Install the necessary programs: MagicDVDripper, AnyDVD, the Divx Codec, and Virtual Dub (the web site URLs for these products are on this page). AnyDVD will remove the CSS encryption from your purchased DVDs, and Magic DVD Ripper is used to transfer them from the DVD to your hard disk, and the Divx Codec is used to re-encode the files as they are transferred by Magic DVD Ripper. Virtual Dub will be used as a second process to color correct the captured video for best display on the Creative Zen Vision.
Insert a DVD disk into your DVD player. In a few seconds, AnyDVD will pop-up a screen that identifies the DVD. If you don't get this far, you have not installed AnyDVD correctly, or you have not enabled its pop-up notification for inserted disks. Dismiss the AnyDVD message box.
Bring up Magic DVD Ripper. It will find the DVD in its drive, interpret the program contents, and display the following opening screen, proposing the most likely audio and video streams for transfer to your hard drive:
You will have to set the Destination directory and the Output Type, Split Mode, and File name.
Be sure to select AVI (Divx) as the Output Type. The Split mode can be used to create separate files for each chapter. I tried the chapter splits and found that, for most movies, this created too many files -- who wants to have to select a new movie file at each "fade out?" So, Isuggest "Infinite".
Go to the Options/Settings menu. You will see a dialog box as follows:
The Convert tab is the only one of interest, and within that, the AVI tab should be selected. The General Options at the top can be ignored (or set as shown). In the AVI Options, it is vitally important to set all values exactly as shown. The 720x480 resolution may not make sense to you at this point (the Creative is 640x480), but keep the faith, these values are required as shown. Select the Divx code on the Video Codec line, and then press the Configure button next to it. The setting for the Audio Bitrate (MP3) doesn't need to be anything higher than 128 Kbits.
You will now be presented with the Divx Codec configuration dialogs. All three elements of the dialog are combined into one dialog box with three tabs, Main, Codec and Video. Set all entries as shown in the following captures:
Notice, above, that we have selected a bit rate of 1500 kbps. This will yield a file size of about 1.6 GB per 2-hour movie. This resolution is overkill for the Creative Zen, but you might want to save the output files for backup purposes. Don't fight the settings: after you have been successful using these instructions exactly as described, then you can fiddle with them in lieu of getting a life.
The above settings for the codec will yield almost a 1:1 rate of conversion (ie: a 2-hour movie will convert in about 2 hours), using a Pentium 2.4 GHz processor. The quality appears more than sufficient for the Creative Zen Vision.
Remember that we set the resolution to 720x480 in the main screen of Magic DVD Ripper? That is the size that it will pass to the Divx codec. It turns out to be much, much faster to have the Divx codec do the resizing (to 640x480), as specified above. Rest assured that I tried almost every possible setting on this screen, and the ones shown above produced the "best" results. Note: if your original DVD is interlaced (most likely if it is a DVD of a television program), you will have to change the Interlace setting to "De-interlace". If you produced your own DVD from VHS tapes, you might want to select some Noise Reduction.
The end-result of the Video Resolution settings will be to squeeze the original 720x480 image into 640x480, which is approximately what happens when you play the DVD to your conventional 4:3 television. Trust me, these settings will work for almost every DVD you might own. Movies released by Universal, which start off with their "globe" logo, provide a good test of the results. In the vast majority of cases, the globe will come out looking perfectly round -- from time-to-time, your mileage may vary.
Press the Start button on the main Magic DVD Ripper screen, and go enjoy a long dinner. If you get impatient, you can abort the transfer. Whatever has been captured up to that point remain in the output file, so you can check the output results the first time that you try this.
Go to the next page for detailed steps for this part of the process.
The following screen captures give a fairly representative indication of the results that can be achieved by the complete process.
This first capture is what the DVD movie will look like on your computer's display after the initial transfer from DVD to hard disk:
This next capture shows what the movie will look like after applying contrast/brightness/gamma correction using Virual Dub. Notice that some highlights are burned out -- that is a compromise you will have to live with in order to get the best display on the Zen Vision.
This next capture shows what the movie will look like after adding saturation boost using Virtual Dub:
And this last capture shows a mock-up that fairly represents what you will see on your Zen Vision, using 50% brightness on the LCD. This last image shows why we have to over-compensate with the boosted saturation -- the Zen Vision produces an under-saturated image for videos.
Nothing to write home about, but it sure beats lugging 6 pounds of computer or DVD player around on an airplane.
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Copyright 2006 by James P. Smith. Last updated 01/22/2006.
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