A guide to encoding, part three (Key terms & Dealing with .ISOs)

A quick note before I begin: words in bold are "key terms" - common encoding words that I am not expecting the readers of this guide to know the meaning of. If you hover your mouse over those words, you will see a definition of the word written by me as well as a link you can click on if you would like even more information.




Now that you have the required programs downloaded and installed, you are finally ready to begin. For this guide I will be showing you how to encode from an .ISO file first. If you don't already have one, here is a new-ish torrent to an .ISO file of the limited A DVD of S/mileage's second single on the Hello! Online tracker.

Things will start to get messy if you aren't careful, so I suggest making a new folder on your desktop somewhere and copy the .ISO to that new folder. Right click on the .ISO file and use either 7zip or WinRAR to extract the contents.

(Click for full size image)


Usually two new folders will appear, "AUDIO_TS" and "VIDEO_TS". The AUDIO_TS is always empty, so you can safely delete it. If you don't have an AUDIO_TS folder (as is the case with the Ganbaranakutemo limited A DVD), then don't worry about it. Open the VIDEO_TS folder, and start MeGUI.

In MeGUI's menu bar, click on "Tools", then "File Indexer".



In the VIDEO_TS folder, you want to find the file titled "VTS_01_1.VOB".  

• NOTE: Every single .ISO you encounter will be named similarly. In bigger .ISOs (such as concerts), there will be multiple .VOB files named VTS_01_2, VTS_01_3, etc. You don't have to load each file, just VTS_01_1.VOB. MeGUI will auto-load the rest. 

In the newly opened File Indexer, open VTS_01_1.VOB. Make sure "Select audio tracks" is selected and the audio is checked and click "queue".



A little status window will appear telling you how fast MeGUI is working, how much time is remaining, and many other things.



That status window will appear every time you tell MeGUI to perform a task and is very handy when you want to see when your video will finish encoding.

After MeGUI is done (it should take no longer than a couple of seconds if you are using the S/mileage .ISO above), two new windows will appear - a video preview, and a window with a bunch of customizable settings (called Avisynth Creator).



This is where things get complicated. Luckily you have me. Continue reading part four to learn what settings to use in Avisynth Creator.