How To: Rip/Encode a DVD, Convert to AVI, Get Video Info, and Share Online

This is written to assist in being able to do everything needed to share your movies and/or become a uploader. Even if you do not share there will most likely be some type of info you can use yourself in this tutorial.

I will show you how to Rip a copy protected DVD (for backup purposes), Covert that rip to AVI(To save space on the hard drive), Check the AVI Movie File to get the Video Info, Split the AVI up into parts using WinRar, make screenshots of that AVI, upload necessary images and upload the Rar files to a file sharing site.

Anyways, let's get down to it...

First your going to need to learn how to Rip a copy protected DVD. If you know how to rip a full dvd and rip just the main movie as well move on to Convert to AVI.

How To Rip A Copy Protected DVD.

There are so many applications that can do this but many do not do this too well or you have to use several different apps just to get the dvd files onto the computer. What a hassle it can be to use several different apps especially if you have never used one of them before. Sometimes it is necessary to use several apps in certain instances.

The old method I used to use was the DVD Shrink to DVD Decrypter method. But, sadly these two applications are no longer updated so with new copyprotection techniques put into play these tools won't do the job with many DVD's anymore. But, They are still useful tools they just aren't updated anymore for the newest protection schemes.

Anyways, the application that I curently use is "DVDFab 6". Why? Because it will remove all DVD copy protections, like CSS, CPPM, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs, ARccOS, RipGuard, FluxDVD, CORE X2, etc. and will support any new DVD protections as they appear. It can do so much more than just removing copy protections as well, but if you wanna know more about that then just go to the products main site or check out the link above to see all the features it includes.

Rip A DVD With DVDFab 6

I'm now assuming that you have a copy of "DVDFab 6" installed and working on your computer. If not then get yourself a copy and come back.

First things first open up DVDFab 6 (double click on it) and on the bottom right click on "Start DVDFab". Then on the left locate DVD to DVD and click on it. Click on "Main Movie" You will see something similar to this below.



Now get a DVD ready you want to Rip and put it into your DVD Rom Drive. After a few seconds this box will show up below.



Select the DVD disc's region code from the list and click "OK". Now a box will pop up and begin to read the information contained on the disc. The box looks like this.



It will take a while to read the information but when done it will look like this.



Now if you want to just save the movie and none of the menus and extra features read on but if you want to rip the full DVD then skip down to "Full Disc Backup".


Copy Just The Movie

Now with the screen I showed you in the pic above it looks pretty daunting doesn't it!?! No worries I'll walk you through what to do.

First you want to select the main movie. This will usually already be selected for you. Notice in the pic that one angle is selected. This is what you want to do yourself. Next for the audio you don't want everything selected because you want to have the smallest size possible when on the harddrive so when you convert to avi you do not loose as much video quality do to too much audio.

What you want is "AC-3/5.1". Take the check mark out of the other boxes and only have a checkmark in the box specified. Next you will see "Subpicture" this is the subtitles. These can be ripped along with the video and audio but are only useful if you wish to include them in a hard subbed AVI file.

You will see the term hard subbed used on forums at times and this simply means that the subtitles are always visible during the movie even when you don't want them. In this case deselect all.

Now select the place on your hard drive that you wish to save the raw DVD data from the DVD to... in this case i am saving it to the desktop in a folder called "detroit rock city". A important note to make here
involves the size of the raw data that your going to rip from the disc. If
this is greater than 4300MB then DVDFAB will try to compress it to fit on
a single DVD. In the case of wanting to convert this to AVI later you
will want 100% untouched data files to work with.

So if the raw data is more than 4300MB select DVD9 from the dropdown menu. You want the quality to say 100% as you do not want any compression.

Note: Most movies require you to select DVD9 as most contain over 4.3GB of raw data that is required to be ripped to your hard drive.

Now that you selected the main movie and audio track you want then click "Next" in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Then simply click on Start on the next screen and wait for DVDFab to rip the raw DVD data files you selected.

NOTE: These data files are commonly called .VOB files which are MPEG-2 program streams with additional packets containing navigation and search information.

You will see that the time to complete the Rip is displayed at the bottom in the pic below. So you can minimize the application if you like and do something else....



Once DVDFab has completed ripping the data close DVDFab as you are finished with this application. Now let's move on to Converting to AVI.



Full Disc Backup

Now if you just want to make a full disc backup click on full disc. Then select a target to save the DVD to your harddrive.

It's best to make a new folder to contain the movie. Now make sure there is a check mark in the "Copy DVD-Video (Video_TS Folder)". Now at the bottom there will be a dropdown box with DVD5 and DVD9 then next to it you will see Quality and the Size of the disc in MB.

A lot of movies will be bigger than what will fit on a DVD5 disc but you can shrink the movie to fit onto one. But, the quality will go down...Most of the time this isn't even noticable. If you want a full backup of the original disc get some DVD9's but I just go with shrinking.

