How to convert DVD into Avi, Mkv, Ipad/Iphone/Ipod, DVD and PS3 format

Step 1: Select the Video

Each format has a choice of different resolution (Low res, HD...)

NB: Cuda or appears in profile list only if Nvidia Cuda graphic card is detected and installed, and enables faster conversions

Please note that if you bought a license for DVDtoDVD, you will only be able to access this output format. All other formats will be available as Trial versions only.

Then, insert the DVD disk with or select the file from your hard drive, by doing a drag and drop of your file or by clicking on the blue square icon to upload it. You can also upload an ISO file.
* If you have inserted a DVD disk and it is protected, you will need to have a decryptor software running at the same time in order to convert your DVD. There are a couple of decryptor tools available, but we recommend AnyDVD. You can also check out this mini guide about Disk protection removal.
When you open the software you will see the main interface.
Start by inserting the Blu-ray disk with or select the file from your hard drive, by doing a drag and drop of your file or by clicking on the blue disk icon to upload it.
* If you have inserted a Blu-ray disk and it is protected, you will need to have a decryptor software running at the same time in order to convert your Blu-ray. There are a couple of decryptor tools available, but we recommend AnyDVD. You can also check out this mini guide about when a disk is protected.

The structure of the video will be checked and the Blu-ray will load into the program:

The entire content of the blu-ray will appear. If your video has a bonus, it will also be shown in this window.

Select the video files (main movie, bonus...) you wish to convert by ticking the square in front of each entry.
To access the audio and subtitle selection + Video edition options, click on "star" icon at the right of the main title.
The window with the selection of available audio and subtitle tracks for this video will be listed. Select the tracks you want to test, and play the video in the player on the right.

The player serves the purpose of checking that you have selected the right video, the right ausio and sub track. Once you're happy with your selection click OK

If you chose DVD format in the next step, you can chose any number or audio and subtitle files. They will not be embedded in the video and you'll be able to select them via the media player or with the remote control of your DVD player.
If you chose Avi, PS3, Playstation, Iphone, Ipad or Xbox as output formats you will only be able to select only one video, one audio and one subtitle track. The subtitles will be embedded in the video so you'll not be able to remove/hide them while watching.

Step 2: Choose your Settings

Note, if you don't want to bother with the technical details , skip this and click straight on the CONVERT button

Click on "Advanced settings" at the bottom on the left of the window
The Settings screen will appear. Please note that the DVD and MKV output offer extra options, please see below:

1. General Settings

The Output Folder indicates the location where the
Maximum simultaneous conversion: indicate how many simultaneous conversions can be made, incase you've got more than 1 titleset. The max number of simultaneous conversions the you can select is determined by the number of cores in your hardware.

Minimum free memory: indicate the minimum of free memory that you want to keep while the converter is working, if you want to do additional tasks on your PC during the conversion.

Conversion priority
If you are doing other tasks at the same time on your computer you can set the priority level in which your computer will treat the conversion in order not to slow down your other tasks or to prioritize the conversion instead. Generally, it is best to run ConvertXtoDVD without any background tasks going on.

Two-pass encoding
Blu-ray Converter encodes the video with a variable bitrate, which is best for quality, using a customized Constant Quality encoding method. This means that if a scene is "complex" (with fast movement), the encoder will reserve more space for this part of the video than for simple scenes (static) with less information (elements).
The more/longer the video you want to put on a DVD, the lower the average video bitrate must be, so it is more important to save some space during "slow" or static scenes to provide more space for "fast" action scenes. In the two pass mode, the first pass has the job of reading, analyzing and taking notes of the video file in order to get an overview of the whole video file including specific information about scenes. The second pass has the job of doing the actual encoding. When the second pass starts to encode, it has for each frame the value of the complexity (including other information such as motion vectors, ...) determined during the first pass. So, the encoder is capable of distributing the bitrate exactly where it is required, taking the whole movie as reference. Audio encoding is done in second pass.
If unticked/unchecked)then the software will use the Single pass encoding: The encoder doesn't know the complexity of the scenes because they were not yet played. So, averaging the bitrate must be done within a small portion of the video (a few seconds). Thus, it may occur that if a complex scene arrives, but to maintain the average bitrate over the slice of video considered, there is not enough bitrate available to handle the scene, thus giving artifacts.

