UNOFFICIAL Rifftrax DVD Creating Step-by-Step Guide (Now With Rifftrax Lite)

[BathTub]

Yeah no problems with Cocktail here.

[Dr. Jan Itor]

For those of you who convert your DVDs to AVIs, there is a cool program that makes short work of it.

Auto Gordian Knot is pretty much a one stop shop and automated the entire process.

http://www.autogk.me.uk/

The only thing not included is a program to "rip" the DVD.  But how you do that is between you, Hollywood, and the DMCA

Seconding the love for AutoGK. A useful side-effect of the way it works is that it dumps the audio, as an MP3, for the video into a folder named agk_tmp in the output folder (it also dumps the original AC3 audio for the purists). This MP3 file already syncs perfectly with the outputted AVI. So, if, like me, you want the original and the riffed version available to watch on your PC, you can do the following:

 - Rip the DVD to your HD (*ahem*, obviously only where your local laws allow this).
 - Use AutoGK to create an AVI - I usually go for the 2 CDs option to retain some quality. One hint here - go into "Advanced" and choose "CBR MP3", and set it to 128kbps or so, as the variable bitrate can confuse Audacity and Virtualdub later on.
 - Go away and do something worthwhile with your time while AutoGK does it's stuff - I personally like to continue building my altar to Cthulu out of discarded chicken bones.
 - Come back and you'll have one perfectly-ripped movie.
 - Now start up Audacity and load the MP3 file from the agk_tmp folder and the Riff MP3 amd sync them up as in the guide above - I use Audacity's normalise function on the movie soundtrack and punch the volume up on the Riff by about 3db to help Mike's pearls of wisdom come through more clearly. A quick glimpse at the waveforms will let you see particularly noisy bits of soundtrack, and you can drop them a couple of dbs if it helps.
 - Export the whole lot as a WAV
 - Now start up VirtualDub (http://www.virtualdub.org/), and load up your AVI. Click Video to "Direct Stream Copy", and then click Audio and "Full Processing Mode", then Audio>WAV. Load up your newly-synced up WAV. Then Click Audio>Compression, and choose MPEG-Layer 3, and 48kbps stero (or higher if you want). Finally, click File>Save AVI, give it an appropriate file name, and leave it to do it's stuff for a few minutes, and you'll have a nicely-synced-up AVI with the riffing, and another without (as if you'd want these films hanging around, I'm sure we've all gone out and bought them because there's no way we'd have Top Gun or Point Break already in our collection, no way, not at all, nosiree...)

[SunWuKong]

Ok, I'm a total noob at this.   I DL DVDShrink 3.2 and it's says I need "Nero" in order to burn the movie onto a DVD.  Am I doing something wrong?

NM, problem solved itself. 

[stirrell]

I just followed SuperDragon's great tutorial on creating a DVD (X-Men). It worked great, played wonderfully in my DVD player. But, strangely, trying to play this DVD on my laptop, it stops and stutters. Has anyone else experienced this and know what causes it? I made a copy of the DVD on my hard drive to see if there was a problem with the DVD but it has the same playback issues. Not a big deal as it plays fine in my home DVD player but I was just curious about it.

Thanks for a great tutorial, SuperDragon.

I have also tried to use Premiere Elements to create a RiffTrax DVD. It previews fine but after burning the audio is out of sync by a second or so. The Rifftrax matches the movie audio but the entire audio track does not match the video.

I also have used Creator 8 and it creates DVDs that work fine on my laptop and one DVD player in my house but always gets "stuck" at a certain point in my main DVD player. I am getting Creator 9 soon and will see if that solves the problem. I also heard the encoding quality is improved over 8 (which did kinda stink, IMHO) and Videowave can now read in VOB files which should save some steps.

So far, though, I have found SuperDragon's method to be the best way (and the tools were free!). The quality of the result was great on a single layer DVD.

[SecretAgentSuperDragon]

Yeah Stirell, I know what you are talking about. I think what happens is when you shrink the movie with dvd shrink, in compresses everything down, even the time. So while a movie maybe 2 hours long, on a dvd player, it will show up as 1:30:00 or something like that. It does work fine though in regular DVD players, and even my XBOX. I have tried to play it on the computer, and I find that WMP, Real, and PowerDVD do that stutter thing. I fortunately have InterVideo WinDVD and it does not have this problem when I play it with that. The only thing is it takes a little while to rewind if I wanna hear a funny joke again.

But I would say if it isn't that big of a problem, just stick with the tv dvd players. They seem to work just fine.

SuperDragon out.

[Tarantulas]

For you custom AVI folks out there, I just stumbled on a program the other day called Fair Use.  Has anyone else here used it?  I gave it a shot with EP1 and it make a pretty nice AVI, and even included the force subtitles for the alien languages.

http://www.fairusewizard.com/lang_en/fairuse_wizard_dvd_divx_xvid_backup_tool_light_edition.html

I hear they have a "full" version, but I've yet to check it out...

[DarkFlounder]

Ok, this is considerably weird.

The Matrix:

-Decrypt using DVD Decrypter? Check

-Audio Delay? 0ms.

-Audio Length? 02:10:34
-Video Length? 01:25:24

Help please.

