The Basics

Ripping in DVD Decrypter is about as easy as it gets!

By default, the program will, where possible, automatically select the source (ie. the DVD drive) and the destination folder (by finding the drive with the most free disk space).

The 'Main Movie' files will have already been selected for you, so you really only have to press that big button to get the ripping underway!

In about 10 - 30 minutes (depending on the speed of your computer / DVD drive) it will finish and you will have lots of nice DeCSS'd VOB files on your hard disk. From there you can choose to watch them with the likes of PowerDVD and WinDVD or you can re-encode them to MPEG1 (VCD) or DivX.

DVD Decrypter keeps a log of pretty much everything it does. Many of you will have seen this kind of thing in other programs - ie. CloneCD.

You can show/hide the log at any point by pressing the 'L' key, or clicking on 'Log' within the 'View' menu.

I suggest you keep it open. It will help you to see/learn what is going on. If you have any problems with DVD Decrypter, you can just send me its contents.

Enjoy! ;-)

Advanced Features

At first, DVD Decrypter might seem like a bare bones program.....compared to an Operating System, I suppose it is! Hardly anybody in the DVD Ripping scene makes money from what they do and I am no exception. I spend lots of my time (on and off) coding DVD Decrypter. A free tool can/will never be as 'functional' as one you pay for. I do however, try my best.

You might recall seeing this on the main page:

IMPORTANT: Advanced functionality can be found in the context menus (Click the right mouse button!)

It seems to me that there are a lot of people out there that dont actually know what a context menu is....hmmm :)
I bet its not that they have never used/seen them before, its just they didnt know that is what they are called.

A context menu is that 'menu' that pops up when you click the right mouse button whilst positioning your mouse pointer over something of interest. Context menus are (currently) available in three places within DVD Decrypter:

• The Source Device ComboBox
• The File ListBox
• The Stream Processing ListBox

Why not take a look at some pictures!

I've never liked programs that are 'in your face' the whole time...that is why I decided to put all the 'extra/advanced' features in context menus. I think this helps to make it look like a more professional program.

If you haven't done so already, why not take a look at what each menu option does! You're more likely to remember that way, than just have someone (ie. me) tell you. :-)

The 'Information' type options combined with the 'Stream Processing' one on the 'File Context Menu' are probably the most 'useful'. You can use the 'Information' options to get a break down of what streams are/should be available within the VOB files. They will tell you (amongst other things) the language of the stream - where appropriate.

Please Note: As with all context menus, their content changes depending on what has been selected. The 'Program Chain/Audio/Video/SubPicture Information' options will ONLY appear when you only have an IFO/BUP file selected. 'Region Information' only applies to the VIDEO_TS.IFO/BUP file. 'Stream Processing...' will only appear when you have 1 or more VOBs selected - and all from the same VTS set.

Stream Processing has been improved from that found in version 2.x of DVD Decrypter. Once the program has finish searching for streams within the VOB files you selected (Note: Only the first one actually gets scanned), you will be shown something like the following:

As you can see, you have the choice of including the selected files in the VOBs you are ripping, or Demuxing them to their own individual files. The two are mutually exclusive. If you stick with the default option of 'Include in VOB', you can also choose whether or not to remap the streams (via the 'Map To' combobox) to a different stream ID. This is used when you want to remove certain streams (ie. Audio Streams NOT in your language) and effectivly have another stream take its place. DVDs typically default to playing stream 0x80. If 0x80 is an English Audio Stream and your native language is French (lets say: stream 0x81), you will probably want to swap the two around.

Decrypt From

This is a new feature in version 3.0.0.15. Basically, it allows you to skip all of the FBI warnings etc that you get at the start of a movie. They're not so much of a problem if you just intend to watch the film from your hard disk, but if you decrypt it with the intention for converting it...from what I've heard, you can run into problems.

According to my sources, some of the bits at the start of a film DO NOT have audio in all languages...this is supposed to cause a problem and it then becomes very hard to get the audio in sync again.

Having looked into it (and with a little help from the author of IFOEdit - Thanks!), I came up with what I hope is the solution. I believe this is should help to make DVD Decrypters output more like that of IFO parsing rippers - but without the need for full IFO parsing.

Basically, having checked the 'Program Chain Information', you will know which PGC is the one that contains the main movie - ie. the one with the longest running time!

Using the 'Matrix' DVD as an example, you can see that PGC 1 has a running time of 02:10:37.03 - and more importantly, that the Cell 1 starting sector IS NOT 0!

In all cases where this starting sector is 0, it makes no sense to use the 'Decrypt From' feature because the output will be no different from that of a typical 'Decrypt'.

'Decrypt From' simply ignores (doesnt write to the disk) all the sectors up until the point known as 'Cell 1 Entry Point Sector' - ie. the start of the actual film - in this case, sector 3648.

Well that is about all I can come up with at the moment....check back now and then to see if I think of anything else!

ISO Mode

Currently DVD Decrypter is the only program in the world to have this feature!

It works like any other ISO imaging tool, only because it is also a ripping/decrypting tool, it is able to offer that little bit more. :) It works in very much the same way as 'File' mode. You insert a disc, and it does everything else for you! All you have to do is click on that big button!

You will need to be running a Windows NT based operating system to use this feature because of the file sizes. A typical DVD disc is about 7 GB. Windows 95, 98 and Me have a maximum file size limit of 4 GB. Houston, we have a problem!

The disc is read off in its entirity, sector by sector. The program automatically removes macrovision from the VOB files (if you have set it to within the setting - this is by default set to 'on'). CSS is, where implemented, also removed, as is the region protection within the VIDEO_TS.IFO / BUP files.

My Toshiba drive takes about 12 minutes to make a complete image.

This ISO file can then be burnt straight to DVD-R (if its less than 4.7 GB - or if they bring out dual layer DVD-R < 9 GB!)
On the other hand, you might just want to watch it from your machine having returned the disc to the video store ;-)
For this, I recommend Daemon Tools. This program has support for DVD ISO images as of version 3.0.
Simply mount the image as a virtual drive, and load up your DVD playing software. It will look/play exactly the same as if it were running from the original DVD. If you have a big enough hard drive, you can make up a library on your machine and save yourself the bother of putting the disc in each time you want to watch it! You can even re-rip from the virtual drive if you need to!

IFO Mode

This has now been fully implemented but I haven't got time to update this guide at the moment. It's all pretty straight forward though, so I'm sure you'll manage ;-)

Ok That all for now!

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