prepare the VOBS and extract the audio from the video.

DGIndex
Go File>Open and choose the vob file you want to encode. If it's a DVD rip then it might be 2 or more vobs and you'll have to make sure they're all added in order like so:


Skip through the video a bit to make sure it's all there then click File>Save
Project:


When you click Save Project, DGIndex will go ahead and extract the audio from the VOB file and save is as either a WAV or an AC3 file depending on the type of audio the VOB uses.

Once you've saved the .d2v project file in DGIndex, close DGIndex and then open the .d2v with Gordian Knot like so.


A window with the video will appear like so: (with or without the boobs depending on what you are encoding )

[ebc]

Then choose the next tab, Bitrate:


Now choose the type of file you want to encode to, Divx or Xvid:


Then the total size of the file you want to create:

The size you want to make it is all up to you. If it is just a 3-5min videoclip then I would choose a size from 60-100mb for the best quality.

Next, choose the bitrate of the audio:

I'm just going to use 192k MP3 for mine and I advise on the same as it's simple and good quality.

[ebc]

Next tab, Resolution:


Now hopefully you know what kind of format your video file is whether it's NTSC or PAL. Usually you can tell by the framerate down in the bottom left corner next to close. If it's 25fps then it is Pal, If it's 29.9 or 30 then it's NTSC.

Now in the video preview window you need to make sure that you tick view resized so that in the next step you can tell what the output resolution of the video will look like.


Go through the following steps using this image as your guide:


Step 1. Choose the type of video format; PAL or NTSC

Step 2. Choose the Aspect Ratio of the Original Video
This is whether or not the video is widescreen or just normal. Choose either one depending on what looks right in the video preview window.
If it's the wrong ratio it will look something like this:


Step 3. Choose autocrop, this is the best way to get rid of the black borders if there are any.

Step 4. Use the slider to choose the resolution you want to make your avi.
The key things to note when using this slider are:
A. (the resolution of course)
B. The aspect error, you need to make this as close to 0.0 as possible + or - a bit. You can change this also by adjusting the cropping but try to make it as close to 0.0 as you can by using the resolution slider. Also the H-zoom and W-zoom must not go over 100% or you will be stretching the avi resolution bigger than the original res. These will go red if you've made them too high.
C. This determines how good a video will look when it's compressed. Just try to keep this out of the red or your encode will look like crap.
If it is in the red and you really want to use the resolution that you've selected then you might need to go back raise the file size of the output avi.

Before we go to the encoding step there's just one more consideration to make, the following screencap you can tell doesn't look right:

As you can see there's lots of lines in it. This means that the video is interlaced and it will need to be deinterlaced or otherwise when you play the video back you'll see these lines during playback. The next step will guide through what to do about this.

[ebc]

Adding a job to the encoding queue


You'll see this window appear

Here you can usually leave everything as default unless, like myself you need to deinterlace the video. A popular deinterlace script is TomsMoComp and it comes with Gordian Knot so I've chosen it to deinterlace my video before it gets encoded by the xvid encoder.

Now choose save and encode:


You will now see this window:

Here is where you will choose the audio file that was earlier extracted by DGIndex, do so by clicking select.

Then choose the file, it will be in the same folder as where you saved the .d2v file:

As you can see it's an AC3 file. This is the type you'll usually see otherwise it will be a wav file.

The next step is to choose the bitrate and type of mp3 you want to make. I've chosen to use 192k Variable (average) bitrate because I know that it's a long file and that some parts will be quiet and therefore can be encoded smaller. The good thing about Gordian Knot is that it takes care of everything so that even if you choose variable bitrate audio the output video file will always be the exact size you want it to be.
For things like PV's and short clips it might be better to use constant bitrate instead. Also if you want to, you can use Just Mux and instead of actually re-encoding the AC3 to mp3 it will just add the AC3 to the video.

Now choose the first tab this will be either Xvid or Divx depending on what codec you've chosen:

[ebc]

Setting up the video encoder
This step can be more complex but I'm just going to keep it simple.
I'm going to do a 2 pass encode because that's the best way to make sure your video looks good. It does of course take twice the time to encode as 1 pass but it's worth it for movies and such.
Choose the buttons in order as shown:


You can choose a different profile but I've just chosen Home Theatre:


You have to click both the 1st pass and 2nd pass buttons so that Gordian Knot can save the settings that you've chosen for for each one. Even though you haven't really changed anything in this window (you can if you want to and know what you're doing but there's no need):


Finally choose step 3: Add job to encoding queue
At this point you'll be asked if you want to start encoding or not, if you want you can add more jobs to the queue or start the encoding queue later but otherwise you can just click yes encode now.
The first part of the process is the audio encoding:


Once this has completed, VirtualDubMod will start encoding the video:


This will go through for both passes and after it is done then it will join the audio to the video and finally you are done.

