Hack Attack : How to Create aXXo Quality DVD Rips
photo credit: ryoichitanaka’s
DVD movies are the best way to pass time while you are at home and have nothing else to do. There are times though when the DVD you rented at the local DVD store has to be returned within 24 hours and you want to watch the movie again and again. In such situations ripping the DVD’s is the best way to go.
If you have been a P2P torrents user for any length of time, I’m sure you’ve heard of aXXo. A lot of people are in love with him and his releases on the internet (including me as well). The quality of his rips are always spot on, and many people have asked me to how he creates such wonderful rips at 700mb which is insanely small.
Sometime in the past aXXo had stopped releasing new movies, and many users were angry. Well you can’t blame him, because he had his own reasons. The purpose of this Hack Attack though is to reduce your dependency on guys like aXXo.
Its as simple as going to a DVD rental store or site, getting the DVD and creating a perfect 700mb DVD rip for the rest of us to enjoy. You don’t need to depend on guys like aXXo anymore.
Without further delay, lets get started with the process, of creating your super small high quality DVD Rip. Here are the tools you will require to get started…
- DVD Decrypter
- Auto GK
- K-lite Codec Pack (if you already have a codec pack installed you can leave this one out)
Install the above softwares, just like you would install any other software, and then grab yourself a cup of caffeine before you proceed. I am going to split this guide into two parts. Lets get started with the first part.
PART 1 : Ripping the DVD to your Hard Disk
Step 1
Fire up DVD Decrypter. It should like the screenshot above. Insert your DVD in your DVD drive and select the appropriate drive as Source, and a folder on your hard disk as the destination with atleast 3-4GB of free space.
Step 2
As you can see in my screenshot, my DVD doesn’t have any region protection, copy protection and RCE protection. It might not be the same with your DVD, and you need to get rid of the protection schemes.
To get rid of the protection schemes, click tools from the menu bar and select settings. The settings dialog should now appear. Now tick the “Remove Macrovision Protection” check box, this will remove the Macrovision flag of the VOB files on the disc. RCE
Protection Region should be set to the region your drive (or standalone DVD player) has.
You can find the regions below :
- Region 1 - 1: U.S., Canada, U.S. Territories
- Region 2 - Japan, Europe, South Africa, and Middle East (including Egypt)
- Region 3 - Southeast Asia and East Asia (including Hong Kong)
- Region 4 - Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean
- Region 5 - Eastern Europe (Former Soviet Union), Indian subcontinent, Africa, North Korea, and Mongolia
- Region 6 - Peoples Republic of China
- Region 7 – Reserved
- Region 8 - Special international venues (airplanes, cruise ships, etc.)
See the following screenshot for a clearer picture of what you are supposed to do.
Step 3
Now that you are done with everything, you are ready to rip the DVD to your disk. Make sure the drive containing your destination folder has enough free space on it. Select all the files on the right column if they aren’t already selected and hit the Start button as highlighted in the screenshot below.
It should complete ripping after a while and you should see something like this…
Yup that is it, you are done with the first part. Now that you have the ripped files on your disk, you can test them on your media player and when you are satisfied you can eject the DVD. Now lets proceed with part 2 of this guide…
Part 2 : Compressing the DVD to AVI format
Open up Auto GK. It should like the one shown above. Basically this is where all the action happens. I’ll guide you through the process of choosing the best settings through to the last step where you can watch your 700MB rip.
Lets continue then…
Step 4
(Click on the screenshots to enlarge)
Locate the input file from the folder you used to store the rips in DVD Decrypter… Here’s how you select the file. In the Open dialog box, select the details view. The input file that we are going to select is an *.IFO file.
As you can see from my screenshot VTS_00_0.IFO has three .VOB files under it with the maximum size, which means this is the movie we’re looking for. Select the IFO to proceed.
Now give the output file, whatever name you need to give by clicking the Output file field.
Step 5
As you can see from the screenshot above, the program lists the available subtitles and Audio tracks. On my DVD there are no subtitles, and there is only one Audio track, so I will select that.
On most DVD’s you have 2 Channel Sound (2ch), Surround Sound (6ch). I’d prefer Surround sound over normal 2 channel if available simply because they sound much better.
Now select the Target (Output) Size. I have selected 700MB here. Generally speaking, higher the size you select, the more clearer the picture is on the DVD will be.