Additional encoding information
So, whether you select single or double pass the average final bitrate for video will be the same, however inside the movie the distribution of that bitrate may be different - it is not completely different as single pass. Often it is ok for most of the time to allocate the proper amount of bitrate when it is really needed;
however, slight differences may occur especially when the encoded movie is long. The quality difference will be visible mostly when there is fast action scenes, double pass will tend to produce less square artifacts than single pass.
In summary, single pass provides a default fixed bitrate reserve which evolves as the encoding occur. In two-pass the bitrate reserve is maximal in each frame as it is allocated taking the whole movie into account; but when there is not enough bitrate in reserve, then CQ encoding has to be dropped, so
"normal" VBR is used.
Due to the intrinsic behavior of the FFMPEG encoder, when the average video bitrate is above 5 Mbps (quantization factor is 1 for Short project), the benefit of the two-pass tends to be smaller. However, if the bitrate is below that, then two-pass will result in more frames encoded with the smaller possible Q (smaller is better, Q=1 is better as Q=2). Also when the DVD is not filled to the specified target size, the quality difference between single pass and two-pass is minimal, so two-pass probably is not necessary.
Note that the average video bitrate for Short project will always be higher than Medium and Long project, largely in part the project length is short.
Additional information about 2 pass : http://www.afterdawn.com/glossary/terms/multipass.cfm

2. Video

You can also select the quality according to filters, this parameter will affect the conversion speed: the highest the desired quality, the longer it will take to be converted.

The DVD Video tab show options for DVD output only. Menus can't be added with other outputs.
will show the Menu and Audio settings. You will be able to select the menu of your choice, and enter the preferred options for the behaviour of the video and menu.
The second option (right red arrow) will show the chapters settings. You will be able to decide how you want the chapters to be implemented: as they're already set in the source file, or set an automatic generation (and indicate the frequency), or no chapters at all.

If you have selected MKV format, you will also get a different screen, but with the chapters settings only.

For other formats, chapters and menu cannot be added.

Chapters

Chapters can only be added to DVD and MKV outputs.

3. Output File Settings

Only if you wish to burn your conversion to DVD, select the max target size, i.e. the size of the disk you will insert. If your project is big, you might have to use a double layer DVD (DVD9) to burn on. For Avi and Mkv formats, you can also split the conversion over two disks

The Output folder is the location where your converted file will be saved. You can edit the destination if you wish.

Quality helper

Underneath you can see the Final quality indicator: this will give a good idea of the overall quality of the output file, depending on the project size and the DVD used (as set right above).
The project size depends on the file itself, if bonuses/subtitles/audio track have been added, so you can play around those parameters to reduce the size of your project if needed.

4. Burn Settings (only if you wish to burn to DVD)

Click on "burn settings..." to access advanced burning options:

Select the burner if you have more than one, and indicate the burning speed (we recommend to always use the lowest possible burning speed for best results) , edit the name of your video if you wish
Customize the burning parameters, like erasing rewritable disks without warning, opening the DVD tray at the end of the process and selecting the write method.

When you're done with all your settings, hit the Convert button and that's it!

Step 3: Video Processing

The conversion will start automatically:

This preview allows you to watch the conversion process.

Step 4 (optional): Burning

DVD, Mkv, PS3, Xbox and AVi formats can be burnt to DVD.
If you haven't inserted a DVD in your burner, and if you want to burn the file to DVD, now it's time to do it.
If you insert a DVD RW, it will be erased and formatted first.
The burning process will start automatically

You can also decide to burn the conversion later, or burn another copy. To do this, click on the "tool" icon at the top right hand corner, select Tools and Burn an already converted DVD video
Then select your video in the window that opens, insert a DVD and you're done!

Step 5: Process completed

If you chose the DVD format, you'll get a video readable on your DVD player (for MKv or Avi format, make sure your player play these formats) or PS3/Xbox/Playstation depending on the format chosen, with an outstanding quality!

