# OT: which software to rip dvd's to disk?



## HiDefGator (Oct 12, 2004)

Several poster's have mentioned moving their dvd collection to hard disk. I'm wondering which software package is best to do this with? What format do you use for the files on the disk? Do you need special software to play the movies once they are on the disk?

thanks,

mike


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## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

I can't name names, but you need to decrypt first (illegal in at least the USA), pull to HDD, then merge the VOBs. At least that is what I do.


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## RedMan8 (Sep 30, 2005)

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to provide this link...
Mod's feel free to delete if this is a no-no.


http://forum.videohelp.com/topic301015.html


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## HiDefGator (Oct 12, 2004)

Thank you redman. That was just the link I needed.


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## Carlton Bale (Dec 17, 2001)

I'd recommend purchasing *AnyDVD *to decrypt and *CloneDVD* to re-author the movie and copy the VOB files to your hard drive. Yes, there are many free solutions out there, but both of these products are very well supported by Slysoft, are very easy to use, work with every DVD you'll run across, and are sometimes updated _several times a week_. I've used the free alternatives, but my time was well worth the investment I made in the commercial software. It's super easy to use and very reliable.

If you want to convert your MPEG2 DVDs from VOB files to some other format, Clone DVD Mobile is a great product as well. You can purchase all three in a bundle. Having said that, there are free equivalents that are about as easy to use as Clone DVD Mobile, so you may not need to purchase this one.

To try a demo version of each, download them from *slysoft.com*.


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## HiDefGator (Oct 12, 2004)

Also good to know. I'll give them a try. I like easier.


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

I still use DVDDecrypter although it's a bit long in the tooth and then do the additional processing with TMPEGEnc. Works very good.


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## captain_video (Mar 1, 2002)

Check the forums at Doom9.org. DVDDecryptor still works for most DVDs but won't decrypt anything from Sony (ARccOS) or other discs using RipGuard.


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## Carlton Bale (Dec 17, 2001)

captain_video said:


> Check the forums at Doom9.org. DVDDecryptor still works for most DVDs but won't decrypt anything from Sony (ARccOS) or other discs using RipGuard.


Exactly why I use AnyDVD instead. Plus, AnyDVD has support for HD-DVD and BluRay.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Are there tools that will rip separate titles on the DVD into separate files that I can double-click (e.g. .mov files)?

These are my own DVD-RW or DVD-Rs, from my DVD recorder. Though I still like the idea of using a DVD recorder, I'm also considering keeping a hard drive backup -- but I'd like to be able to categorize the stuff a bit.. (Most of the stuff is musical recordings from talk shows -- and I would make folders based upon the various musicians.)


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

This is on a Mac, btw, so if there are UNIX CLI tools that might be portable, that's reasonable.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

I used DVDDecrypter and some other tools a while back but I am ripping all of my disks over now because it has gotten a lot less tedious and error free to do.

I use DvdFab Platinum- which resizes/ compress them to MP4 (it supports a variety of mpeg4 codecs as well as profiles for a bunch of portable devices, so I can make one for the Tivo Media Server and one for the Video iPod).

It has worked on 99% of my dvds- I guess I have gone through maybe a 150 or so by now- a few serials like avengers and Hercule Poirot, but most are commercial movies- and a lot of them Pal Videos from New Zealand. I recall DVDDecrypter had to be tweaked to fix the sync on Snow White, but DvdFab handled it with no complaints. 

There is no rhyme or reason about the ones that fail. One was a kind of a low budget thing created at a symposium, another was a Cirque du Soleil dvd- all the other Cirque's did fine though.


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

mattack said:


> Are there tools that will rip separate titles on the DVD into separate files that I can double-click (e.g. .mov files)?


AutoGK can do this. Search at any of the above mentioned sites.


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## captain_video (Mar 1, 2002)

DVDFab Decryptor is a freeware tool that is about the only one that is still updated on a regular basis other than AnyDVD. Check the downloads section at dvdidle.com. The current version is actually called DVDFab HD Decryptor and works on HD-DVDs and BD discs as well.


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

Anybody know what will rip Disney's Cars? I've tried DVD Decrypter, DVDFab Decryptor, and a trial of DVDAny. Is just my hardware having a problem?

Perhaps the kid has already messed up this second disc and that is the problem.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Soapm said:


> AutoGK can do this. Search at any of the above mentioned sites.


That's only a Windows app as far as I can tell. Plus, it looks like it does conversion -- even if I DID run Windows, could I losslessly convert between the DVD and some double-clickable file an then back to something I could burn to another DVD that had the same quality as the original?


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## gtrogue (Jun 18, 2001)

mattack said:


> That's only a Windows app as far as I can tell. Plus, it looks like it does conversion -- even if I DID run Windows, could I losslessly convert between the DVD and some double-clickable file an then back to something I could burn to another DVD that had the same quality as the original?


