I gave up and uninstalled.

———————————————–
Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library
Assertion failed!

Program: …D_Ripper_Platinum\WinX_DVD_Ripper_Platinum.exe
File: libdvdnav/vm/vm.c
Line: 1772

Expression: pgcit != NULL

For information on how your program can cause an assertion
failure, see the Visual C++ documentation on asserts

(Press Retry to debug the application – JIT must be enabled)

Abort Retry Ignore
———————————————–

Pressing Ignore gets the same error again, except at Line: 1671
and a second Ignore gets:

———————————————–
Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library

Runtime Error!

Program: …ty\WinX_DVD_Ripper_Platinum\WinX_DVD_Ripper_Platinum.exe

This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.
Please contact the application’s support team for more information.

OK
———————————————–

The first time through, I got an AVI file that played but had no sound.

So I tried again, only this time I moved the Volume slider up from the default of +2dB to +8 and I got the same error messages and a file of about the same size (I didn’t write down the original size) only this file causes WMP to hang. It will open with DivX Player, but still no sound.

I have tested the same 11 min. 40 sec. VOB file using this program (Win DVD Ripper Platinum), the Aimersoft HD Video given away last week, and the free Dr. DivX. I used the same settings of Audio at 128K/48000 and Video at 900K/sec 512×384.

Dr. DivX took 33 mins to convert the file, Aimersoft took 11 mins and Win DVD Ripper Platinum took 5 mins.

For still images, the image quality of all three is similar, but for movement, the picture quality of Dr. DivX is by far superior to either of the others, so I will stick with it for my purposes. Most of what I want to watch has moving images in it, I don’t do much with slide shows.

Both Aimersoft and WDRP get a wierd edge effect in moving images. I’m sure there is a technical term for it but looks like the motion blur is composed of horizontal stripes that are very distracting. Maybe they would not be as noticeable on a tiny screen but at 1/4 of my monitor I did not like watching those images. When I tried playing the file to my large HDTV, it was worse than annoying.

In this stripes-instead-of-blur effect, WDRP was not as bad as Aimersoft, and it did the encoding in half the time or less, so if that was my choice, I’d go with today’s WDRP. — if I could get sound out of it.

But I’m not going to bother trying to fix the sound because my target for viewing is my living- room TV, and Dr. DivX beats these others so much that I don’t care about the longer encoding time.

It’s been the same with every other one of now eight DVD converters from GAOTD that I have tried. They can all beat The Doctor on speed, but nothing comes close to the quality.

Since I don’t care about portable player formats and my so-far-best method for capture gets me VOB files, I only have one conversion type that I’m concerned about, and one hands-down winner for doing that: Dr. DivX. It’s slow, but it gets me images I can watch on the larger screen.

Thanks anyway, GAOTD, it sounds like this one is useful for some people, but I’ll be removing it.

I hope this helps,
August

When given a Region 2(Japan)DVD of anime, (I’m in region 1) the program aborts with the “conversion wrong, please check parameters” error noted by #7. It does however, work if provided with either a DVD that lacks region locking, or given a set of files, (matching a DVD’s directory tree from the root level) that are already ripped.

Another point for the “good” tally: Although the video on the DVD had been reformatted to match TV viewing, (30 frame/sec interlaced NTSC) this program correctly identified the original anime source as 23.97 frame/sec film, and when given a set of files, was able to correct the interlace artifacts introduced by the NTSC conversion.

I personally found the output video quality to be very slightly smeared. But unless one has seen the 10 megabit/second original from a commercial DVD, or is trying to read credits written in Kanji (Japanese characters), the smeared edges probably wouldn’t be noticed. (Most TVs smear the video far worse)

So I suggest you try it with a DVD to see if your complaint goes away.