I have a couple questions about ripping DVDs

[iansan5653]

I've been trying to rip a DVD, but I am having some problems.

First of all, what free DVD ripping software can break the encryption on a commercial DVD? I've tried Handbrake, VLC Media Player, and WinX DVD Ripper. They all show various error messages. The only solution I've found is to use AnyDVD to rip it and Handbrake to convert it to playable media.

Second, is there any way to speed up the time it takes to rip the DVD? The solution I found took about 6 hours (1 hour for AnyDVD and 5 hours for Handbrake). I have a really old computer, but it still shouldn't take that long after a fresh restart.

Third, what is the best video format to convert to? I want to put the ripped movie onto my Android tablet, so I want the smallest space possible. Currently the video I ripped is 1.1 GB, and it's in m4v format, which my tablet doesn't support (Handbrake only converts to m4v). The resolution of the tablet is 800x600.

I think I am probably doing something wrong here, but I don't know what it is.

[jagabo]

DVD Decrypter still works on a most DVDs. The free version of DVD Fab works on almost all DVDs except some of the very latest releases (it's not updated as frequently as the paid version).

Regarding speed: use faster encoder settings.

[iansan5653]

Alright, I'll try it.

[hech54]

(Handbrake only converts to m4v)

WRONG

what is the best video format to convert to?

Whatever format an Android Tablet accepts.

[jman98]

The ONLY completely reliable rippers these days are DVDFab and AnyDVD. Period. There's a free version of DVDFab that trails the pay version by 6 months so new releases may not be able to be decrypted correctly.

DVD Decrypter does still work, but there's a big catch. If you buy DVDs in the USA or Canada, it depends on what studio made them. Sony and Disney are the most infamous for using what we call "bad sector" copy protection and DVD Decrypter cannot handle that at all. Other studios may use it to. Many do not. In other parts of the world bad sector copy protection is much rarer but it still may be used.

Your ripping times for DVD may be so slow because your DVD drive is set to PIO mode. There are various ways to change this but the way I am most familiar with is via editing the Windows Registry. If you have never done that before I do not recommend trying it. You can do a search on something like "windows pio mode stuck" or maybe "windows pio mode remove". If you are using Windows XP note that the PIO mode issue is considered by Microsoft to be a feature rather than a bug. Basically what happens is that your DVD drive has an error counter in the registry and by default it's set to a ridiculously low value. Once the drive encounters that many errors, and encountering those errors is not really and truly necessarily indicative of a problem, Windows panics and puts the drive in PIO mode which is much slower.

[pepegot1]

No free lunch. Get AnyDVD and have no problems.

[iansan5653]

OK, I downloaded DVDFab and troed to rip Spiderman 2 with it. I set it for rip to Android, and left the house. I came back in 5 and a half hours and it had completed %10. There has to be something wrong here.

[fritzi93]

Nope, sounds about right if your computer details are accurate. You're not only ripping (decrypt/copy to hard drive), you're also re-encoding. And DVDFab is not the best encoder available, by a long shot.

[jagabo]

Use DVDFab to copy the contents of the disc to your hard drive. That's all it's good for. Then use the encoder of your choice to convert to whatever codecs and container you want.

[hello_hello]

OK, I downloaded DVDFab and troed to rip Spiderman 2 with it. I set it for rip to Android, and left the house. I came back in 5 and a half hours and it had completed %10. There has to be something wrong here.

It depends on your definition of "ripping". Traditionally ripping is the process which extracts the contents of a DVD to your hard drive. From there you'd convert the files to another format.
Ripping on it's own usually takes 10 to 20 minutes (depending on the size of the video etc) whereas conversion time depends on your CPU speed and the encoder settings you're using. DVD Fab is fine to use for ripping but it's not a good converter. You'd be better of converting with Handbrake or another encoder GUI. Plus if you're ripping the files and then converting them your DVD isn't working for hours at a time. Which CPU are you using?

[The village idiot]

So AnyDVD is the tool of choice to take my disks and convert to some form of h.264 to use on my Android tablet? (yes I'm clearly saying this is for fair use of the media I own). I've tried a bunch of different tools and I'm not happy at all with what I have to do to make this work and ready to fork out some money for a tool that really does what I want.

One of the big things is that many of the free decrypters that still work on windows 7 will not join the vob's into a single file and i really don't want to just through three or four hoops to get from disk to file to watch on my tablet.

What about Fair Use Wizard and the new free lite version?

[hello_hello]

So AnyDVD is the tool of choice to take my disks and convert to some form of h.264 to use on my Android tablet? (yes I'm clearly saying this is for fair use of the media I own). I've tried a bunch of different tools and I'm not happy at all with what I have to do to make this work and ready to fork out some money for a tool that really does what I want.

As far as I know AnyDVD only decrypts and/or rips the discs. It doesn't convert. There's a free version of DVDFab which decrypts DVDs. There's also a paid version which converts too but it doesn't have a reputation for being very good.
I rip DVDs by running AnyDVD or DVDFab in the background to do the decrypting, then just open the disc using DVDShrink to rip it (copy the files to the hard drive). DVDShrink has a re-author mode which makes it nice and easy to rip just the movie, or for episodic DVDs, to rip the episodes individually for converting.

One of the big things is that many of the free decrypters that still work on windows 7 will not join the vob's into a single file and i really don't want to just through three or four hoops to get from disk to file to watch on my tablet.