You'll notice a lot of files in the project folder. The video file that you made will usually be the largest avi there. The other avi is just the video by itself with no audio. All the other files are just log and settings files created by Gordian Knot. If you're happy with your video you can just delete them.

If you have any problems or your video didn't turn out right or anything at all. Just write them in this thread and I'll try to help you out.  

[Happosai]

That's exactly why i gave up on Gordian Knot a long time ago...  

Because even if you're lucky enough to find a "simple", detailed and yet clear tutorial like yours, THE WHOLE THING IS JUST TOO DAMN COMPLICATED !!!!  :evil:

It's a good tool, but it demands too much implication to obtain a decent looking video with a decent file size...

[shirenuファクトリー]

OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH, EBC!!!!!!!!!  

MY SAYAKA VID TURNED OUT AWESOME!!! NOW TO ENCODE THE REST ^________^

YOU ROCK, EBC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ebc]

That's exactly why i gave up on Gordian Knot a long time ago...  

Because even if you're lucky enough to find a "simple", detailed and yet clear tutorial like yours, THE WHOLE THING IS JUST TOO DAMN COMPLICATED !!!!  :evil:

It's a good tool, but it demands too much implication to obtain a decent looking video with a decent file size...

Like most things, to get good results with a powerful tool it takes practice, time and effort.
Anyone can go and use AutoGK but when you come along to a file that just won't encode propperly or just doesn't look right, then there's not much you can do with AutoGK to fix it.
By using this simple guide a few times, you'll get used to using GK and eventually once you get used to it you'll be able to benefit from the more advanced features it offers.
Actually GK really isn't that hard once you've used it a few times. You'll start to try different things yourself and work out what looks the best.

[frblckstr1]

I will save this guide for the 'just in case' time, but using AutoGK is just a tad simpler I think (only real thing to worry about is what output size to select)

[Lunar]

thx  ebc  my hero  

i just got on prob i cant  select  Home theatre NTSC only some AL@5  

stuff or sumthing liek that

[Asmodai]

Awesome guide, I've gotta try this.

[ebc]

thx  ebc  my hero  

i just got on prob i cant  select  Home theatre NTSC only some AL@5  

stuff or sumthing liek that

Hmmm, can you select any other profiles at all?
I'm not really sure what the problem could be other than that you might have a different version of Xvid encoder that doesn't have all those profiles to choose from.
Maybe try download and installing this one http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Koepi_XviD.htm

See if that lets you choose more profiles.

[Lunar]

thx  ebc  my hero  

i just got on prob i cant  select  Home theatre NTSC only some AL@5  

stuff or sumthing liek that

Hmmm, can you select any other profiles at all?
I'm not really sure what the problem could be other than that you might have a different version of Xvid encoder that doesn't have all those profiles to choose from.
Maybe try download and installing this one http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Koepi_XviD.htm

See if that lets you choose more profiles.

ty for the help ebc   worked anyways  =) everything i just perfect   luv ya for doin this tut

[Saburo]

VERY interesting stuff here.  I've wanted to rip some of my DVDs to share but couldn't get other programs to output good-enuff avi files (missing frames, audio sync issues, etal).  I will reference this for future consideration.

Thanks!

[ohbahsan]

woo i just encoded LCFA 3 using this guide, and it was  much easier than i thought!  thanks a lot ebc

[romi]

I stop using virtualdub/Nandub/DVD2AVI method after I found out about Xilisoft's  DVD Ripper...easy to use and give decent results. The best part is direct vob to avi that I use alot. (You can specify codecs and settings, so you can use DIVX etc.)

Gonna give this a try. This will certainly give better quality. Nice work, ebc! ^^

[RionZ]

this is the best tutorial i've ever seen, i need to try it out as soon as i can. ^_^

[maliciel]

I did my Mogwai encoding with this guide, pretty simple. I did fuck up on the 2nd pass settings once, and had to do it all over again though.

[aimaime]

well written guide indeed. however i have to ask you how long does it normally take for virtualdub mod to encode movie to 700mb? is 14++ hours estimated time considered normal? or is my laptop too slow to encode stuff?

[ebc]

lol, what kind of laptop do you have?
 
but yeah encoding can take quite awhile depending a few things:
 
cpu speed
the resolution of the video being encoded (the higher the longer it takes)
the codec and it's settings.
 
DivX, Xvid, h264, blahblah, they all have different times they spend to encode and the different settings each one has can increase the time taken as well. I remember never upgrading my codec from DivX 5.0.5 at one time cause the next one up for some reason increased the encode time by 3 hours, that was awhile ago and I didn't really know much about it. But now I just use Xvid anyway.