Best DVD Ripper Software these days?

_Kaiser_

Afternoon all,

I've been looking at the shelves of DVDs I now have and the 1.5TB Hard disk that I ordered the other day and I was thinking "wouldn't it be nice to back those up"

So off to Google I went but theres a ton of free and paid options out there. What I particularly want is to be able to back up series DVDs - for example Battlestar Galactica series 1-3 - so that each episode is saved to a seperate file.

Any suggestions/tips?

Note: This is to backup DVDs I already own - nothing dodgy intended so hope it's ok?

Bob_Harris

Use DVD Decrypter to rip the DVD to the hard drive.

Then use Handbrake or Megui to convert the DVD to either a x.264 MKV or Xvid AVI.

Cool Mo D

If you have the VLC video player installed, Handbrake can use VLCs DVD reading code to break the encryption, and can rip it directly.

Be warned that it is technically illegal to break the encryption on any protected DVD you own, no matter how stupid that may seem.

Voodu Child

I'd probably use DVDFabHDdecrypter for the initial rip. Its a little buggy, but newish and free. Id never encode from a disc, will wear out your DVD drive in no time, and doesnt allow a queue of multiple encodes)

If you have a massive HDD and not too many DVDs, you might decide to just leave it at that. You'd probably fit 200+ uncompressed DVDs on a 1.5TB hard-drive.

If you decide you need to compress the video_ts folders down to something smaller, Handbrake is a good/simple option. Personally I use MKV container, x264 video codec, full DVD frame (ie anamorphic), contant quality encoding (RF of about 20-19 for DVD source) and the AC3 track off the disc. You can do all that in Handbrake. When you are using x264 constant quality, the RF determines your quality, and the x264 settings determine the compression (and encoding time).

If there are subtitles, I use subrip to get them off the disc and convert them into a text format, then mux them into the MKV file. Or else just download them from somewhere.

_Kaiser_

Cheers guys.

I've ripped the disc (in this case BSG series 1, disc 1) to a folder on C: and they're all there in a Video_TS folder.

Then fired up Handbrake but it seems that a few of the episodes on the disc (4 in total) are split into different files? How do I merge these?

I suppose there's nothing out there that will read the source directory and simply allow you to choose the ones you want, and pick a destination file?

Thanks again

scottie pippen

I use this to back up my dvdshttp://www.fairusewizard.com/lang_en/fairuse_wizard_dvd_divx_xvid_backup_tool_light_edition.html

It’s free

Well worth checking out, looks to be more convenient than dvd-dycryptor

Voodu Child

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

Cheers guys.

I've ripped the disc (in this case BSG series 1, disc 1) to a folder on C: and they're all there in a Video_TS folder.

Then fired up Handbrake but it seems that a few of the episodes on the disc (4 in total) are split into different files? How do I merge these?

I suppose there's nothing out there that will read the source directory and simply allow you to choose the ones you want, and pick a destination file?

Thanks again

If you rip a full disc (with lots of episodes) to your HDD, and open it with handbrake, the individual episodes will be visible in the 'Title' section. Sometimes there is some guesswork needed, as it'll show all the video files on the disc, so basically you are just looking for ones that are the same length as the episodes themselves. 40 min or whatever.

Once you have picked one episode, and set up the encode (including the name/location where you want it saved), click 'add to queue' and then you can pick the second episode, set that up, etc. Then just go to the queue window and click 'start', it'll do them one by one so you can leave it be. Much handier than starting each encode manually.

Before doing any of that, I recommend just doing a short clip (for example just one chapter) so that you can get the hang of the encoding process, settings, etc. Keep an eye out for interlaced content (you can see lots of horizontal lines) - you can fix it with a deinterlacing or decombing filter.

slowlydownwards

Smilin' here at the fancy n efficient encoders of today. Did my first encode a decade ago with SmartRipper + Flask encoder. Man, things have moved on: multicore cpu-s, oodles of ram and tb-s of hdd, not to mention the wonder of h.264. Used to take 12hours to encode 2 hour movie on a p3.:eek:

RolandIRL

i think dvd shrink is the best for ripping. if you want to back up on a dvd then you can select it to compress the *.iso file or VIDEO_TS subfolder. it's really handy and you can get rid of other stuff on the dvd that you don't need eg foreign language subtitles and just leave the bare movie/episodes etc.
also an option to burn with nero, which really saves time.
all in all, it's really quick, taking about a half hour to copy a 4.7 GB movie