Does Ripping damage the DVD? (the disk, not the drive)

[bachelor]

This may be a newbie question, but I thought I read somewhere that ripping DVD's hurts the DVD, and can possibly crack it. Is this true? I've ripped a few DVD's, and then watched the original DVD on a DVD player after ripping it, and I think with one DVD, the video skipped ahead a second. I'm not sure if that skip was there before the ripping or not. Also, I'm not sure if it was the DVD player, but I have watched many DVD's on the player without any issues.

I have ripped many audio CD's without a problem, so I figured it's pretty much the same concept, but want to make sure.

Can anyone confirm or deny this?

[condone]

does watching/playing a DVD damage the disc? though ripping does have more strain its on the hardware reader side...so if u take good care of the reader ripping should, in most cases, be equivalent to playing/watching a DVD. if i am totally offbase feel free to correct.

[HillJack]

It's light (a laser) shining on a disc. No it won't damage the disc. If someone tells you otherwise, then I have a solar-powered flashlight I'd like to sell them.

And no it won't damage the drive either - your reading the data from the disc, thats what dvd-rom's are made for... to read dvd's and cd's. If it "does" damage the drive, you have a crappy drive

[bachelor]

Kool. Thanx for the info.

[pjotrek]

...but, on the other hand, ripping is kinda cracking. Watch out for
cracks...

[DVantrease]

The only possible damage I could think of is to the drive itself, if it overheats. This shouldn't happen if you're just ripping the VOB files to your harddrive for later conversion. However, make sure you do this first, do NOT try to convert directly from the DVD. This would cause your DVD drive to spin for many hours, which may overheat it. I don't know what would happen to the disc that's in the drive if it overheats.

[bachelor]

OK. Thanx. I use SmartRipper to rip the VOB files onto my hard drive anyway. Glad to know I am ripping using the safest method.

[condone]

The only possible damage I could think of is to the drive itself, if it overheats. This shouldn't happen if you're just ripping the VOB files to your harddrive for later conversion. However, make sure you do this first, do NOT try to convert directly from the DVD. This would cause your DVD drive to spin for many hours, which may overheat it. I don't know what would happen to the disc that's in the drive if it overheats.

Thats really what i was referring to. Doom9 (www.doom9.org) has stated explicitly that doing direct DVD encoding is likely to cause problems as were mentioned. they also talked about prolonged use for ripping (endless ripping usage basically) could cause problems. Now if u rip once in a while im sure your fine (like most of us are) its just common sense.

[DiViNeLeFT]

yeah, dont use those all in one rip software things... always rip the vobs first... i seen a post on here once before about someone thats dvd melted inside the drive ruining the drive and forcing him to pay for the rented dvd. of course this was after hours of ripping.