Now click Advanced Settings button to show the Advanced Options window as shown.
Configure the settings as shown in the Screenshot. Choose XviD over DivX because it gives you higher compression for same quality compared to DivX.
Step 6
Now that you have finished configuring everything, just click the Add Job button and the Start button to start the conversion/compression process.
Just grab yourself some coffee, if you have finished the one you took before getting started. The compression process will take quite a while, so you could even have a nice nap meanwhile.
Note : You won’t much activity in Auto GK itself. A lot of programs will load including a couple of command prompt windows, do their jobs and exit. This is completely normal so don’t bother messing around with anything.
That’s it guys! You have made your first aXXo like DVD Rip!
Please share with is in the comments how the process went. I’ll be gald to hear your opinions out.
P.S : I am trying out a variety of settings, so I will write a follow up post sometime in the future detailing them as well.
If you have any ideas or suggestions please share with us in the comments …
42 Comments, Comment or Ping
Mike Ryan
Heh, I love aXXo rips. They are spot on awesome and the fact that his name is now branded upone a method is just cool.
Aug 11th, 2008
David Guinan
Thanks for this always wondered how they get the rips so small my goog quality ones are always well over a gig thank you
Aug 12th, 2008
Multi-Monitor Computer
axxo was the bomb! I wondered where he went. I use DIVX. Anyway, your blog is great! I will definitely be back!
Aug 12th, 2008
Thomas
There is nothing like autoGK as far as ease and quality.
I’m always travelling so there was no other option that backing up all my DVD’s to my portable hard drive, in order to always have my favorite movies with me.
Great guide
Aug 12th, 2008
Chris P
XviD lets you do 2-pass encoding, it takes longer but you get the best picture quality for the smallest file size.
Aug 12th, 2008
saga
It’s nice to have high quality rips. However, if one is doing this themselves why not make DVD-R copies? Pretty much all computers have DVD-R drives these days and the media isn’t that much more expensive than CD-R’s either. Add to that a person can still play it on their comp or their DVD player on a larger screen with minimal compression (if any) needed.
Aug 12th, 2008
David Guinan
Saga: because copying dvds is illegal so technically you cant just sling a blank disc in and if you was going away on holiday and you wanted to take say 10 movies with you and your laptop you would run out of space in your bagage taking 10 boxes or risk damaging them in plastic wallets where all you need is 7 gig on your hard drive and you can carry 10 movies anyway. you may also want to edit or batch movies if your into that
Aug 13th, 2008
Jack
Great post, I can sometimes not find movies for my Media Center PC online, this way I can rent them and still keep it in my Movie library while not losing space or quality, awesome site, every hack attack Rocks!
Aug 13th, 2008
Aravind Jose T.
I used FairUSE Wizard till now for ripping DVDs into Quality-700MB rips.
I’m perfectly satisfied with FairUSE, as it does all by itself.
With that, there is no need for DVD Decrypter.
You just have to select the DVD Drive and set the conversion rules (as we did in AutoGK).
But, the tutorial is nice, and I’ll surely use this, if ever, FairUSE fails.
N.B. A tutorial on ripping DVDs using FairUSE, could be found on my blog.
Aug 13th, 2008
Delighted
Thanks for the guide!
You really helped me out!
Aug 14th, 2008
DanielS
While I too love my xvid rips. I’ve found that using the newer h.264 codec even for normal dvd rips (normal being DVD-R not HD/Blueray which is where the h.264 codec was really intended for) the video quality is far superior. I’ve made a side by side copy. autogk set to 700MB and used Staxrip http://www.planetdvb.net/staxrip/ set to encode a 700MB file and the quality was still better. Like noticably better.
While I still use the Xvid codec when it’s called for via site rules, I encoded to h.264 for my personal collection.
B.T.W. I only used the 700MB setting for staxrip for the side by side comparison I still prefer a slightly larger encode for quality settings and use the mp4 container for compatability with a larger base of devices.
Aug 14th, 2008
varun
Quite a method dude…
I wonder why did u choose to tell us.. U could have been the next AxxO and earned a millions :))
Aug 14th, 2008
ArchAngel
I am curious to know if compressing down to 700mb loses any quality and would a 1080P LCD show these imperfections.