Click "Start" and the process of saving the movie to your hard drive will begin and will take a extended amount of time depending on your processor speed, RAM and what not.

After this is finished. Go to "Write Data" and under "Source" locate the movie folder on your hard drive. Then inside that folder locate the "Video_TS Folder" click on it. Then click ok. Select the region of the dvd player that you are going to be playing the dvd on and click ok. Now insert a blank DVD disc into your DVD Drive.

Then select your drive from the "target" then click start. The process of burning your movie will start. When finished put it into your DVD Player and enjoy.



Converting To AVI

Here is where you will re-encode the .VOB files you just ripped into a much smaller AVI Movie File while retaining as much quality as possible.

How will you do this? With a free application called "AutoGK (Auto Gordian Knot)".

I'm now assuming you got yourself a copy and it is installed and working. If not get yourself a copy and come back.


How To Use AutoGK.

First things first open up AutoGK (double click on it). Once opened click on the "Input file: folder" in the upper right hand corner.



ow select the folder where you saved the data DVDFab ripped from the DVD disc. Open the movie folders until you come to the folder which contains the "Audio_TS and Video_TS" folders. Select and open the "Video_TS" folder.

Now you see the .VOB files we ripped from the DVD disc with DVDFab. Select the file named "VTS_01_0" it will look like this below.



Then click open. You have now loaded all .VOB files into AutoGK which automatically includes the other files listed in order after "VTS_01_0", Up to and including "VTS_01_4". You will see the movie information highlighted red in the pic.

Which will tell you the DVD resolution is 720x480, the aspect ratio is 16:9 and the length is 1 hour 34 minutes and 43.25 seconds long.



Note: this pic above is what I will be referring to when I say a color and pic in the text to come...


Now select where you will be saving the completed AVI movie file to once it has been converted by AutoGK. In this case I selected to save it to the desktop in the "detroit rock city" folder I created earlier.

Note that the file is going to be saved as a AVI file by AutoGK highlighted with blue. Now select an audio track to include with the movie, in this case I ripped two, but the way I told you to do it there should only be one so that would be the one you will be using. Highlighted purple in the pic.

You will also see subtitle tracks in the right of the purple highlighted box. If you select one of these it will be hard subbed onto the video picture and permanently on the movie so don't select any unless you have a reason for doing this, such as a foreign audio movie which has optional English subtitles you want to include with your completed AVI movie.

Now you will select the Predefined size of your completed AVI output file which is highlighted green in the pic. A good rule here is to select 1CD(700MB) Which will fit on a single CD if the movie length is approximately 2 hours long (I like to choose 1/6 or 1/5 myself). If over that then select 2CDs (1400MB). I myself tend to choose 1/3 DVDR if the movie is over 1 hour and 50 Minutes but the choice is all yours.

What all this means is deciding how good the quality of the movie will be. The more you compress the .VOB files, the greater the loss in picture quality will be.

The reason why you shouldn't convert every movie to 2 CD's or 1/3DVR and having a extremely high quality on every movie you rip and convert is because most people who rip movies, do it so it can be uploaded to a file sharing site such as Megaupload, Rapidshare, ect... and then can be made available for others to download and enjoy.

The larger the file to download the more likely it will get passed by because nobody wants to download a movie using 1.4GB of their own bandwidth when they can download the same movie file that is half the size and the smaller ripped version is still a quality that can still be enjoyed.

If you are not concerned with how popular your posted movie uploads are then rip everything to 2CD's or 1/3DVDR as the quality will be much higher and some peeps like that and do not mind downloading the extra bit.

If you want to earn points for rewards from one of the file sharing sites I would suggest that you keep the movies as short as possible while still keeping a good viewing quality.

Anyways, now that you selected the predefined size you would like to use ...next click on the "Advanced Settings" button which is in yellow in the pic. A new box will open which looks like this.



In here you choose the qualities of the completed movie file you will have. First select the "Output resolution settings" choose "Auto width". This will allow AutoGK to decide the most appropriate resolution taking in account all the other settings you will choose. Until you are familiar with the many options of AutoGK I suggest you use this setting.

Now lets move on to "Codec". The codec is the compression method used to convert the .VOB files into the AVI file format. You should use Xvid as it results in a higher quality movie than what is produced by DivX and as you may have noticed Xvid is a more preferred choice for most people downloading movies.

Now for the "Subtitle options". Put a check in the box for "Display only forced subtitles" as this option will burn subtitles that are in English audio movies with scenes involving a foreign language.

If this box is not checked then a part in the English movie with a foreign language where you are meant to see subtitles will be left out. If there is no subtitles in the English audio having this box checked will not make make any difference...So keep this box checked.

