Well I'm a little new to all this but I did mange to get 136 minutes onto 1 CD however I don't know if I lost the KVCD quality or not. I think I did. I used this method to rip http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdbackup.htm . I used the 120 minute KVCD NTSC template {I think) and the mpg file ended up being 955mb. Too big for a CD. I used TPMGE to do a cut and when I did I noticed that both files were only 688mb together. Now I'm not sure I did this right because I used MPEG 1 (automatic) from the drop down menu. Or should I have use the non-compliant VCD? Anyway, I decided to do one big cut of the whole movie using automatic and the file ended up being 688mb. Burned to VCD using Nero and got the whole movie on 1 CD. Picture quality was that of VHS.
Is this a good method. I can live with the quality. I'm going to try the 2 CD DVD quality template and see how that works.
Any comments?
Tim

Hi Tim,

Start here: http://www.kvcd.net/guides/kguide/kvcdguide.htm

-kwag

Whoaa! That's alot of reading. I'm not sure I can use that method as I only have about 4 gigs of HD available. I'm learning.
Tim

I think that is not enough.

Maybe 10GB will be more or less safe.

Its like this...

You have to rip the VOB to you HD. so thats roughly 80% of the original VOB.
Then you use DVD2AVI to frameserve it. It will create AC3 File or WAV file which is really big. Maybe another 30% of the original VOB.
Then you do the Audio Conversion to make mp2. But this is not too much because you can remove your wav after this process.
Then you have to encode the video part. Which is roughly 700mb to 800mb.

There you are...

I hope this helps...

Well, I've been using the above mentioned method which directly rips to a Mpg file. Rips in about 4 hours and takes about a gig or more for the whole process. Works great for me though I hear it might be hard on your DVD drive. Any horror stories out there? I just bought the DVD drive for $43 so it will be under warranty for a while. I just don't have the space to do it any other way.
Tim

Don't even bother using DVDx. The design concept is excelent. The functionality is absolutely the worst I've seen. You'll probably notice that we don't even use it here, and there are no forum areas for it

-kwag

Thanks for the advice. With only 4 gigs of HD available, aside from buying a new HD I really don't have any other options, or do I?
Tim

Sadly, no . You won't be able to do KVCDs with all the filters and stuff. You really need to rip your DVD to a hard drive to use all the advanced features

-kwag

I tryed to make *.d2v file for standard not encripted DVD disk ( loaded vob files directly from disk to DVD2AVI v1.76) . resulted d2v file already points to vobs on disk . Leaved disk in dvd drive , load d2v to TMPGenc via avisynth file and processed as usual .
Guess what : IT WORKS !!!
U can try the same !
I hope it'll work for u too .

bman

Interesting. Well, basically what I'm doing is using DVDx to load the dvd file and serve it to TMPGE via avisynth. I've got DVDx using 300mb of my HD to cache the vob files. When I start encoding, DVDx has the DVD drive throw 300megs of vob cache to my HD than serves it to TMPGE via avisynth and TMPGE does the encoding. If I use one of TMPGE's VCD templates, the whole process takes about 5 hours with a 1.2 athlon. So what's wrong with my method here? Does DVDx just suck at serving? Am I actually using two encoders when I use this method? Quality wise, they come out looking great on my 19inch computer monitor but a bit like VHS on my 32 inch TV. I tend to get a lot of pixelation in dark areas. I may try your method if I can figure it out. I've only been doing this for four days now.
Tim

Hi Timster !
"My method" isn't better then with DVDx ,it's just different approach to the same prob.
I've tryed that too and I can assure u that my best encodes are done with the same method .
If u have some pixelation or blockiness on dark areas than maybe u should check codecs on ur system . If u check close than u'll find some blocks on non dark areas too .
If i'm right then check if u are not disturbed by msyuv.dll .
This dll is trouble maker on some systems (Win98,WinMe) .
And generally , I think that there isn't the universal "BEST" method :
KVCD temlates are THE BEST of THE BEST , SansGrip filters are just close to PERFECTION .
If u fill comfortable with the method this guys are suggesting to us and it works for u than use it else u just stick to u'r preffered method

I hope helped a little
bman