Although movies stored in DVD format are high quality and can be ripped or copied to a consumer’s personal computer, they are bloated in size (3-9 gigabytes per movies) and have weird or obscure file naming conventions. By converting a DVD to AVI or other formats, before storing on a computer or portable hard disk a significant space savings can be obtained and the file naming can be tailored to meet personal preferences by the end user. A popular open source project supported on the Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X platforms, the application is capable of converting DVD to AVI format is the DVDx project which gives end-users the capable to not only rip DVDs but include personal preferences in the newly saved file.

Steps to Convert DVD to AVI

Step 1 – Download the current DVDx zip file to your computer from the Sourceforge repository and extract to a working directory.

Step 2 –Double-click the “DVDx Setup” file and follow the default menu prompts to install the program on your computer. Linux users will need to ensure to download the Debian package and Mac OS users the Mac version of the installation package.

Step 3 – Run the DVDx software after installation is complete.

Step 4 – After the program window loads, insert the DVD to rip or convert into the DVD drive of your computer. The program also supports ripping DVD files saved to the hard drive of the computer. Use the program’s file chooser to select the DVD file. The “Open IFO” menu option is used to choose DVD files saved to the computer’s hard drive.

Step 5 – Choose the file selected in the resulting pop-up window and then select the movie to encode from the resulting pull-down menu. The root menu and file for each movie to encode on the DVD will need to be selected. Some DVDs will have multiple movies on the same disc.

Step 6 – Ensure an audio track is displayed in the Audio section of the DVDx display to be converted along with the video.

Step 7 – Click the “OK” menu button and select the “Settings” and “Output Settings” dialog box.

Step 8 – Change the output format to “AVI” and select an audio compression method. The “Lame MP3” is the preferred option for AVI output with MPEG as a secondary alternative.

Step 9 – Select the “XviD” video codec in the drop-down menu and then select a screen size or resolution for the encoding. To support wide screen monitors the 720 x 576 format (16:9 screen ratio) is the appropriate choice with 720 x 544 (4:3) for normal displays.

Step 10 – Select the “Whole” menu option next to the “Max Frame Number” menu label and other settings may be left at the default settings.

Step 11 – Toggle the maximum file size to “Infinite” in the “Output Settings” menu option and then choose the “Apply” menu choice.

Step 12 – Select the “Destination” location for the converted file located under the DVDx file menu and then click the “Record” menu button.

Step 13 – Enter a file name in the dialogue box when the recording is completed and then click the “Save” and “OK” menu buttons to complete converting the DVD to AVI format.