Last but not least is "Output audio type". Your completed AVI file will be made up of 2 main input files, one the video and the other the audio. Since there is a limited output size the more space you make for the audio the less you will have for the video picture. This is why you shouldn't let AutoGK decide the audio for you which is "Auto". You want to use MP3 sound and select either VBR or CBR. VBR will result in a bit of a higher audio file size so you should use CBR. Now you must select the kbps audio rate.

The higher this is set the better the sound quality will be, but the higher you set it the more the file size will be for the audio in turn decreasing the quality of the video. What you wanna do is set this as low as possible without affecting the audio quality noticeably. The number you want to choose here is 128kbps. Do not go any lower than 112kbps or the sound will distort on playback.

Now that all this is done click "OK" as you are done with the advanced options. Now your back at the main display for AutoGK.

Before you move on there is something that needs to be done. With the DVD movie in your drive... open the movie up through a media player. Start the movie and get to the end where the credits start to roll. Pause the movie when the ending credits start to roll. Such as the pic below.



Note the time...Which for this movie is 1hour 28 minutes and 54 seconds. Write it down in a text document such as notepad as we are gonna be using this. Some movies only have a couple minutes of
credits but some have up to 8-9 minutes of credits included. Also go to the complete end of the movie and note the full running time of the feature film. In this case I got 1:34:43 you will use this later.

The reason for getting this time is so you can compress this section of the movie much more than the actual main feature film itself. You wanna do this because you want to give as much quality to the finished AVI file rather than wasting MB's on the end credit's. You could cut the credits out completely but some peeps like to see the credits.

Also some peeps will notice that your file does not match what movie info sites such as IMDb say it is which in turn may lead to replies from people wanting to know why your movie does not match up to the original retail version. It's best to leave the credits in tact do to this.

Now that you have the time it's time to move on. Go back to AutoGK.

Once back to the main display... On your keyboard press and hold the "Ctrl" key and then press the "F9" Key. Now if you thought the "Main Movie" screen in DVDFab looked daunting then AutoGKs "Hidden Options" will look even more so. As like before I will walk you through what to do. Below is a pic of what the"Hidden Options" looks like.



It is very important you do not touch anything unless I tell you too. Notice the highlighted red area, this is where you will be putting in the time for the end credits.

First off put a check mark in the box labeled "Encode Credits with different setting". Now where it says "Frame Calculator" for Hrs:, Min: and Sec: put the time of the end credits that you took note of in the appropriate boxes. In this case for this movie I would put 1 in the Hrs: 28 for Min: and 54 for Sec:. Now for the "Framerate:".

This is very important so be careful here or your movie will goof up. If you are ripping a DVD that is NTSC source then you would choose 29.97fps. If your country uses PAL then choose 25fps. Just make sure that you pick the number which matches the frame rate of the retail DVD that you ripped the data from. NTSC=29.97PAL=25.

Now locate "Quality" and set this to 10%. Finally click on the "Calc" button and you will see the actual frame number where the end credits start. This is where AutoGK will change it's compression from the movie to only allow 10% of the quality of the original end credits. The credits will still be watchable but you will see a drastic drop in the picture quality when the compression kicks in.

Now one last thing to do here is to uncheck the boxes in the highlighted black box in the pic if they are checked in the first place. Once completed doing all these steps click on the "OK" button.

Now you are back on the main display of AutoGK. Click on the "Add Job" button followed by the "Start" button. Both in which are highlighted in the box in the pic below. You will now notice that the empty log window is now filled with information and will continue to scroll with updates as AutoGK encodes the movie.

This can take a extended amount of time depending on your processor speed, RAM and what not. It usually takes anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours depending on how long the movie is and from the settings chosen.



Once AutoGK has completed converting the raw data of the DVD into an AVI format movie file you will see in the folder which you chose to save to 3 different items.

One being your completed AVI format movie file, another being a notepad log file and a temporary work folder. Remove the work folder and the log.

Now this is where you would think that I would congratulate you....

But, we are not done yet as we need to look at the properties of the
AVI movie file to make sure everything went well.

In order to do this you will need to get a small freeware utility called "AVI2Clipboard".  

Using AVI2Clipboard

Download and Install. Now in any browser locate "File" note: you will most likely find this on the upper left hand of the browser. Click on it then select "open" for internet explorer then browse to where the AVI file is located and right click on it, and locate AVI2Clipboard put your cursor over it and then select "View AVI Information".

For firefox click on "Open File" and browse to where the AVI file is located and right click on it and locate AVI2Clipboard put your cursor over it and then select "View AVI Information".

