Ripping DVDs.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Have Nero for this on XP - but nothing on Win7. Google found Handbrake (free) to copy a DVD to HD. Works - but took a couple of hours to transfer a 1/2 hour home movie DVD to HD. Not tried it with a commercial DVD - I just wanted to have the home movie stuff in DVD format all together. At the moment if I want to produce a home movie DVD copy I've got to use the original software that produced it. Hoping to make this easier by having them all in the one folder so I can just drop them onto a blank DVD. How hard can that be? ;-)

[John Rumm]

Handbrake is very good for taking DVD images and converting them to single AVI/MP4 files etc.

However as its transcoding (i.e. decompressing, rendering, scaling, encoding and decompressing etc), its CPU intensive. My old 9550 Core Quad used to romp through a feature film sized job in 15 to 25 mins. My current i7 box can knock one out in 5 to 8 mins.

For actually ripping DVDs in the first place there are a number of options. Personally I prefer AnyDVD (commercial from Slysoft) since it sits as a layer between system and DVD drive and just makes all the copy protection nonsense (on any type of disk) go away. It also has a very easy "right click - copy DVD to hard drive" feature.

[Toby]

If you do not want to be able to play them from the file on the hard drive, then just use ImgBurn (free) to rip to an ISO file, then you can burn that to disk (with ImgBurn)

If you want to keep them on your hard drive, and play them back on the computer, or maybe via the network to a smart TV, then you need to put them in a playable format. I have used DVD Fab to do this, ripping to MKV is pass-through mode - this will be fast, as it is not converting the video at all.

MakeMKV looks like it may do the same for free.

[Richard]

Anything here of use?

[Toby]

Just to add, this is for home made stuff, if they are commercial copy protected disks, you need something like AnyDVD to remove the protection ;)

[Nick]

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

I've been using DVDshrink to dump my commercial DVDs to ISO on the NAS. Works well and allows you to select what you want to extract (not a problem for home movies, I imagine!). BUT I've not posted a direct link, as on my install and another I've seen there's been some malware installed at the same time. This was detected and removed by my AV software (Avast), but you may want to Google a bit before deciding where to download from - or from where to download, if you're Churchill.

[Fredxxx]

Why would you want to? Every time you change the encoding format the quality will deteriorate.

I have used WinFF to change formats.

They all take a lot of processing power to re-encode video and 1/2 hour is par for the course.

You can still have a copy of the Video_TS directories for each DVD in a series of folders on a drive and select the right one.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've downloaded and installed it - says it is a trial version which lasts for 21 days - but I can't get it to work. I assume the trial version should function?

[Chris French]

In message , Nick writes

Yes, that's what I use.

Or rather used to, I don't really bother ripping DVD's anymore, we don't buy that many, more likely to stream/download. And if I want a copy to use on the network it's easy to download a torrent/usenet copy.

The offical DVDshrink site is here:

However development stopped in 2004 (though still worked fine on Win7 when I last tried it). But there are various rips offs around on the net.

[David]

As John says, the first step is to check that your hardware is up to the task. What CPU are you using?

One thing - it can be possible to add a graphics card which can take on some of the decoding/encoding, although you have to be sure that your software of choice can use that graphics card.

I'm investigating this myself for future processing of HD video of our holidays.

Cheers

Dave R

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Chris French escribió:

The download links point to what look like C-Net style "download manager" wrappers. They'll probably install malware or adware.

[ChrisK]

Probably safer to get it from videohelp then

(videohelp is a useful resource)

dvdshrink not required for non commercial DVDs though.

Chris K

[John Rumm]

Yup the trial is fully functional. It should sit as a icon in the tray. If you right click it, you should see the rip option. Other than that I will just make a DVD look like a normal region free unprotected DVD regardless of what it is.

[John Rumm]

Yup I have used that in the past for making DVD copies onto single layer discs. Used to work well.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Right clicking on the tray icon only gives 'Any DVD application', 'pin this prog to the taskbar, 'close window'.

It does give details of the DVD, but can't find any way of going any further.

It's quite an expensive prog - I'm not willing to buy it without trying it first.

I've tried a re-install.

[Toby]

You need to right click on the icon in the system tray (where the clock is) not the one on the task bar :)

[David]

Just looked at the site and there is also AnyDVDHD - I don't have any BluRay's at the moment although the new drive is BluRay.

The site tries to bundle CloneCD, CloneDVD and CloneDVD Mobile plus a link to CloneBD.

Are any of these necessary?

If AnyDVD can rip DVDs then why are other utilities required?

I'm interested because I intend to rip our DVD collection to disc for the HTPC.

Cheers

Dave R

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think only licensed - essentially Mac or Windoze - software can rip BluRay at the moment.

There are some open source decrypters but they are not ideal or easy to use yet

[Jonno]

The Natural Philosopher scribbled

It's easy to rip a BluRay disc, whether a copy will play on a BluRay or DVD player is another thing.

[John Rumm]

That's not the tray icon, but the minimised main window on the task bar. Look for the little red fox close to the clock - you may need to hit the arrow icon to make it visible: