Every Flavour Beans

While the main strength of #1 DVD Ripper is ease of use, AutoGK is a conversion application that allows a lot of customisation of various settings, and is also Free software. Most of the configuration settings have good default values but can be changed to suit one’s requirements(eg: I never go with the default “2CD - 1.4GB” conversion size; 75% quality setting gives me smaller file sizes). AutoGK does everything that #1 DVD Ripper can do, and more, but perhaps with a little more work and less elegant user interface. It’s functionality can be enhanced by installing, optionally, other Free video related software. A step-by-step procedure of a typical conversion process using AutoGK is given below.

1. Start AutoGK from the Start menu.
   
2. The main window looks like this. First two text boxes(step 1) are for the source and destination folders; the following two boxes(step 2) allow the selection of audio tracks and subtitles of preference; left panel(step 3) below these text boxes is for selecting the size/quality of the output AVI file, right panel is for changing conversion settings; and the bottom two panels show the conversion queue and log messages.
   
3. First of all, click the “Browse for input folder/file” button at the far right of the first text box and browse to the folder where the ripped DVD files are stored. Select a VOB file to convert just that VOB file; a track usually spans multiple VOB files, so it is usually more correct to select an IFO file(there may be multiple tracks in a single IFO, in which case AutoGK prompts to select any one track; I don’t understand why it doesn’t allow all the tracks to be selected at one go). If there are multiple IFO files in the folder, select one of them(ISO of the main movie perhaps) and you can repeat the procedure with other IFO files after adding the current job to the queue.
   

   Next, click “Browse for output file” button to the far right of the second text box, browse to the folder where you want the output AVI file to be stored and enter a name for the output file.

4. The most important decision to make in the conversion process is the size/quality desired for the AVI file. AutoGK allows the parameter to be specified in three different ways:
   
   1. Select one of the standard output file sizes(2CDs, 1CD etc), or
   2. Specify a custom size(550MB, 1.2GB etc) and let that size define the quality of the output file;

   

   3. You can also select the quality instead, as a percentage of the original movie quality, and let that define the size of the output file. Be careful of this setting as different DVDs will end up generating AVIs of different sizes, sometimes quite large, for the same quality percentage selected. You don’t want to get disappointed to see a very large file generated after an 8 hour conversion process(AutoGK once converted an 11GB DVD movie - Pride and Prejudice, BBC Productions - to 20GB AVI files after a 50+ hour conversion process!) . For typical 90min/3.4GB DVD movies, 700MB AVI files have decent quality, 1.4GB AVI files have excellent quality and you probably don’t want to go for any bigger sizes than that.

   Once you have specified the Size/Quality of the output file, you can optionally configure more conversion settings by clicking “Advanced Settings” button(you can make AutoGK show still more configurable options by pressing various special keys; see AutoGK manual).
   
   Important ones are:

   • Output Resolution
   • Audio Bitrate
   • XviD or DivX codec
   • Forced or external subtitles(read AutoGK manual for more information)

   After you are satisfied with the settings, Click “Add Job” button to add the job to the queue. Make double sure about the selected settings as you can not edit them once the job is added to the queue; you have to delete the job and add it again with the new settings.

Repeat the above steps to add more IFO files(from the same DVD folder or a different one) to the job queue. After adding all the conversion jobs, Click “Start” button to start the conversion process.

During the conversion process, a lot of windows keep opening and closing automatically, just ignore them.

AutoGK is a very popular application and has a large community to share the many different ways in which the application can be used. If you need much more than simple DVD to AVI conversion functionality, with a lot of configuration options, then AutoGK is the right tool for you. If you would rather use a simpler application similar to #1 DVD Ripper, but without having to shell out money to buy it, then SimpleDivX, hopefully the subject of the next post, is an application worth checking out.