What you will see is in the pic below. I've highlighted parts I want you to check to see what AutoGK converted the .VOB files into. You want to make sure the file size matches up to what you selected so in this case I selected 746MB and it matches. Next you want to make sure the "Video Length" matches the original movie file length. 1:34:43 is what I got for original time, it is off by 6 sec. In this case what I would do is open up the AVI file and check to see if it is in sync. If it is then all is well, in this case AutoGK added a little more time to the ending of the movie. Next you want to check the "Resolution" In this case I got 608x272 which is a good overall size for TV viewing.



The last box has the most important information of all...The Quality Factor. You may have noticed this figure listed with some movie uploads posted. This basically is how much fine detail the movie has. The lower this number is the worse the movie will be when viewed on a large screen such as a TV. Anything less than 0.185 B/px is not the best when viewed on a larger screen.

You will see in this case the quality factor is 0.245 B/px which is very good. So in this case you can see that trusting AutoGK to pick the resolution settings automatically works fine. It's best to try to aim for 0.200 B/px or more in general. Some 2 cd rips can be well over 0.300 B/px and are extremely sharp on a TV. Now if you chose a fixed resolution for the movie lets say 700 you would see the quality factor drop drastically. It would be like watching a CAM or TS version. Not good at all.

Now if everything looks good then Congratulations!!! You successfully made a AVI movie file...

Now make sure to go back to where you saved the raw DVD data that you ripped with DVDFab and delete this as well. Why? Because both files are pretty large and if you rip a lot of movies you will fill your hard drive with a crapload of .VOB files unless you delete them after they have been converted.

Note: Only remove the raw DVD data after you have confirmed the "AVI2Clipboard" data.

This part of this tutorial is huge but in reality the more you get familiar with the apps above the more simple it will become each time.

Now that the most difficult part is all finished with it's time to move on to the simple part. Since you have a AVI movie file now you need to know how to share this with others. What you will want to do is split the AVI up into parts so it is easier to upload to a file sharing site later. There are several ways to do this but I'm going teach you how to do this with WinRar. Get yourself a copy if you haven't got one.

Split The AVI File UP With WinRar.

I'm assuming you have a copy of WinRar installed and working. If not get yourself a copy and return.

Now what I want you to do is go to where you saved your AVI Movie File. I want you to create a new folder. If you do not know how to do this simply right click on the page and select "New" then "Folder" (pic below) Name it what the movie is called. Now move your cursor over the AVI Movie File, left click on it hold the left click down and drag it into that newly created folder.



Once done doing that open up that folder. Create a .txt document which could read anything. Such as the AVI Movie Files video information from "AVI2Clipboard" or you could just say "If you downloaded this movie a simple thanks would be appreciated" or say that this was ripped and uploaded by you. Just put anything, then add this document to the folder. I myself create a NFO saying what is included, that it was ripped and uploaded by me and ask for a simple thanks. But, a text document is fine. After finished doing this close the folder.

Now open up WinRar (double click on it). It should look something similar to the below image.



Locate "File" Click on it and select "browse for folder" double click on it.



Now browse to the Movie folder open it. The movie folder I'm talking about is the one in which you named the title of the movie way back when using DVDFab. In this case it would be "detroit rock city" This folder will have the folder I had you make with the AVI Movie File and the text document. That's if you followed my suggestions thus far. See the pic below...You want to click and highlight the first folder then click ok.



Now highlight the folder I had you create by clicking on it. Then Locate Add and click on it.



The Archive name and parameters menu will open up and look like the pic below. Locate "Archive name" in this case it is named "Detroit Rock City.rar" by default it will name it the same. just with .rar at the end.
What you want to do is change this name to something that will not be easily picked up by search engines and will not let anyone know what is contained within. This helps ensure when you upload to the file sharing sites your files will most likely not get removed.



In This case I would name it something like DERoCI.rar Only I know what this is and the only way anyone would know what this is...is by downloading all parts of the file and extracting or by me telling what it is in the description of the thread I will create. Does that make sense? Name the movie to something only you will know unless you let peeps know what it is.

Anyways, now for "Archive format" select rar, then for "Compression method" select normal - best. I myself choose best as it will usually compress 10% better. Now under "Split to volumes, bytes" you want to type in the size in bytes that you want to split the folder into. In many cases if you want to earn points from megaupload or rapidshare then you would want to split the folder into 100MB parts. as anything bigger you will not earn any points. Points accumulate and then you can redeem them for premium services or other things. 100MB = 104857600 bytes....

So anything less than that if you want to earn points is a must for what you would put in that box. I tend to go for a unique number...a size different than what many would use as this will help to keep your files from being deleted.

Select a unique size that suits you. Now just click "OK" and the process of splitting your folder will start. A box will show up telling you how much longer it will take for WinRar to split your files.



This time will depend on your processor speed, RAM and what not. For me it usually takes around 15-30minutes. Once finished WinRar will save the files it creates to the same folder by default.