I don't know of any which join vob files by default, although DVDShrink has an option to not split vob files into 1GB segments, so it'll output one large single vob file if you want it to.
It's doesn't matter if the vobs aren't joined when ripping however. When you rip a DVD the vob files which make up a movie are all sequentially numbered (if they're ripped correctly). Normally when converting you open the first vob file with the conversion program and it'll automatically include the rest if them when it converts. If a conversion program won't do that then use something else as that's the "usual" way DVDs are converted.

What about Fair Use Wizard and the new free lite version?

I've never used it but I think it'll only convert using Xvid and I think even the paid version will only convert discs.... you can't convert files after ripping them to your hard drive (someone else may be able to confirm that).

Once you have the disc ripped to your hard drive there's plenty of free programs which use the x264 encoder and should all output similar quality. Personally I use MeGUI but as far as encoding GUIs go it's probably got a reasonable learning curve, however there's plenty of other alternatives. Handbrake, VidCoder, ffcoder and Ripbot264 are a few which come to mind.

If you're going to convert a bunch of DVDs then taking a bit of time to learn how to use one of the free conversion programs will be time well spent and there's plenty of people here willing to help if you need it.

[Noahtuck]

I've never used it but I think it'll only convert using Xvid and I think even the paid version will only convert discs.... you can't convert files after ripping them to your hard drive (someone else may be able to confirm that).

From the description on the tool page,

FairUse is a DVD backup software designed to be very easy to use. It makes turning DVD into high quality DivX, XviD, H264 avi or mp4 files

I usually rip a dvd to my HDD to an image/iso file then you open that with FU.

[hello_hello]

When I said I think it'll only convert using Xvid I was referring to the free version, but looking back I didn't make that very clear. And possibly made a bad assumption.

So the free version will also convert using x264? Or does it use another h264 encoder? The website is fairly light on details. About all it says regarding the free version vs the paid version is:

Light Edition has the following limitations :
- no iPod Video encoding
- encoding target file size limited to 700 MB
- no range selection
- no quality based encoding

Seems the free version wouldn't be particularly useful. I can't see ripping a DVD to an ISO file for converting being ideal, but then admittedly I've not done it that way myself before.

[w6rlf]

A lot of good info here. I use DVD Decrypter then Handbrake to convert my DVDs so I can watch them on my tablet and it works great. But I'd like to take that decrypted file and back up some of my DVDs.

The problem is that the file size of the original and the decrypted version is almost always over 6 gigs, whereas 4 gigs is the biggest recordable DVD I can find.

I'm hoping there is an easy solution here that I'm missing...

Thanks,

Paul

[Noahtuck]

Yep, you're missing quite a bit...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817130008&name=CD-DVD-Blu-ray-Media

If you want a fast and dirty transcode to single layer dvdr use DVD Shrink.
For a better result use DVD Rebuilder, it takes longer but reconverts instead of transcoding for a better end result.
If your PC specs are correct it will probably take quite a bit longer.

Although on a lot of dvd's DVD Shrink looks fine for most people.

[w6rlf]

Thanks very much! This is very helpful!

[w6rlf]

Noahtuck,

Thanks again! DVD Shrink seems to work well. Tonight I will burn to a DVD and see how it looks on the TV. Will also try DVD Rebuilder as a comparison.

Paul

[jman98]

The problem is that the file size of the original and the decrypted version is almost always over 6 gigs, whereas 4 gigs is the biggest recordable DVD I can find.

You should be aware that this is only because you are going on what you see in stores. Stores rarely have good quality media. You'd be well served to just buy online. Rima.com and supermediastore.com are 2 reliable vendors many of us use. Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden make the only consistently reliable discs, but do avoid Verbatim's low quality Life line of discs (this is NOT the same as their very high quality DataLifePlus line). If you ever decide to try DL media, ONLY use Verbatim DVD+R DL or you will waste your money.

Not to start a religious war here, but one of our longtime members swears that Sony now uses only the very best manufacturers for DVD media. All I can say is that this was not the case a few years ago (he admitted such) and it seems really odd to me that Sony would deliberately go from selling cheap crap discs to better ones given that the better ones cost them more to get produced. But he swears that they are now great so if you want to roll the dice on store brands I guess you could try Sony. But I have my doubts despite his assurances given how I know Sony operates. It may be true but it makes no sense for it to be true. Sony is very cost conscious AND hostile towards consumers so I am unwilling to buy Sony DVDs just to check them out for myself and confirm what he says. Many here feel the same way I do.

[hello_hello]

I tried Sony discs myself several years ago. They weren't a disaster, but considering they had a reputation for quality I didn't obtain quite as high a burn quality as I'd expected and I'm pretty sure I'd tried the "good" discs. I just put it down to my burners liking some discs better than others and went back to Verbatim.

Anyway..... the way I understand it Daxon were the manufacturers of Sony discs up until they went out of business a couple of years ago. The Taiwanese Daxon were considered to be better quality than the Malaysian Daxon. These days, according to the info on this page, Sony discs are made by Ritek.
http://www.digitalfaq.com/reviews/dvd-media.htm
Even the once good quality TDK discs are apparently no longer made. Don't quote me on this as I may be remembering incorrectly, but I think TDK discs are now made by CMC. Well the TDK "Gold" definitely were a few years ago. They're very average.

It shouldn't be too hard to confirm who makes a disc by looking at the media ID. Nero has a utility for looking at disc info and I'm fairly sure ImgBurn can too.