Is file splitting checked under the tools options in dvd decryptor?

I just did The Matrix last night following my guide to a tee and I didn't have any problems. Most problems do occur when you forget to do some thing in the guide (i.e. disabling filesplitting, putting it in IFO mode, setting the video and audio options to demux, etc...) Just try it again and it should be alright.

Your problem sounds vaguely familiar to mine. When I finished The Matrix and Point Break, they both showed shorter film times than the actual movie. But the entire movie played anyway, even when the time said it still had 15 minutes to go when the credits rolled. It was almost like the time on the dvd slowed. There was no technical problem, the video worked great. It was just a little irritating with chapters, but oh well. With Point Break(2:03:00) it ended

I'm having the same issue with The Matrix.  When I recombine the audio tracks with the video, it comes out fine and the audio never loses sync.  However, I'm also trying to integrate subtitles.  Since the subtitles are keyed to the timecode of the original video, they lose sync immediately.

Anybody got a solution to this?  I know The Matrix is one of the most difficult movies to rip properly (I remember in the early days of DVD ripping, The Matrix would actually crash rippers).

[James of LinHood]

Anybody got a solution to this?  I know The Matrix is one of the most difficult movies to rip properly (I remember in the early days of DVD ripping, The Matrix would actually crash rippers).

There are two different editions of the theatrical cut of The Matrix on DVD.  One is the original single disc edtion and the other is the remastered edition with commentaries that came in the 10 disc Matrix box set.  I'm assuming you're using the single disc edition?  If so, maybe the disc in the 10 disc set would be easier to rip.  I'm not saying you should go out and buy it.  Check with your friends and see if they have it.  Also, Netflix might have that version available to rent.

I do have both of those versions of The Matrix but I have not gotten around to burning a synced up Rifftrax copy yet.  I'm still busy trying to balance the audio for my Top Gun DVD.  Still, I'll try to get to The Matrix this weekend and I'll tell you how it goes.

[SecretAgentSuperDragon]

Ok, this is considerably weird.

The Matrix:

-Decrypt using DVD Decrypter? Check

-Audio Delay? 0ms.

-Audio Length? 02:10:34
-Video Length? 01:25:24

Help please.

Is file splitting checked under the tools options in dvd decryptor?

I just did The Matrix last night following my guide to a tee and I didn't have any problems. Most problems do occur when you forget to do some thing in the guide (i.e. disabling filesplitting, putting it in IFO mode, setting the video and audio options to demux, etc...) Just try it again and it should be alright.

Your problem sounds vaguely familiar to mine. When I finished The Matrix and Point Break, they both showed shorter film times than the actual movie. But the entire movie played anyway, even when the time said it still had 15 minutes to go when the credits rolled. It was almost like the time on the dvd slowed. There was no technical problem, the video worked great. It was just a little irritating with chapters, but oh well. With Point Break(2:03:00) it ended

I'm having the same issue with The Matrix.  When I recombine the audio tracks with the video, it comes out fine and the audio never loses sync.  However, I'm also trying to integrate subtitles.  Since the subtitles are keyed to the timecode of the original video, they lose sync immediately.

Anybody got a solution to this?  I know The Matrix is one of the most difficult movies to rip properly (I remember in the early days of DVD ripping, The Matrix would actually crash rippers).

Yeah, I know what you mean. Some of them just work different for others. For instance, Star Trek V and X-Men both worked fine, the correct movie times showed up and everything. Then I did Point Break and The Matrix, and it started having the timing problem(even though the movies still played fine). It could just be a problem per DVD, but I will definitely be troubleshooting it when I do Star Wars. I'll let you know what I find out, if anything.

[MrTorso]

Anybody got a solution to this?  I know The Matrix is one of the most difficult movies to rip properly (I remember in the early days of DVD ripping, The Matrix would actually crash rippers).

If I remember correctly the first Matrix release utilized new specifications that weren't in the DVD specs at the time. I had a first gen player and I had tons of problems with it and had to upgrade my player.

[stirrell]

I am also having the problem with "crackling audio" mentioned earlier in this thread. I didn't notice it with X-Men but after making a copy of Phantom Menace, it is very noticeable - when a ship flies by, for example, the audio noticeably crackles. Would normalizing the audio help, does anyone think? I think it probably happens from the audio being so much louder but that is just an incredibly uneducated guess :-).

I notice that Sound Editor in Roxio's Creator 9 actually reads in and saves out AC3 files so I am going to try to use that on my next project and see if I fair any better. The "ducking" feature in Garageband sounds cool.

[James of LinHood]

I am also having the problem with "crackling audio" mentioned earlier in this thread.

Try converting your ac3 to wav with AC3Tool.  That fixed the problem for me.  You can download it here:

http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=AC3Tool

If you have trouble using that program send me a message and I'll walk you through it.

[JonnyFrag]

Anyone had any luck getting the Matrix to rip properly?
It is the sux0r to get to rip right.
And yes, using the original release, not the box set version, which would probably make this all go away.

[Qrusher14242]

hmm i got mine from netflix and it worked fine. I just used Dvd decrypter and demuxed the audio/video and it ripped fine. What ripper did you use?

[BathTub]

my copy ripped fine with DVDDecrypter