There you go just like that you now have your folder split up all ready to be uploaded to a file sharing site such as megaupload, rapidshare, hotfile, ect... The choice is yours, but first there are some things to know when making a thread to share what you just created. You will want to include a DVD Cover image, which you can find by doing a simple search in a search engine.

You'll also want to include information of the movie which you can find at IMDb as not everyone knows what a movie is about. It's always a good idea to give the Movie information which I told you how to do with
"AVI2Clipboard" as knowing the quality matters to many. And last but not least you will want to include screen shots of the movie as this helps people to decide if they want to download the movie.

So now I'm going to tell you how to make a screen shot of the movie.

Making Screen Shots

There are many applications around you can use to make screenshots of your movie. Such as: Image Grabber II, Video Snapshots Genius, Windows Media Player Classic ect...Some of these applications can be quite a hassle to set up or require you to install more stuff just to use the software. Then after you install everything needed to find out that your OS does not support the application in the first place...I think that's just a pain in the ace...

Anyways, the application I'm gonna tell you how to use is "Video Snapshots Genius". I've used this with "Windows XP 32-bit" and "Windows 7 64-bit" and works wonderful. It supports Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Win7. The program supports almost all popular formats, such as MPEG, AVI, WMV, DivX, Flash video (*.flv), RealMedia, QuickTime, DVD and can open a video without any other player for preview playback.

This is a bit of a hard application to come by I must say. So get to searching....When you find a copy come back.

If you want to try "Media Player Classic" instead for screenshots scroll down to "Take Screenshots with Media Player Classic".



I'm assuming you got yourself a copy of Video Snapshots Genius installed and working. If not get yourself a copy and return.

Now open it up by double clicking on it. It should look something like this...



Locate "File" and click on it. Then select "open", Locate the Avi file that you created and open it up or just click the "Open" button and locate your avi file and open it. Once open you have some options. You could Manually capture images from the movie yourself or do it Automatically.

I'm going to show you how to do it automatically. First click on "Automatically" now under "Capture Method" You have two options.. Capture (however many) shots from open file or Capture a shot every (how ever many seconds). Select the first option. Then select let's say 16 shots from opened file. Now you could select a "Start Time" which I actually preferr myself. I tend to set it around 00:03:00 depending on where a good screenshot of the movie would be.

Now don't worry about any other settings as I'm just teaching you the basics. Now click on the "Capture" button and Video Snapshots Genius will start to take snapshots of the movie. There will be a processing screen that will show up telling you the progress in a%. Check the pic below.



After it has captured however many shots you specified they will show in the box to the right as so in the pic below.



Now after all the snapshots are taken. Your now gonna want to locate the "Thumb" button and click on it. The "Make Thumbnail" window will pop up as in the below pic.



Open the player>>go to view, then options>> go to playback "output"
click on it>>Locate "DirectShow Video" check "System Default" >> Click OK

Close the player and reboot the system for what you just did to take affect.

NOTE: Without doing the above you will get a error when trying to take a screenshot. So Do It!

Take Screenshots with Media Player Classic:

Now, open the player again>>Go to "file" and open a movie file. Now pause the movie>>Go to "file" again>>now select "Save Thumbnails".

Select a folder in which you want to save the screenshot.

Now on the bottom of the new window go to "Thumbnails" Put how many rows you want then how many columns you want. 5x4 works.

Now go to "Image Width" and select 800 pixels. Give a file name and save as type Jpeg.


There you go, simple as that.

Note: screenshots will contain some movie info on the upper left of pic. Which can be pretty nice.

Just thought to share another way to make screenshots, as you may like doing it one way or another...



Congrats...You have now made a screenshot...that wasn't so difficult was it. Now all you need to do is upload this to a image hosting site so you can include it in your thread you will create.


Uploading to a Image Hosting Site

There are several free image hosting sites out there such as: imageshack, tinypic and photobucket. There are plenty of them around...but I'm gonna be talking about how to upload to photobucket as that is what I use.

Code:

http://photobucket.com/

and create a free account. Trust me it's well worth doing. After you get your free account setup, log in with the username and password you chose. Now there should be a big "Upload images and video" button. If not....on the upper left hand of the page locate "My Home" and click on it. Now you should see a page simular to the image below.



Locate the button and click on it as the image shows. Now locate where you saved your screenshot on your computer and open it up. Your image will begin to upload...When it is finished you will be presented with a window like the below image.



Now you can add a title, description and tags as shown above in a red box. I just add a title myself in this case I would put DRC Screen. Whatever you choose to do after finished click the "save and get links" button as shown in the pic above.

Now you will be presented with a screen with your link codes for your uploaded screenshot. Now you want to locate "IMG Code" which is highlighted in red in the pic below and copy the text in the box. Simply click in the box and the text should become highlighted, now just right click and copy the code. This is the code you will use to show your image in a thread on a forum.



