OK, I had it honestly.
My last computer was a 2002 imac, and I thought it was too old to handle the DVD technology.
So I got a 2009 macbook.
I saw "Old Dogs" and I thought I download it for my mom to watch, and add language subtitle(non English speaker). In case you wonder why not wait for the DVD, its because not even the DVDs released with a translation. Kind of like Selling Chinese movies with no dubs or subtitles in Walmart, get the idea?
Downloading is my only choice. After Trying to put it on DVD, it was so difficult to put the subtitles and the movie.
My DVD won't read the non-latin letters as .srt once I rip the movie in .avi as a file.
So bought software called Submerge that will put the subtitles over the movie and make them 1, I was impressed with the results, it only took like 1 minute to produce a whole new movie file but it was .mov .
No dvd will read that, so I had to re-encode it(1 hour, fans of the laptop went nuts) using toast, and finally the quality of the DVD was noticeably degraded, its easy to see. The DVD couldn't handle it. I do not understand why.
The movie was only 1.5 hours long, which is average, and the file itself is 700 mb, I do not understand why it had to degrade it.
If you were to copy a movie from a DVD it will take like 1 hour to rip, and its like even longer if you want exact copy. Why is this so difficult, this is '96 technology which is the era of N64 when it was top notch graphics. Why current computers can't handle it easily.
How can those people that pirate DVDs do it, I can go to a local store and he would give me like a dozen copies. That each movie took 1 hour to rip!? DAMN . The ones they have are subtitled too.
Why can't my DVD read subtitles in .srt but can if the DVD was original it can?(some DVDs are sold with local language subtitles but hard to find)
DVD piracy, how do they do it?
Re: DVD piracy, how do they do it?
The reason why a DVD player will display subtitles in any given languages is because the subtitles on the DVD are images which are sequenced in a special way to enable compliant hardware and software to display said subtitles regardless of any other factors. When ripped those subtitles are usually OCR'd to regular text which is then saved as one of a number of subtitle formats (usually the text plus timing codes, or as witnessed on anime fansubs some formats allow for custom positioning on the movie frame to accomodate for credits and lyrics etc). The reason why an MPEG-4 compliant DVD player won't display non-Latin characters is because it doesn't support the UTF charset. To test this, open the SRT file in Notepad and save it using UTF-8 encoding (make sure the extension isn't changed to .TXT). Of course this SRT has to match the AVI movie and I take it you can display subtitles on the PC correctly? You can try subscene.com for a large collection of readily made subtitles, that software they market to newbies is mostly a scam. Rename the SRT to the same filename of the movie (e.g. Movie.avi, Movie.srt), burn it on disc and try it on the DVD player. No promises it'll work as it is most likely your player lacks support for non-Latin characters. If you don't mind wasting a good DVDR you can always use software to convert an AVI file into MPEG2 and let it burn the resultant encode along with the subtitles to DVD.
Of course you can just hook a laptop to the telly to play the original DVD and download the subtitles of your choice rather than deal with all that nonsense
As for why ripping takes so long, it's basically a procedure of applying complex algorithms to a digital stream to convert said stream from format X to format Y, usually to reduce it in size for distribution purposes. The reason why piracy skyrocketed during the first years of the noughties is because a) People got better bandwidth and b) The MPEG-4 AVC and ASP specs are so advanced that even at lower bitrates the encodes look quite close to their source material. This is why DivX was at one point called the MP3 version for movies.
Of course you can just hook a laptop to the telly to play the original DVD and download the subtitles of your choice rather than deal with all that nonsense
As for why ripping takes so long, it's basically a procedure of applying complex algorithms to a digital stream to convert said stream from format X to format Y, usually to reduce it in size for distribution purposes. The reason why piracy skyrocketed during the first years of the noughties is because a) People got better bandwidth and b) The MPEG-4 AVC and ASP specs are so advanced that even at lower bitrates the encodes look quite close to their source material. This is why DivX was at one point called the MP3 version for movies.
Thy ban hammer shalt strike 
Re: DVD piracy, how do they do it?
can you connect your comp to the TV as a second monitor ? that's what I do. I also found DVD burning a pain in the ass. so now I just use the TV as a second monitor. all my movies are stored on an external HD. I use VLC to watch movies which will load .srt files if I need them.
Ocelot, did it again...sorry Boss !
Re: DVD piracy, how do they do it?
Try this: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/XviD4PSP to hardcode subtitles, XviD4PSP is free and easy to use, set Format as AVI, Video encoding to any Xvid option (I'm using Xvid HQ Turbo) add subtitle file and encode your AVI, for me encoding takes about 13-15 minutes, you could also try to encode to MPEG2 for better quality.
Re: DVD piracy, how do they do it?
He's using a mac, that's mostly the problem. Maybe it could be run using parallels.Harambaša wrote:Try this: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/XviD4PSP to hardcode subtitles, XviD4PSP is free and easy to use, set Format as AVI, Video encoding to any Xvid option (I'm using Xvid HQ Turbo) add subtitle file and encode your AVI, for me encoding takes about 13-15 minutes, you could also try to encode to MPEG2 for better quality.
Re: DVD piracy, how do they do it?
I missed that!Anapan wrote:He's using a mac, that's mostly the problem. Maybe it could be run using parallels.Harambaša wrote:Try this: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/XviD4PSP to hardcode subtitles, XviD4PSP is free and easy to use, set Format as AVI, Video encoding to any Xvid option (I'm using Xvid HQ Turbo) add subtitle file and encode your AVI, for me encoding takes about 13-15 minutes, you could also try to encode to MPEG2 for better quality.
should have read it more carefully.Re: DVD piracy, how do they do it?
I do have XP on this system, I can use that...
But the app named Xvid4psp,
Can I get a .avi file, hardcode the subtitles to it in something like 10 min without losing quality?
that will be amazing
so far, connecting a laptop to the TV is the easiest option I guess.
I was thinking about connecting iPod, thats even easier. I can transfer
the file to the iPod then connect it to the TV
But the app named Xvid4psp,
Can I get a .avi file, hardcode the subtitles to it in something like 10 min without losing quality?
that will be amazing
so far, connecting a laptop to the TV is the easiest option I guess.
I was thinking about connecting iPod, thats even easier. I can transfer
the file to the iPod then connect it to the TV
Re: DVD piracy, how do they do it?
I stopped reading at "I watched Old Dogs." lol
Re: DVD piracy, how do they do it?
Any real change to the original video format or content will take time for quality output, there's no way around that except having a much faster CPU and Hard drive. There are codecs that work fast, but either look bad or make a huge file, then there are codecs that look good but have to completely read through the file 2 times to make the quality and file size decent those ones take a lot of CPU power because they decompress the video, analyze it thoroughly, then recompress the video into a much more advanced format than DVD's use (Mpeg2). Every time an operation is done on the video the quality will degrade because of subsequent re compression. The only way to avoid unnecessary quality degradation is to work on the file nearly uncompressed. The drawback to that is the file size can be over 50 Gigabytes while it's being worked on.