OT-ish: copying DVDs to hard disk

[Lobster]

Let me pre-empt the collective scream of "Google is your friend" by saying that I've BTDTGTTS etc, however presumably because the above-mentioned activity is typically associated with illegal activity it seems to be associated with a high risk of getting your computer infected with something nasty. So I thought I'd ask here on the basis that there are plenty of regulars whose judgement and knowledge I'd trust on this...

Basically I'm interested in transfering as many as possible of the family DVDs on to a hard disk (a) to eliminate the ever-growing pile of DVD cases from the living room (as we did with CDs a few years ago); (b) to make it easy to select and view a film to watch via our media streamer rather than ferreting around for the DVD and (c) to copy them on to a netbook/portable hardrive to let the kids watch them on long journeys. However clearly the process is much more complex that ripping a CD, right; especially with encryption etc??

[A nice-to-have would be (d) where I could just copy the movie itself and lose all the menu crap, especially the front end where you sit through 5 mins of copyright theft info and trailers before the film starts...]

Can this be done *easily* without getting involved with dodgy pirating programs, or complex video software etc? Would be grateful for any pointers

Thanks David

[Vortex5]

The de-facto program for decrypting DVD's is here:

This works very well.

In my case I transferred a few decrypted DVD's to my old HP WHS then let the HP Video converter convert the result to MPEG 4 for streaming via DLNA directly to my (Samsung) TV. It all works nicely but quality is so compromised I didn't bother ripping any more and gave up.

I see on the DVD Decrypter site there is an App called Handbrake that looks like it's worth a try on a rainy day.

[John Whitworth]

I see nothing bad on this simple search:

(apart from the one called freedownloadscentre.com, but that's an obvious barge pole candidate.

DVD Shrink and/or DVD Decrypter used to work a dream for me. There may be better available now, but those names may help you locate a suitable forum discussion or something.

[stuart noble]

The two most famous pirating programs, but very reliable I believe :-) Dvd Fab is the one to have, but I don't think it's free

[spamlet]

If you mean the cases DVDs come in, the simple way round is to use some of these:

(Keep an eye open if you do want some: I've got three and only paid a tenner each for them. Even these fill up faster than you expect! But recorders tend to record at higher quality than I actually need, so you can put more than 2hr on a disc if space is still a prob. With audio you can get masses on a disc - even before you try stripping it and compressing to mp3 etc - which I have found to be rather time consuming.)

Also I have a similar problem with a pile of video tapes that I never get around to copying: but generally, have found that the things I have on tape turn up on TV sooner or later and can thus be recorded straight to hard drive and edited there anyway. Getting them from the recorder's hard drive to a separate one is a pain though - via RW discs in my case - but I'm sure there are easier ways. Try AV forums: but remember to ask about backing up to hard drive *not* copying DVDs or they won't be able to answer you.

Here is their basic guide on backing up to HDD:

[dennis]

Windows Media centre does this with ease. You probably have media centre if you have vista or win7. Look on the start menu to see if its there. I rip mine to lossless WMA not MP3 as I get headaches listening to MP3.

[dennis]

ignore this I didn't read DVD.

[geoff]

In message , "dennis@home" writes

We generally do, dennis

[Adrian C]

What you want is some tasty hardware from this bunch.

is, if you won the lottery recently ...

[Camdor]

DVD Shrink is perfect for this, It will rip the main movie only, so you lose all the intro, and *extras*. This will keep the size down. There is a good guide here

is freeware, or abandonware now as the Author now works for Nero.

You can download it here.

[Mark]

longer under development.

If you prefer a up-to-date product then slysoft do some good stuff. See

[Colin Wilson]

It might also be worth giving RipIt4Me a whirl too - drop me an email if you can't find it (the author got the standard threatening letter so had to remove his own download links)

It did a reasonable job of working around a lot of Sony copy protection up until development ceased :-)

[thomas-davey]

I personally use Handbrake [

] - its available for windows, mac or linux, and basically does what you mention above. Put you DVD in, it scans it and finds the main feature [so no annoying bits at the beginning], click start and it decrypts it and rips a copy to your desktop in mp4 file format [or m4v if you choose], so it can be watched on quicktime / itunes / appleTV / iPod etc. Very simple to use, but make sure the mp4/m4v file format is what you want other wise this isn't for you. I can recommend it for quality of the final movie file, I've tried a few other ripping / converting programs and the movie quality can't be beat IMHO.

Hope this helps

Thomas

[stuart noble]

Just about ok on my 28" screen but not for anything bigger I would have thought. And still not all dvd players read mp4, which is surprising.

I can recommend it for