Now just paste the IMG code into notepad or wordpad or a text editing program of your choice and save.

Congratulations, you uploaded your image to a image hosting site. Pretty easy huh...Now just follow the same to upload the DVD cover you found as well. Now lets move on to uploading to a file sharing site.



Uploading your Rar Files to a File Sharing Site.

Now there are many sites you can upload your files to such as: Rapidshare, Hotfile, Megaupload, Easy-Share, Depositfiles, Mediafire ect... The choice is yours. The two big boys would have to be Rapidshare and Megaupload. It's best to create a free account through one of these sites before you upload as you will be able to earn points that can be redeamed and the download links created will last longer in most cases.

If you want to learn how to upload to Rapidshare check this out:

Where you can upload:

Code:

http://rapidshare.com/index.html

If you want to create a collectors account at rapidshare to earn reward points then visit rapidshare.

Go to:

Code:

http://www.rapidshare.com/

-From the home page, click on "browse" and pick a file, any file, to upload.
-A large "upload" button appears>> Click it to upload your file.
-It Takes you to a page where it asks you who you want to e-mail the links to
-If you scroll down on this same page, there will be an option that says "create collector's account"
-Click the "+" sign next to "create collector's account"
-Create your collector's account

Now when you want to upload log in to your account here:

Code:

https://ssl.rapidshare.com/cgi-bin/collectorszone.cgi

And upload your rar files. Simple as that.

Now....

If you want to learn how to upload to megaupload go here:


"How To Use Megaupload" The Total Guide!

What is megaupload? Megaupload is an online Hong Kong-based company established in March of 2005 for the use of
uploading and downloading files. It includes a video browsing section in the site Megavideo as well as a sister company
called Megaporn (formerly Megarotic) which hosts uploaded pornographic content.

Yes, megaupload has been around for as long as Rapidshare, but has remained true to the warez scene and
is wonderful for the free user and premium user alike.

I myself have been using megaupload for about 3 years now, only ever used the free account. I know a thing or two about
how things work and that is what I'm going to be sharing here with you all.

In this Guide I will be explaining everything from: the features and benefits of using megaupload, the basics such as how to download
and upload, tips and techniques for uploading & downloading, the more technical: taking advantage of happy hour, how to bypass
the "IP Time Limits" for free users, how to change your Dynamic-IP to a Static-IP and much much more.

First let's get into the features and benefits of using a free account on megaupload.

What I mean by free account is the one that you get when you register.
Why is it a good idea to get one you ask?

Well, I'll be happy to share.

You will no longer have to wait 45 sec after entering the captcha, instead only 25 sec.
You earn reward points for your uploads that can be redeemed for premium accounts.
You get free 200GB storage for your files. Which is more than enough for many and is great I might add.
You can upload up to 2GB sized fies if needed.
You can download more files before reaching your download limit compared to a free user. You get about 2-3 times more.
You get a thing called a Filemanger which allows you to keep track and manage the files you upload, as well as letting you see how many times it has been download.
You can download up to 1GB files. Which is very nice.
You get great download speeds. When I had my 12Mbit connection I was getting around 2-3MB/sec as a free user. No kidding!
You can take advantage of the Happy Hour which basically makes you a premium user while it's active. I'll fully explain this to come.
When you upload your files they will stay active for 90 days.. This isn't entirely true as I still have a file sitting in my filemanager from 6/11/2008 that has yet to be downloaded.
Yes, I'm serious! I remember it was a very small game that I posted for a request made by someone and it wasn't what they were looking for.


There is a couple of downsides though.

Customer service is pretty much non existent. But, the upside though is they will help get back your account if it was hacked.

You have to put in captcha. Which really isn't all that bad as it is very readable and only a mixture of 4 letters and numbers
that are not case sensitive.

You can only download one file at a time. You'll need to wait till the initial download completes before you can start another.
But, who says you cant put another download link into your browser, put in the captcha wait the timer and have it so your
next link is ready to go.
I will get into more detail about certain features and benefits later on in this guide this is just to show you what to basically expect.
There is a lot of great info I'm gonna get into but first I want to let peeps know how to download and upload from megaupload.


Downloading From Megaupload

Why is downloading with megaupload worth it? Because I said so. lol Just messin with yah. It's because it's one file hoster that is great to
the free user and always has been. It doesn't throw a cap on you like other free services. Megaupload allows you to download at
higher speeds. I was getting 2-3MB/sec with my previous connection which was wonderful It will be good to you, you just have to try it
out for yourself to actually see and feel what I'm talking about.

So with that said let's learn how to download from megaupload. I will be making the assumtion that you are a complete beginner when it
comes to the warez scene and only know a couple of computer basics.

Anyways, lets get down to it.

STEP 1: Find Some Megaupload Links.