Aug 16th, 2008
FireFox
Archangel, a 1080 vertical lines screen would have to upscale the whole image. In facto you will see ‘errors’ larger. Ofcourse quality is lost. However this is only visible if you really go and compare still images of the same sequence.
Aug 18th, 2008
FireFox
I like this tutorial, really I do, but what about us linux guys? Is there a similar way to compress to h264 in let’s say Ubuntu. I’d be happy to see that:)
Aug 18th, 2008
xroblade
I think you did axxo a favor doing this cause he wont get prosecuted if everyone is doing it. Just like the music industry
Aug 19th, 2008
projectgrafix
Yea man I am also a fan of aXXo and download without reading comments, his name is enough! Thanks for telling how we can make such fine DVD rips, I was thinking to do so but didn’t knew where to start.
Aug 21st, 2008
Dave
In Step 2 you didn’t say what to do if the copy protection comes up with something. For example this DVD i just threw in reads: CSS/CPPM
Any ideas?
Aug 25th, 2008
someguy
Or you could just use DVD Shrink 3.1. . . . .
It’s really simple to use, and I’ve been able to burn any dvd with it.
Aug 28th, 2008
James
Hey! I’m from New Zealand (that little island next to Australia that we like to call a country).
I’m a programmer in Visual Basic and I’m wondering if you’d be interested in me creating a way to automate all of this, hit me back on this. I’ll check back weekly.
Aug 28th, 2008
Cybersupam
This is very simple to use, but still quality gets some way lower than axxo,..In this way axxo is great.
I also use Yasa VOB-AVI converter n select its size to 700 mb,..as well nice tools like Vidsplitter n Divx Converter
Aug 31st, 2008
Cybersupam
Yup again really Vidsplitter is also a free n easy tool to compress VOB files to 700mb avi files. Thats what I found lets us to customise size of the output file, n the remaining it does itself. So give a try to it!
Aug 31st, 2008
Bill Williams
Just use FairUse wizard. It gives you all the tools of the mentioned software, all rolled up in n00b format.
Sep 2nd, 2008
rippr
Yeah that or use Fairuse Wizard
http://www.fairusewizard.com/
Sep 2nd, 2008
shrek412
many many thanx…………..
Sep 3rd, 2008
ClaudioX
How about some Mac software?
Sep 4th, 2008
ONe321
I just converted scary movie 4, the quality is great but there is a probelm with the sound, the film is lagging behind the sound which means that you can hear the sound before you the movie on the screen,
Sep 4th, 2008
Kekabu
i used the autoGk software but the output still not the same like axxo. the quality still lower (sharpness & clear) . usually axxo version got the DIVX logo on the bottom right corner .. mine one dont have
Sep 12th, 2008
Robert
once i have copied the dvd to my hard drive,
can i just select all and burn to a dual layer disc?
or is part 2 an important step?
im not looking to compress, ill be using dual layer discs.
Sep 13th, 2008
Tanay
Thanks a lot for your post, it really helped a lot.
I was wondering that normally the movie is in parts, many VOB and IFO files.
So how to merge them into 1 file like aXXo does?
Sep 14th, 2008
Curtis
@ ROBERT - I have a program called DVDFab, which copies the disc and can burn it all in one step, the quality remains high, so there’s no need for the second step. Try and download the full version from a torrent site. The full version is called DVDFab Platinum. I have burned a fair amount of DVD’s and have never had problems with quality.
Sep 16th, 2008
Michael Garmahis
I doubt that automatic gives you perfect quality, it’s all about tweaking settings.
Sep 25th, 2008
Tarquin
My rip did not have an IFO file, what now?
Oct 3rd, 2008
Zero
Thanks for a great info.
Oct 5th, 2008
Dibyajyoti Deb
pretty nice article up there, i wanna know will leaving anything unchanged in advanced option change the aspect ratio.
How to crop the file to smaller resolution like 640X480 or 546 X 328
Oct 6th, 2008
jade
Hey this is axxos blog
http://axxoreleasetoday.blogspot.com
check it out !
Oct 9th, 2008
Dustin
Nice, I tried it out with one of my DVD’s.. everything went fine except for the audio syncing. In the beginning of the DVD it looks okay but later, the lips of the people don’t go together with what they’re saying.. like a sort of lag between audio and video. I don’t know what’s wrong here. But thanks for sharing.
Oct 28th, 2008
Andy
aXXo actually uses DivX compression
Nov 4th, 2008
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