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Sorry to be a numpty, but not bothered with this sort of thing before - can I ask how this all works? You 'rip' the DVD which leaves VOB files (plus a few others AIUI) on your hard drive, and then use something like MattX suggested to convert it to something your media player will recognise? This would be a brilliant solution for me much like your own setup, if I can get it to work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dos_Box
No. You rip the files into either an MPEG or AVI format and then convert them. The initial convertor software will convert the VOB to MPEG or AVI. What you then you take the DVD quality ripped footage and then downscale it to whatever format you require. Which is where DivX comes in.
Hi All
Thanks for the advice on this thread - really helpful and a couple of software programs that I wasn't aware of the I'm looking forward to trying out.
Thanks again.
It's worth mentioning that the method you use depends entirely upon what you want to do with the videos. In almost all cases you would first strip the CSS encryption, region code restrictions and any copy protection used on the disc (such as ARccOS, RipGuard, SafeDisc etc.). The best software for doing this is AnyDVD or DVDFab since they are constantly updated and the decryption is done on-the-fly. This means you don't have to copy the files on the DVD to your hard drive first, although most people do in order to reduce the amount of time it takes to convert the videos and reduce wear and tear on the DVD drive.Quote:
Originally Posted by techtopia
VOBs are already MPEG-2 files, so you don't necessarily have to convert them twice as DosBox mentioned above. A program like Handbrake can read the structure of the disc directly via the IFO files. This allows you to easily select any title on the disc (e.g. the main movie) and convert that into a single MP4 or MKV file using the H.264 codec. Obviously, if you have a playback device which can't read these formats you wouldn't use this method. However, if you wanted to watch a DVD on a portable device such as an iPod/iPad/iPhone or laptop this would probably be the best program to use for the job. A couple of other really good programs are StaxRip and Xvid4PSP.
If you have lots and lots of disk space you could simply rip each DVD as an ISO image file using the "Rip to Image" feature in AnyDVD or ImgBurn; or even just copy the whole VIDEO_TS folder from the DVD to your hard drive using Explorer in Windows. This would be a good method to use if you had a HTPC (XBMC / Windows Media Center with the MyMovies plug-in) or a networked media player (WDTV / Popcorn Hour) and wanted to keep all of the menus and extra features intact without losing any quality in the process. If on the other-hand you didn't care about the menus or features, you could rip the video using MakeMKV or DVD Decrypter - the latter can create single VOB file if you turn off the file-splitting option in the settings.
x264 is the new bee nees, especially when it comes to ripping and converting Blu-Ray discs. The difference in quality between MPEG-4 ASP (Xvid etc.) and MPEG-4 AVC (a.k.a. H.264) is very noticeable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gibbo
RipBot264 seems to be one of the best programs to use for converting the huge M2TS files once they are on your HDD. BluRip is good too.
Downloaded the trial of AnyDVD and have ripped a 2 hour film (first one that came to hand off the shelf, should've hand-picked 'Fireman Sam' or something!) and thus far it has taken circa 30 minutes to rip the DVD to 90%. This is a fairly poky machine so there are no issues with CPU or memory that I can think of. Is that sort of time usual? Is there something I need to set in the software which will reduce that time? I did take out an option about adverts and set it to go to main title, so don't know if that increases the time? I presume that children's titles which are much shorter in length will take proportionally less time to rip? I have a number of home made DVD's (family holidays/Christmas and some children's programmes) which were copied from original VHS which I want to put onto SD/HDD so I'm hoping to speed the process up where I can.
I must be doing something wrong as AnyDVD has ripped the DVD to my hard drive and I now have a whole load of .VOB files, .IFO and a couple of .BUP!Quote:
Originally Posted by Dos_Box
It shouldn't take that long. On my computer it takes an average of around 6-7 minutes to rip a dual layer DVD like The Matrix (~7.5GB).Quote:
Originally Posted by techtopia
What make/model is your DVD drive and are you using a laptop? Laptop DVD drives are usually a bit slower. Many drives also have a riplock which slows down the transfer speed to 2-4x. Depending upon which drive you have it may be possible to update the firmware to remove this speed limit. Another thing it could be is if you have AnyDVDs "Speed Control" feature enabled (this is located under Settings > Drives). Scratches and fingerprints on the disc itself can also slow down the ripping process.
That's normal. :) Which device(s) do you want to play the DVD on as this will determine what you do next.Quote:
Originally Posted by techtopia
Ah right, I misunderstood an earlier reply.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arthur
I will want to play on a Mede8er (yet to be purchased) and also a car DVD player. The former will apparently play anything thrown at it but I am as yet unsure what format the DVD player supports, it is a Nextbase Click 10.
However, I would like to convert to a popular format for future proofing, as I don't want to rip to a format that is useless in a few years time. Appreciate formats/codecs are changing with different technological advances, so what would be a safe bet? Not too worried about file sizes as I will just increase storage capacity as needed, but don't want to have to repeat this process any time soon!
I guess a converter which gives me a choice of formats would be good - I can bang out some quick DVD's for the car player, but be a bit more selective for the longer term rips.
EDIT : Found this about the DVD player, but not entirely sure I fully understand it.
I did today's 'test' rip on a laptop. On my desktop machine though, I have a couple of drives so I will check out firmware updates.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arthur
EDIT : updated the firmware on my desktop machine drive and it was ripping at 10x which completed the rip considerably faster than before. Converted to MP4 using Handrake, and it all seems to work fine. Biggest problem I have now is that the file sizes are a bit big, 1gb+
That's excellent news! :)Quote:
Originally Posted by techtopia
What size HDD will you be using with the Mede8er and how many DVDs do you have in total? A 2TB hard drive should be able to store around 450 discs if you do not use any compression.Quote:
Originally Posted by techtopia
Xvid is the best format to use out of all the ones listed for that particular DVD player. The audio track(s) should be MP3s with a bitrate of 192kbps (or higher). This is generally considered to be transparent and artifact-free.Quote:
Originally Posted by techtopia
For the Mede8er it would be best to create MP4s as you have already done or VOBs/ISOs.
I suppose when you look at it like that, it's not quite such an issue!Quote:
Originally Posted by Arthur