MacTheRipper is pretty much the only ripper for OS X. MTR2 has problems with discs that use rip prevention measures (ripguard, etc.). MTR3 works better and you can find it online if you look around. The best combo I've found on a Mac is MTR3 with DVD2OneX2 for reauthoring and Handbrake and VisualHub to do file conversions and transcoding.


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## Carlton Bale (Dec 17, 2001)

mattack said:


> That's only a Windows app as far as I can tell. Plus, it looks like it does conversion -- even if I DID run Windows, could I losslessly convert between the DVD and some double-clickable file an then back to something I could burn to another DVD that had the same quality as the original?


If you want lossless, it's best to just store the files in VOB format (the way they are stored on the DVD.) That's what I do with all of my movies, and it's the only way to preserve the menus. My directory structure is has each movie in its own folder and a vidoe_ts folder under that containing the vob files (i.e. /movies/movie name/video_ts/vobfil1.vob ). Most DVD playback software will recognize and play a *video_ts* folder and play it like a normal DVD.

But, if you want a single, clickable file, you'll to to enter convert it to a single mpeg 2 file and lose the menus, or to a lossy xvid/AVC/mpeg4 file, which is great for saving space but does diminish the quality some. I only transcode video I'm going to watch on a portable device while traveling.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

bummer. What I wanted to do was be able to break up the DVDs full of 'music videos' (really performances on Letterman, Leno, etc) into separate files -- but not lose quality.. so I could then later use a regular DVD authoring program to put a whole bunch of the same artist back on DVDs.

(I have tried saving performances on my non-Tivo recorder, but the original DVD burner went bad, and the one I have replaced it with isn't a perfect replacement and won't see unfinalized DVD-Rs.. so I've thought of possibly using a cheap external hard drive to store batches of them.. if I could easily do this conversion and categorization.)


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## Carlton Bale (Dec 17, 2001)

mattack: Not sure about Mac, but on a Windows PC, you can use AnyDVD to decrypt and CloneDVD to rip selective portions of individual DVDs to hard disk, and then use a DVD authoring program to recombine them into one DVD. DVDShrink is an old program that will do the same thing. It's free, but hasn't been updated in years and may not work on all DVDs.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

I'm not clear anymore on why Kaleidascape is permitted to copy dvds to a hard drive for later playing, but using a dvd ripper and a home computer to do the same thing is some sort of back alley thing.

If I am using a ripper on my own purchased dvds, and I can produce all the dvds that are on my hard drive, then why is using a dvd ripper any different than what Kaleidascape is doing?

The recent ruling in favor of Kaleidascape was narrow- as I recall it just said that the suing company could not sue using the particular legal agreement they had. It was nothing broad like "This is fair use copying and DMCA or other legal mechanisms cannot be used to interfere with fair use copying."


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

on the mac I use handbrake to rip a dvd to an h.264 file
works nicely


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Gunnyman said:


> on the mac I use handbrake to rip a dvd to an h.264 file
> works nicely


I go to MPeg4 too and the copies are indistinguishable from DVD.

Personally, the concern that some folks have expressed about some sort of degradation when you transcode is mistaken. So long as you don't get agressive with bitrates and overcompress the file, you will have huge storage savings, with zero degradation in Picture Quality.

[Generally, I convert to .MP4 not H.264, and usually store at about 1GB/HR using DVDFab Platinum's VBR encoder. It's probably overkill, but I didn't bother to calibrate it, since the storage payoff would not be that huge if I were to tune it to the optimal. I dump the menus. Possibly DvdFab supports a mode for doing a copy that behaves exactly like the dvd, but this did not interest me.]

BTW- I don't regard this thread as OT to Tivo at all. What I do with these MP4s is put them on the PyTivo server and download them over to the Tivos for watching. Practically all the children videos are permanently on the Tivo for reasons I think any parent who has bought more than one copy of a disney DVD will understand. There are a some movies that I simply can't get through in one sitting because they are kind of on the slow side, but they are very interesting/ have great shooting.

As far as I'm concerned, I really don't want to go back to watching DVDs the old way.


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## gtrogue (Jun 18, 2001)

Justin Thyme said:


> I go to MPeg4 too and the copies are indistinguishable from DVD.
> 
> Personally, the concern that some folks have expressed about some sort of degradation when you transcode is mistaken. So long as you don't get agressive with bitrates and overcompress the file, you will have huge storage savings, with zero degradation in Picture Quality.
> 
> ...