Enter your license

You can try the free trial which will be limited to 10 minutes of conversion, but once you've bought the software, here is how to enter the key:
Click on the "bolt" icon on the top hand side, and click on "Enter registration key"

For more info on how to enter the license key, please read this.

When you open the software you will see the main interface.
Start by selecting the conversion format for the output, you have the choice between DVD (for making copies), Avi, PS3, MKV, Xbox and Apple devices: Ipad/Iphone and Ipod.:

Then, insert the DVD disk with or select the file from your hard drive, by doing a drag and drop of your file or by clicking on the blue square icon to upload it. You can also upload an ISO file.
* If you have inserted a DVD disk and it is protected, you will need to have a decryptor software running at the same time in order to convert your DVD. There are a couple of decryptor tools available, but we recommend AnyDVD. You can also check out this mini guide about Disk protection removal.

The entire content of the DVD will appear. If your video has a bonus, it will also be shown in this window.
Select the video files (main movie, bonus...) you wish to convert, as well as the audio and subtitle tracks, according to the list offered on the original DVD.
Please note that depending on the output format you choose, you might not be able to select mutliple audio or subtitles :
If you choose DVD format, you can chose any number or audio and subtitle files. They will not be embedded in the video and you'll be able to select them via the media player or with the remote control of your DVD player.
If you choose Avi, PS3, Iphone, Ipad or Xbox as output formats you will only be able to select only one audio and one subtitle track. The subtitles will be embedded in the video so you'll not be able to remove/hide them while watching.

To make your selection, tick the box on the left of the entry.

When you're done, click on "Next Step"

Step 2: Choose your Settings

The Settings screen will appear. First you need to select the kind of output profile you want: for our DVD exemple, you have video standard PAL for Europe, NTSC for the US, and screen size, 16/9 or 4/3.

NB: Cuda appears in profile list only if Nvidia Cuda graphic card is detected and installed, and enables faster conversions.

If you chose the DVD format, click on "Advanced Settings" to get the list of special features available:

You can create a DVD, and chose a template for this menu.
You can also choose how the DVD will be behave when played: loop playback, etc
There is also an option to convert the audio (AC3, Mpeg...)(leave it as automatic if you're not a pro :-)
And finally, you can decide to add chapters or not

DVD video settings

If you chose the MKV format, you will be able to add chapters only.

Now let's take a look at all the settings available on this window:

1. Video Quality
The highest quality you select, the more room it will take on the DVD. Check the conversion advisor (see below) to make sure the conversion will fit on the DVD if you choose high quality.

2. Output File Settings

Only if you wish to burn your conversion to DVD, select the max target size, i.e. the size of the disk you will insert. If your project is big, you might have to use a double layer DVD (DVD9) to burn on. For Avi and Mkv formats, you can also split the conversion over two disks

The Output folder is the location where your converted file will be saved. You can edit the destination if you wish.

3. Quality helper

Underneath you can see the Final quality indicator: this will give a good idea of the overall quality of the output file, depending on the project size and the DVD used (as set right above).
The project size depends on the file itself, if bonuses/subtitles/audio track have been added, so you can play around those parameters to reduce the size of your project if needed.

4. Burn Settings (only if you wish to burn to DVD)

Select the burner if you have more than one, and indicate the burning speed (we recommend to always use the lowest possible burning speed for best results) , edit the name of your video if you wish
Customize the burning parameters, like erasing rewritable disks without warning, opening the DVD tray at the end of the process and selecting the write method.

Oce your selection is made, click on Convert

Step 3: Video Processing

The conversion will start and you will be able to monitor it with the preview.

preview

Step 4 (optional): Burning

If you selected to burn to DVD once the conversion is over, you will only need to insert a blank DVD and the burning will start automatically

It's as simple as that !

You can also decide to burn the conversion later, or burn another copy. To do this, click on the "tool" icon at the top right hand corner, select Tools and Burn an already converted project
Then select your video in the window that opens, insert a DVD and you're done!

Step 5: Process completed

If you chose the DVD format, you'll get a video readable on your DVD player (for MKv or Avi format, make sure your player play these formats) or PS3/Xbox depending on the format chosen, with an outstanding quality! For the Apple formats, all you need to do know is load it onto your Iphone/Ipad/Ipad with Itunes.