Advice on Hard Drive Back Up

[King Otoss]

Hey, I've been reading many many guides and reviews of many many dvd ripping, decrypting, converting programs...and to be perfectly honest i'm more confused now than I was....

What I want to do is back up all of my Movie DVD's onto my hard drive purely for playback on my pc preferably using Windows Media Player, I would like to get the best possible picture and audio quality and I am not worried about high file size as hard disk space is not an issue.
As far as programs goes I am willing to pay for one if its gonna save hours of stressfull use with free programs.....

Also whats the best format to output as for highest possible quality playback in Windows Media Player??

Help would be very very much appreciated!!!

Dave

[hech54]

https://www.videohelp.com/guides/how-to-rip-a-dvd-to-the-hard-disk-using-dvdfab-hd-decr...er-id1052#1052

[King Otoss]

what format will the video be in using this software?

[Noahtuck]

what format will the video be in using this software?

Depends on what format you want to rip & convert them to.

[King Otoss]

I have just read on another forum that If I want to keep the full quality of the film then i should rip it as an .iso and not convert it, as converting decreases quality which i already knew from video editing, but i didnt realise that WMP plays .iso files....is this right?

[brettski74]

I have just read on another forum that If I want to keep the full quality of the film then i should rip it as an .iso and not convert it, as converting decreases quality which i already knew from video editing, but i didnt realise that WMP plays .iso files....is this right?

I doubt that you will get WMP to play ISO files. I don't use Windows much any more, but it really all depends on what you want to keep. If you rip the entire DVD filesystem into an ISO image, the you're retaining *everything* on the DVD, including all the different languages, camera angles, subtitles, menus, special features... the lot. Most people doing what you're doing merely want to store the movie in the form that they would normally watch it, possibly with some subtitles depending on the movie. For that, you'll do better to store the movie as a file in a format such as MPEG, AVI, MP4, Matroska, Quicktime, etc.

As far as conversion and information loss is concerned, you're correct. Any conversion of the audio or video data will incur a loss in quality of the resultant audio or video. This doesn't mean that you need to keep the video in the same container format. There are many programs out there that will copy the audio and video data into a standard container format such as MPEG without converting the audio and video data. This will give you the exact same video and audio stream and therefore no losses, but still have the simplicity of a standard MPEG file or whatever.

As for the max quality point, while any conversion of the video stream you do will incur some loss in quality, storing the raw MPEG2 stream off the DVD will chew up your disk space quickly. I don't know how much disk space you have that it's "not an issue", but invariably no matter how much you have, it will eventually become an issue. I have a 3TiB array with another 3TiB on hand and I still choose to transcode my DVD collection into H264 video. I would recommend using the x264 codec using constant rate factor encoding. I'm using crf=22 which is giving me great quality results and files between 10-20% of what they would be if I stored the raw MPEG2. The quality differences between the original DVD and the encoded stream are largely imperceptible, although if you believe that you have a more picky eye than me, you could try crf=20 or even lower and see how you like it. Audio is not so much of an issue. I usually keep the raw AC3 stream as the disk space gains are much lower and AC3 can be streamed directly to my home theatre receiver.

[JohnnyBob]

Welcome to this forum! FYI, I'm not an official greeter (like at Walmart), just another ordinary forum member. It's normal to be confused at first, requires a fair amount of reading and experimenting to figure things out. You'll find some helpful people here and the answers to most of your questions, if you persist. It's not necessarily easy, but it's possible.

The most popular freeware for ripping is DVD Shrink, DVD Decrypter, RipIt4Me, and DVDFab HD Decrypter. You can find them in the Tools section of this forum.

As long as you don't compress/shrink when you rip, you will retain the original quality with either an .ISO file or DVD Video format (VIDEO_TS folder with .VOB files), the most common output formats. They're the greediest of hard drive space, but you said that was not a factor for you. I use and prefer DVD Video format which plays fine with WMP, PowerDVD, and most other computer players, as well as all standalone DVD players. Conversion to other formats such as .AVI or XVID/DIVX can save a lot of space but takes longer, is much more complicated technically, may lose quality depending upon your expertise, and is less compatible with various players.

My older versions of WMP player and PowerDVD won't play .ISO files. Some software/systems play .ISO files, some don't, so try it for yourself to see what works for you. I've heard that you can play .ISO files with VLC media player, for example, but I've tried it and don't like it. I greatly prefer PowerDVD. You can get different versions of PowerDVD at http://www.oldversion.com/PowerDVD.html - the 5 version is the last unbloated version and works best on my older XP computer.

[JohnnyBob]

https://www.videohelp.com/guides/how-to-rip-a-dvd-to-the-hard-disk-using-dvdfab-hd-decrypter-id1052#1052

Outdated. The default output with DVDFab HD Decrypter and DVDFab used to be DVD9, but now it's DVD5. So it's necessary to change that setting otherwise it'll compress the output automatically. Newbies won't find that easy to figure out.

[classfour]

JohnnyBob: That must be in the settings somewhere. I just installed DVDFab HD Decrypter 6.2.1.8 and it defaults to "DVD9"

This is after a full uninstall of the previous version, and deleting the program folders.

