I have quite a large collection of DVDs and box sets that I want to rip to digital form to make available to my HTPC. I don’t really know much about ripping DVDs so am looking for some guidance on what the best software is to use, what format or codec to use, what bit rate, what audio codec, and what container to use. There seem to be so many variables that it’s a little confusing.
I just want my DVDs ripped so they are still of good quality with the original 5.1 soundtrack in tact but reduced in size. I don’t have any Blu-ray dvds. I don’t care for the menus or extras on the dvd, I just want the film.
Thanks henkasdf. I just installed it and have a few of questions if you don’t mind.
Which format is best? MP4 or MKV? Is there any difference in terms of resources required to play them?
Which video codec do you suggest? H264 or MPEG-4
What video quality setting? Do you go for a bitrate setting or target size or use the slider?
Which audio codec? AAC, MP3 or AC3 / DTS passthru?
If using the H264 codec, do you just leave the settings as default under the H264 tab?
Well I decided to give it a try with the settings left on default and it has estimated to take 7.5 hours the rip a 2:35hr film. Is that normal? This is on a 64bit 2.7Ghz dual core AMD processor. It seems very slow to me or are the settings way off? At this rate it’ll take me 3 months to rip the collection.
Well, that’s too long due to the conversion process, probably to mkv, which uses a very sophisticated and resource-hungry codec, h264 (or is it x264?).
If you have enough disk space you can copy the DVD to an iso file with k9copy or k3b and optionally reduce it’s size with dvdshrink or something like that. This takes at most 30 minutes.
k9copy does a good job of ripping and shrinking, or you can also use some good windows tools with wine. But note that AFAIK in the USofA even if you own the DVDs it is illegal to use decrypting tools on them. That’s a can of worms.
Hi
I use legacy classic, mpeg-4. But I’m putting mine onto a SHDC card for
playing on a portable dvd player that has an SHDC slot so they only
take 20-40mins or so.
What you need to do is pick a chapter that’s only say 5-10mins long and
experiment with the different settings to confirm formats, quality etc
on your setup. I have a few that play via the xbox and from memory they
took around 1:40mins to rip.
>
> I have quite a large collection of DVDs and box sets that I want to rip
> to digital form to make available to my HTPC. I don’t really know much
> about ripping DVDs so am looking for some guidance on what the best
> software is to use, what format or codec to use, what bit rate, what
> audio codec, and what container to use. There seem to be so many
> variables that it’s a little confusing.
>
> I just want my DVDs ripped so they are still of good quality with the
> original 5.1 soundtrack in tact but reduced in size. I don’t have any
> Blu-ray dvds. I don’t care for the menus or extras on the dvd, I just
> want the film.
If you’re DEAD broke… then it makes good sense to not spend fifty dollars
or so to create storage for 200 DVDs or so. BUT, if that sounds
interesting, IMHO, it’s not horrible to rip to flat mpeg2 files. That way
you don’t lose anything… it’s just an unencrypted copy (or you can rip
encrypted as well) of the original. Ripping that way is fast btw since no
encoding (expensive) takes place.
Easy rip:
mplayer dvd://1 -dumpstream -dumpfile myvideo.mpg
Occasionally you’ll have to rip starting somewhere other than “1” and
occasionally you’ll have to rip using “dvdnav” instead of “dvd” as the mrl.
But only rarely (pretty much all contemporary Disney will index start
somewhere else besides “1” though… watch your player and you can find out
where to start.
The advantages to ripping to mpeg2 is you don’t lose anything AND you always
can encode to compressed formats for your PMP style devices as needed.
I’ve used k3b in the past to make EXACT copies of DVDs (for backup)… but
for online storage, I prefer the ripped unencrypted mpeg2.
To “shrink” DVDs I use the already mentioned K9copy. But since you only want to have the actual film, you should indeed use Handbrake (or dvd::rip package is called ‘dvdrip’) which in my opinion has a less cumbersome interface). .mkv is a cool format, because it also supports subtitles, so in case you want to use them too, you do not have to hardcode them into the film (they can be switched on and off). It also supports various audio-channels (for multiple languages) and even chapters. Note that .mkv / Matroska is only a container-format which supports various codecs such as MPEG, WMV, H.264, Theora etc.; the filesize is configured by the codec, not the container-format. Due to the small overhead it produces, Matroska-files often are smaller than other formats with the same quality / codec.
