Hi All,
I am having trouble with my favourite encoding program - XMPEG wich has started crashing on me.
What program can I use to encode DVD to DIVX with ease? I liked XMPEG’s ability to easily select the size of your movie as well as the automatic cropping features.
Is there a good easy encoding program to do this?
See my post to your other duplicate post.
The two main tools are AutoGK (www.autogk.me.uk) or my personal fave, FairUse (www.fairusewizard.com). Hope this helps!
Beware of the spyware in AutoGK.
I second fairuse. The free copy limits you to a 700mg file.
I just tried about 25 of them and I settled on Magic DVD Ripper 32a. Easy to use for a Noob but a few options to keep control of what’s going on. Plato DVD Ripper came a close second but a well placed BitRate Calculator won out over the preview screen and info display. Many of them are just rebadged by resellers.
AutoGK
What spyware and in which version? 
Ad-Aware and Spybot-S&D detect nothing. 
Spyware in AutoGK is a new one on me too!
Don’t you ever read the EULAs when installing software?
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?&threadid=87056&perpage=20&pagenumber=1
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=91692&highlight=autogk+spyware
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=92221&highlight=autogk+spyware
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=93509&highlight=autogk+spyware
Rarely (basically only when M$ crapware is concerned), thanks for the heads up, removed it now.
No more spyware/adware in AutoGK: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=96337&highlight=AutoGK+1.96
Take a look at XMPEG.
Maybe a little dated, but simple to use.
Right now is in beta, but it’s under development.
I used to play with it when I first started tinkerign with DivX, but AutoGK is a way more mature prodcut with tons of additional features and tweaks.
I use DVD2AVI to make a .d2v file, then AVISynth with “MPEG2Source” to import that. I resize the video to a width of 512x x/x AR. I extract the AC3/DTS audio to 2ch WAV using foobar2000, normalising to -18DB with GoldWave, and then encode to ABR MP3 with LAMEEnc. I then use the Nic’s MiniCalc to calculate the bitrate. The I encode using VirtualDubMod to XviD using 2 pass. If it is a bigger CD I encode fully, and then open again with VirtualDubMod and split using the “Direct Stream Copy” mode.
A little complex, but gives the best results you can get, and it is spot on size (between 697-699 MB every time).
That’s basically the same method that I use. DVD Decrypter to rip the DVD, DGIndex (same thing as DVD2AVI basically) to demux the streams; AviSynth to apply any filters to improve quality or compressibility and to de-interlace, crop and resize the video where necessary; BeSweet to transcode the audio; and VirtualDub to encode the video and mux the streams together.
That’s if I’m using AVI for any reason. I usually use Matroska and use ChapterXtractor, SubRip and mkvmerge in addition to those programs.