An .mp4 file can contain H.264 encoded video, it doesn't have to be mp4 video inside a .mp4 container. H.264 is the better codec.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Sorry- you are absolutely correct. I meant to use the acronym in all caps MPEG4- not that this is very precise either. Mp4 is just a wrapper, and like avi- there could be anything in there. As a habit, I happen to use .mp4's only for the more brain damaged MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile part 2 encoder with aac audio- my mind tends to free associate them for that reason. Although I have been impressed with the incredible job that H264 profiles can do on complex video ever since the moonlight codec came out, my preferred format is MPEG4 asp because of its greater portability. Though larger than a comparable PQ H264 file, I find that more apps will eat MPEG4s without a transcode, the encoding is pretty fast, and open source transcoders are not encumberred by H264 licensing. Following others, I refer to the part 2 asp profile as "MPEG4", but that confuses folks because technically WMV, Div5, Div6, xVid, H.264 are all Mpeg-4.

Not that H264 is a very precise label either- Ipod will only eat the baseline profile, there are about a kajillion others like the extended profile, the main or the Hi444PP.


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## billboard_NE (May 18, 2005)

Carlton Bale said:


> I'd recommend purchasing *AnyDVD *to decrypt and *CloneDVD* to re-author the movie and copy the VOB files to your hard drive. Yes, there are many free solutions out there, but both of these products are very well supported by Slysoft, are very easy to use, work with every DVD you'll run across.........
> 
> To try a demo version of each, download them from *slysoft.com*.


I just purchased Anydvd and CloneDVD from Slysoft, how do I protect my investment if my PC crashes, with no media to reload? Do I just copy the "key" files to a backup disk, that I downloaded after the purchase?

Very good software, but I got some sort of cryptic error when I tried to back-up a dirty DVD that the software could not read, why not just have an error saying "fail to read drive x"?


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## billboard_NE (May 18, 2005)

greg_burns said:


> Anybody know what will rip Disney's Cars? I've tried DVD Decrypter, DVDFab Decryptor, and a trial of DVDAny. Is just my hardware having a problem?
> 
> Perhaps the kid has already messed up this second disc and that is the problem.


I backed up my copy of Cars using a trial of Anydvd, I have a purchased copy of Anydvd now.


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## billboard_NE (May 18, 2005)

Justin Thyme said:


> Sorry- you are absolutely correct. I meant to use the acronym in all caps MPEG4- not that this is very precise either. Mp4 is just a wrapper, and like avi- there could be anything in there. As a habit, I happen to use .mp4's only for the more brain damaged MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile part 2 encoder with aac audio- my mind tends to free associate them for that reason. Although I have been impressed with the incredible job that H264 profiles can do on complex video ever since the moonlight codec came out, my preferred format is MPEG4 asp because of its greater portability. Though larger than a comparable PQ H264 file, I find that more apps will eat MPEG4s without a transcode, the encoding is pretty fast, and open source transcoders are not encumberred by H264 licensing. Following others, I refer to the part 2 asp profile as "MPEG4", but that confuses folks because technically WMV, Div5, Div6, xVid, H.264 are all Mpeg-4.
> 
> Not that H264 is a very precise label either- Ipod will only eat the baseline profile, there are about a kajillion others like the extended profile, the main or the Hi444PP.


On this board we speak english 

Just kidding, everything you said is way over my head, video files have always made my head hurt.


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

billboard_NE said:


> I backed up my copy of Cars using a trial of Anydvd, I have a purchased copy of Anydvd now.


Good to know it is just me. Now to figure out what is wrong.

Much appreciated. :up:


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## Carlton Bale (Dec 17, 2001)

billboard_NE said:


> I just purchased Anydvd and CloneDVD from Slysoft, how do I protect my investment if my PC crashes, with no media to reload? Do I just copy the "key" files to a backup disk, that I downloaded after the purchase? /QUOTE]
> 
> All you need to keep a backup of the key files that were sent to you via e-mail when you registered the software. That is all you will need; you can just re-download the trials and apply the keys if you have a crash. I have a folder in my webmail account where I keep that kind of stuff, so I don't have to worry about computer crashes.


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## hardmusicfanatic (Jul 29, 2007)

greg_burns said:


> Anybody know what will rip Disney's Cars? I've tried DVD Decrypter, DVDFab Decryptor, and a trial of DVDAny. Is just my hardware having a problem?
> 
> Perhaps the kid has already messed up this second disc and that is the problem.


 I use AnyDVD to decrypt it and DVD Shrink & Nero to burn. Using these programs I've yet come across a Disney DVD, which are usually hard as hell to burn from, that I can't burn.


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

hardmusicfanatic said:


> I use AnyDVD to decrypt it and DVD Shrink & Nero to burn. Using these programs I've yet come across a Disney DVD, which are usually hard as hell to burn from, that I can't burn.


AnyDVD worked perfectlly after I cleaned the disc a little with Windex.