I've always had this behavior - always have had to set it to "DVD5" if and when I wanted it to shrink.

I really suspect it's in YOUR settings somewhere.

For the OP. The only means to play an iso without a player that will read these direct is to mount the image. Use the tools of your choice.

[JohnnyBob]

JohnnyBob: That must be in the settings somewhere. I just installed DVDFab HD Decrypter 6.2.1.8 and it defaults to "DVD9"

This is after a full uninstall of the previous version, and deleting the program folders.

I've always had this behavior - always have had to set it to "DVD5" if and when I wanted it to shrink.

I really suspect it's in YOUR settings somewhere...

I also did a full uninstall of the previous version (using Revo Uninstaller). Subsequent install of DVDFab 6.2.1.8 (paid version) produced DVD5 as the default output for DVD to DVD operation, as it has been doing for the last few versions. It has nothing to do with my settings, which were all removed. If all your prior settings were removed(?), then it's a mystery, and I can only speculate as to the cause. Maybe DVD Fab HD Decrypter has different defaults than DVDFab(?), or maybe it's a quirk in the installer for different op systems(?). I'm running XP Home SP3.

[classfour]

Same download - different settings????

All I've ever seen with the program (paid or free) is default to DVD9.

[JohnnyBob]

Same here, til the last few versions, which default to DVD5 output for DVD to DVD on my system. A mystery.

[redwudz]

I would probably just decrypt the DVDs and store them as VIDEO_TS folders or ISOs. Figure about 8GBs per DVD. The ISO container has the advantage of showing the name of the video on the ISO file, while with VIDEO_TS folders you would have to put them in another folder to add the title. And I wouldn't use WMP for much of anything, IMO. VLC works fine for ISOs.

But you can try both formats and see what works for you best. You would have no quality loss with either format. You could also use DVD Shrink if you just wanted the main movie with no compression and that can halve your filesize at times. With your listed computer details, higher compression formats will take a fair amount of encoding time and will have some quality loss.

And welcome to our forums.

[King Otoss]

Could somebody please explain what my options are?

I just want to back up my film collection onto my hard drive with excellent video quality...i want to be able to pick and choose what bonus features, subtitles, languages i want...
I will be playing the video's back in windows media player so i want it in a format that WMP will recognise....

What are my options?

Thanks for the good comments.

Dave

[JohnnyBob]

Could somebody please explain what my options are?

I just want to back up my film collection onto my hard drive with excellent video quality...i want to be able to pick and choose what bonus features, subtitles, languages i want...
I will be playing the video's back in windows media player so i want it in a format that WMP will recognise....

What are my options?

Thanks for the good comments.

Dave

Simple, use DVD Shrink to rip and edit to ordinary DVD Video format with a VIDEO_TS folder containing .VOB/.IFO files etc. If you previously used different software to rip, you can still use DVD Shrink to edit. It's a good, relatively easy-to-understand editor. You don't have to use it to compress/shrink, which loses quality.

One trick I found is to leave it set on DVD-9 (8.5GB) output all of the time. If so, then it will never compress/shrink anything. Switching between the DVD-9 and DVD-5 settings encounters some quirks, so it better to sidestep that possibility. Since you are storing on hard drive (not burning discs), you don't have to worry about the difference between DVD-9 and DVD-5, which applies only to burning discs. Layer breaks are also irrelevant to your purpose, except it's advisable to remove them when ripping.

[brettski74]

Simple, use DVD Shrink to rip and edit to ordinary DVD Video format with a VIDEO_TS folder containing .VOB/.IFO files etc.

I'm not sure that it's quite that simple, as this only answers half of his question. He also seems hell bent on using WMP. Will WMP recognize a VIDEO_TS folder or ISO image? I haven't bothered with the latest versions of WMP, but I'm guessing that it probably won't work with them. Certainly the last version I used wouldn't do it. Correct me if I'm wrong about the latest version.

To the OP - what's more important to you? Using WMP or retaining the entire menu structure and all the features from each DVD? You're probably going to have to pick one, because I'm not sure that you can have both. It may help if you explained why using WMP is so important to you. Are you perhaps using a remote control and don't know how to make it work with anything else bu WMP? Whatever the reason, people may be able to suggest another alternative that still meets your needs.

[JohnnyBob]

...I'm not sure that it's quite that simple, as this only answers half of his question. He also seems hell bent on using WMP. Will WMP recognize a VIDEO_TS folder or ISO image? I haven't bothered with the latest versions of WMP, but I'm guessing that it probably won't work with them. Certainly the last version I used wouldn't do it. Correct me if I'm wrong about the latest version...

You're right! I only replied to what I understood best and figured others would fill-in as needed. I'm not familiar with WMP because I rarely use it, but I've got WMP 11 and gave it a quick try. I found that it will play movies in DVD Video format if you open the VIDEO_TS folder and send it (open) an .IFO file. For example the VIDEO_TS.IFO file plays the whole movie from the beginning. Maybe there's a more automatic way to set it up, I don't know. It seems designed mostly for audio, not video, and I have a hard time figuring out how to do anything with it. Obviously I'm not an expert in that area.