Where do you get them you ask?

Well search "Katzforums" for them or other forums. For example: look in movies, click on a movie you would like to have, then check
for a "code: box" like this one below in the description.

There will be links that say something like this:

Code:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DXQQQSJW

If you do not find any megaupload links keep searching the forums, you'll find them soon enough. Also you can get download links by
using a search engine such as google. ( type in the movie, game, or whatever your looking for, followed by megaupload,)

For example: "spider man megaupload" then click search. You'll eventually find some forum or website with megaupload download
links for what you're looking for. If you are getting too many results for a specific file host you do not want you can add on
-rapidshare - hotfile ect.. to your search terms

For example this is something you could put into google to narrow down your results: "spider man megaupload" -rapidshare -hotfile
you will notice that the results will go down and that is a good thing.

Now that you have found what you would like to download then it's time to move on.

STEP 2: Copy & Paste Download Links

If you all ready know how to do this skip ahead to: Take Your Megaupload Download Link,

Now that you have your "Megaupload Download Links", it's time to "Copy And Paste Them". If you do not know how to do this
I will explain. We all start somewhere and figured why not put this in.


How To Copy & Paste

First go to the download link and right before the http:// left click on your mouse and hold it down, drag the mouse to the end of the link so
it's all highlighted and let go of your left button. Now your download link should be highlighted even when moving your mouse around.
Now right click with your mouse on the highlighted download link, a pop up box will show up, now left click on copy.
Now you have the download link ready to go.

Now on your browser, look to the upper left hand corner of it. There will be several clickable links, I want you to click on File then click on
New Tab. In your browser a new tab will be present it will say (untitled). click on it and you will now have a blank page. Now go
to your "Navigation Toolbar" ( this is where you type in website URLs you want to visit) go to the blank space in there, and right click
on your mouse, another pop up window will show up. Move your mouse over ito paste and click on it.
Now your Megaupload download link will show up in the box,


Video: How to Copy And Paste:

Code:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HSF9D7PX

STEP 3: Take The Megaupload Download Link,

Put the download link into the browsers url address bar, then click on "Enter", it'll come up like this below.



Now type in the 4 letter code and click "Download" next to it


STEP 4: Wait Through Timer

Wait the 45 seconds (25 seconds if you register for free and login) or you could just purchase
a premium account and you won't have to wait anymore.



STEP 5: Download

Wait until the timer runs all the way down and on the same page where the countdown was you'll see "Regular Download" click on it,
a new pop up window will show up, make sure "Save To Disk" is checked and click "OK".
Now just save the file where you want and your done!



NOTES:
If you have multiple download links, then follow the steps above and make sure to save all files in the same folder. You will
need to wait for the first part to complete before you can start the next, but that does not mean that you can't get the next download
link ready to download by pasting it into your browser, filling in the captcha and waiting for the timer to run down. Once your first
link is finished then just click to download the next part. Then repeat for the next part and so on and so forth.

After you get all your files in the same folder, you will need a certain application to combine all the files into one to get what is contained
within. More often than not you will come across rar files, but this isn't always the case.

Sometimes you'll come across other file extentions such as 7zip, 001, 002, zip, ect... There is just way to many to mention them all, but
the ones I listed are more common than most. You could use winrar to extract rar and zip files, but this app is not free and will
not extract the other file extentions. So what you want to get is a app called 7zip which is free (google it) and install it.
This will cover just about any file extension you come across.

After you have it, open it up and browse to the folder you saved all parts to. Click on the file to highlight it and then click on extract.
Save the file where you want and wait for it to complete it's task. If you do not pick a location it will by default save the extracted
content to the same folder in which the parts were contained.

Now browse on your computer to where you saved the extracted content, in there you will find a folder, the full movie or whatever
that was contained, double click on it or open it up in a media player, emulator or whatever you need to use and there you go.

VLC media player is great for playing pretty much all media formats (audio/video) just to let you know.

Also a quicker way to extract would be to browse to where the parts are located, right click on the first part go to open with and click on
7zip. If it doesn't show then click on "choose default program" make sure that "always use the selected program to open this type of file"
has a check in the box then browse to where 7zip is located and click OK.

Now you can do as I said before by right clicking and selecting 7zip to open it. Also now you can
just double click on the first rar part and it will open 7zip as well.

What ever option you choose once 7zip is open click extract and save it where you can easily find the extracted content.



Downloading Help Q&A

I downloaded every part except for one that I could not, do to it saying "the file is temporarily unavailable" what should I do?

This usually means that the server that the part is located on is either temporarily down, overloaded with traffic, or under maintanence.
First thing you should try is keep refreshing the page over and over again. This will if the server was busy possibly eventually give
you access to the missing part, you will know if you see the captcha to enter.