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## texast (Aug 4, 2007)

I just bought this cool little gizmo that you guys like you might be interested in. Essentially, it's an external hard drive, which attaches to your computer via USB like any other.

...Except! It also has some sort of black-box OS (Linux?) hardcoded on the board (flashable firmware), and a software media player that covers just about every format (VOB, MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, etc...) (and audio -- MP3, WMA, OGG, etc...).


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## texast (Aug 4, 2007)

The best part is that it's not restricted to a USB interface, but also has outputs directly to your television: Component RGB, red-white-yellow RF, S-video, coax video, and another I can't think of (I'm not at home right now).

Anyway, rip your personal DVD collection to it, and play it to your TV (without any connection to your computer!). It travels well too; My DVD player in the family van has r-w-y RF inputs, and it never skips (like the DVD often does). Travel with your laptop? -It plays via USB just as well.


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## texast (Aug 4, 2007)

I got the best price by typing MG35 on the pricegrabber website. It comes as a shell, and you add your own IDE-HDD. I paid $120. (It also has an ethernet port, so you can access it like a NAS; If you're fortunate enough to have a LAN drop near your TV, you'll never have to move it.)

Finally, I came here to figure out why my kids' favorite movies were giving me a hard time (ripping to hard drive), and found so much great advice in this thread. So, thanks!


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## ogreinside (Sep 25, 2008)

I know this is an old thread, but can't find an elegant solution.

I'm doing just like Carlton Bale in comment #18, saving all my daughter's DVDs in their VIDEO_TS folders, after using AnyDVD's option of "rip to harddisk". From here I've used Handbrake to convert them to a PS3 compatible h.264 .mp4 (using Handbrake's preset). I can point to the same share just as Justin Thyme in comment #23 and watch them from any of my TiVos. The problem is because of the transcoding, the video can't be watched live. Once it is completed (24 hours or so?) it plays fine. I know I need a better pyTivo server, as during transcoding ffmpeg is taking up 100&#37; cpu the whole time.

After looking around quite a bit, I was able to use Handbrake to convert the video to .avi first, then use Videora TiVo converter to make it TiVo friendly. Now that video can transfer and play rather quickly on any TiVos.

So I'm wondering if anybody knows of a way to go straight from either DVD or a VIDEO_TS folder to a TiVo compatible format, so I can one-shot these? 

Another thing I've tried doing is reburning the DVD without menus for use in our car. This helps on 2 levels: first when the daughter yanks the disk out and decides to play frisbee while we're driving it doesn't destroy my initial investment. Secondly, any parent who has tried to reach behind the seat and navigate previews and fake "Fast Play" ads knows how difficult that can be while driving. I just want to play the movie. I've used DVD Flick to do this, but it requires that I point to a single file, it won't take the VIDEO_TS or DVD directly. It also fudges up the aspect a bit. Any suggestions on authoring tools (*nix or Windows)? I have Roxio Media Creator 9, but it doesn't support AC3 audio that the .mp4 has.

Thanks in advance.


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## Bushwacr (Sep 6, 2007)

ogreinside said:


> I know this is an old thread, but can't find an elegant solution.
> 
> I'm doing just like Carlton Bale in comment #18, saving all my daughter's DVDs in their VIDEO_TS folders, after using AnyDVD's option of "rip to harddisk". From here I've used Handbrake to convert them to a PS3 compatible h.264 .mp4 (using Handbrake's preset). I can point to the same share just as Justin Thyme in comment #23 and watch them from any of my TiVos. The problem is because of the transcoding, the video can't be watched live. Once it is completed (24 hours or so?) it plays fine. I know I need a better pyTivo server, as during transcoding ffmpeg is taking up 100% cpu the whole time.
> 
> ...


Try DVDFab for your second issue. They have a trial.


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## rambler (Dec 3, 2005)

I always try DVDShrink first. Backup just the movie by "re-authoring."

If that doesn't work I use RipIt4Me in conjunction with DVDecrypter, it has never failed me. You can do just the movie with these also.

Once on my hard drive, I use PocketDivx to make an avi. You can include the closed captions if you like. Then I use Videora if I want it on the Tivo.


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## ogreinside (Sep 25, 2008)

Thanks for the replies guys. I ended up giving CloneDVD and CloneDVD Mobile a try. Turns out they solve all my issues, so I went ahead and bought them. 

I'm all about opensource and freeware, but I don't mind paying for something that "just works". CloneDVD Mobile has an option called "VOB file (passthrough)" which writes a single file, which I can rename to .mpg. pyTivo does not need to transcode it, so it transfers very quickly.

CloneDVD lets you pick which title such as just the main movie and quickly write a folder or straight to DVD. It is very nice, shows a preview of the title in fast play, lets you strip out other languages and director's commentary, menus, etc.


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