
  Power Ripper by Anonymous Coder.
------------------------------------------------




 * Notice:
-----------
This program was created for the sole purpose
of converting non-copyrighted DVD material
into a more manageable format for internet
previews and small-scale reviews.

Distribution of copyrighted content is
strictly prohibited.





 * Introduction:
-----------------
What Power Ripper does is control PowerDVD's
screen capture controls in order to easily
extract small movie snippets into either a
BMP series, or through the Microsoft AVI encoder
into any AVI codec stream.




 * Requirement:
----------------
+ PowerDVD v1.3 -> 2.0.
+ All the PowerDVD hardware requirements.
+ Nice AVI codecs (links below).





 * Codecs:
-----------
+ MPEG 1,2 :
  http://www.darvision.com

+ MPEG 4 (on-demand producer) :
  http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/default.asp

+ Motion JPEG (MJPEG) :
  http://www.jpg.com
  http://www.mainactor.com
  http://www.morgan-multimedia.com
  http://www.pmatrix.com/

Note:
The MPEG-4 decoding codec that comes with the on-demand producer
is CRAP!  To get the updated decoder, you need to install the
new Media Player (v6.1 or better), then find the file
"MPG4DS32.AX" in the x:\windows\system directory.   Move the file
to a different directory, and trying to play an MPEG-4 file will
force the media player to fetch an updated decoding codec for
MPEG-4.  The latest decoder codec for MPEG-4 at this time is
version 4.00.0.3688.  This version supports all sort of
properties such as CPU adjustments, brightness, etc...
It also supports hardware overlays which makes it MUCH FASTER!





 * Usage:
----------
First, load PowerDVD.

Load up any DVD movie, seek to the start
of the movie and press the [Pause] button.

Tip: You can pause then move the track back
     and it will remain paused at the beginning
     of the track.

Load up Power Ripper select how many frames
to capture (DVD movies are 24fps, so each
24 frames means 1 second).

Tip: Menus, Trailers and Bonus footage is usually
     in TV type formats, which means that they are
     30fps for NTSC and 25fps for PAL.

After seeking to the wanted DVD location, you
need to select the destination size (only works
for AVI encoding).

You can either use Ratio scaling or a Custom setting.

There are 3 ratio modes,

1. Half resolution
2. Third resolution
3. Quarter resolution

Using the custom mode you can select any resolution,
just make sure it is smaller than the original content.

You can right-click the user interface to
get a selection of some of the more popular
custom resolutions.

There are some issues when using ratio
scaling, the MPEG format for example doesn't
like image widths that are not dividable by 16.

The AVI field allows you yo select a file name
for the generated AVI file, do not use the
".AVI" extension, it is included automatically.

The AVI will be created in the PowerDVD screen
capture directory, make sure it's defined correctly
or the program won't at all.

By unchecking the "Encode to AVI" check box, you will be
able to capture to a series of BMP files. A new edit box
will appear, allowing you to enter a base name for the
BMP series.

Using the widescreen cropping option, you can specify
how many lines to crop off the top and bottom of the
ORIGINAL image (not the target resolution).

When using a custom resolution, you can set the
"Vertical Adjust" check box in order for the target
resolution to keep it's proportional aspect.  Otherwise
the image will have higher scan line count and will
appear  stretched (A bit like an anamorphic source
image for DVD).





 * Speed:
----------
Power Ripper automatically switches
the active process over to PowerDVD,
this speeds up the conversion process
considerably.  Make sure PowerDVD is
the active application for maximum speed.

I got around 180 frames per minute
on my P2/300mhz using MJPEG encoding
at maximum quality (which looks great
btw, but is rather big) using 352x240
resolution.

That's around 8 times slower than
real-time conversion.

I don't think speed can be improved
by much, basically, a faster CPU will
will improve the conversion speed.

Tip: Minimize the PowerDVD display
     window to gain a bit of speed.





 * Quality:
------------
For the best video quality, get the
MPEG-4 codec from microsoft, set the
crispness to 100, the bit rate to 950
or so.

A 90 minutes movie including 16bit,22khz
mono audio (using the crappy microsoft
ADPCM Audio codec) at full resolution (24fps)
takes around 550mb which is pretty damn
cool, and the quality is quite well.





 * Troubleshooting:
--------------------
Some codecs require a picture width
that is dividable by 16.  These mainly
include MPEG and MJPEG codecs.

Specifying an incompatible width will
either display badly, or will give an
error when trying to encode.


Clipboard capturing is hardly stable,
i do not think there is a way i can
do it any better than what i am doing now.

I am actually hooking into the clipboard
notify stream, and capturing it's content
whenever it notifies me new information
is placed there.  But still, it may crash,
especially if your computer is doing
other things beside capturing at the time.


The widescreen cropping option can not
accept the total height of the image
(after cropping) to be less than the
output destination, doing so will crash
the program.


You must disable the Hardware Acceleration
checkbox in PowerDVD or it will disable
screen capturing on cards that support
acceleration (ATI cards and such).





 * Feedback:
-------------
If you have any comments or questions, 
feel free to log into #pcdvd on efnet,
people there may use this program and
might answer your questions (or not).