Sometimes you just have to wait it out and see what happens. If you are desperate for the part you could always
contact the poster and ask if they could reupload the part,

Sometimes if what your downloading is hot, meaning everyone wants it, it can be that too many people are trying to access the same file
at the same time. Again refresh and wait. If all else fails contact the poster.


I keep getting IP Limit Exceeded and I have not downloaded anything at all, whats going on?

This can happen if you have a Dynamic-IP (one that changes periodically) through your ISP (Internet Service Provider).
The person that had the IP address before you must have reached there limit for downloading, so it rolled over and
you got stuck with it.

You could remove the cookies to megaupload and then clear the cache, unplug your modem for a bit and
plug it back in and try again. Instead of unplugging your modem you could use a proxy.

Also note that there is a certain amount that you can download in a certain amount of time.

Free users only can download a certain amount of files in a given time, per day with the same "IP Address". I counted around 5-7 file
downloads before I got the "IP limit exceeded" warning. After that a page will pop up saying you have a certain amount of time to
wait before you can download again. There is ways around this and I will share those with you in this guide.
You'll have to wait 45 seconds before you can download a file.

If you "Register" to "Megaupload", which I suggest you do (it takes a little bit of your time) not only do you get to download
more files in a given time, per day with the same "IP Address", but you also get to "Take Advantage" of the "Megaupload Happy Hours"
which is great. I counted 13 file downloads before I got the "IP Limit Exceeded" Warning. Again, there is ways around this.
You'll only have to wait 25 seconds, to be able to download a file.

Using Download Managers

I personally do not use any download managers myself, never really cared for them. But, figured that some of you use them and this guide would be incomplete without some info regarding them.

Let's start off with megauploads own megamanager. I used this in the past and I would always have issues with it not downloading fully or getting error codes. This works great for some and for others it just doesn't work good at all. I would suggest just to stay away from it and use something else, but the choice is yours of course.

Now the best download manager that I know of that works great for a free member is JDownloader. Why you ask?

Well, the main advantage of this downloader manager is that it can read captcha (those letters you need to type on most direct download hosts as a free user). So basically it enters the captcha for you so you don't have to do it yourself.

Which in turn will allow you to copy some megaupload links into JDownloader, go to sleep, and when you wake up,JDownloader will automatically have downloaded a new file every time you have been allowed.(and no, you don't need to sleep for JDownloader to work, just a handiness example).

Very handy indeed.



Now if you have a megaupload premium account and you are having trouble in getting your download manager to work properly then read on.



Setting Up Your Download Manager w/Premium Account

I'm only going to be talking about the two most used download managers though. IDM (Internet Download Manager) and JD (JDownloader).



Let's first start off with IDM.


Setting Up IDM

You will need to add new login information line for

to IDM Options->Site Logins. You should use the asterisk at the beginning of the site name because there are redirects to different sub domains on the site.



Here's step by step how to do this below.



1. Open Internet Download Manager,Click On Options



2. Clicking on Options will bring you to the window below.

At the top you will see multiple tabs , Click on Site Logins.



3.Click On New.



4. You will be presented with the screen below.

[/IMG]http://i51.tinypic.com/2d98knd.jpg[/IMG]

ou will need to . Select "http://", type "*megaupload.com", your username, and your password on the "Site login" Megaupload dialog.


5. Turn on "Direct download"

You just click on "My Account" when logged in and then can do it in the "Transfer settings" area.

When direct download option is turned on, it's not necessary to download with IDM using "download with IDM" popup menu item in the browser. IDM should take over the download automatically when you click on its download link. If IDM has not taken over the download and a standard browser download dialog appeared, you should check the extension in the list of automatically downloaded file types in IDM "Options->File Types" dialog.

For example you can come across files like filename.zip.001, filename.zip.002, and etc. In this case you should add 0* (zero followed by an asterisk) to the list of file types to start downloading automatically in Options->File Types.
Setting Up Jdownloader

With Jdownloader this is what you need to do.


1. Turn on Direct Download

You will need to make sure that "Direct Download" is on in youraccount settings in megaupload. You just click on "My Account" when logged in and then can do it in the "Transfer settings" area.

You then will need to put in your premium account information into jd.


2. Go to Premium Account Manager

To get to JDownloader's premium account manager, click Premium --> Premium Settings. From here, you can add any Premium Account that JDownloader supports.


3. Click the Add Account button

A new little window will pop-up.


4. Select the website you have a premium account with

In this case megaupload. Then insert your username and password. When you are done, click OK and JDownloader will begin to login in the background.

JDownloader logs in to your premium account in the background and retrieves some information such as the account status, expiry date and the remaining traffic on the account. This is quite useful as it removes the need for you to login through a web browser completely.

Also, you know that JDownloader will work fine when you can see it retrieving information from your premium account. It should not make any mistakes and attempt to download as a free user.