Converting DVD to 264 via ripbot

[rocks911]

Alright, I'm at the beginning of yet another learning curve. I have a bunch of concert DVD's that I want to convert to 264 with the use of Ripbot and am running into all kinds of trouble.

I should say at the outset I'm running W7 Home Premium 64 bit.

I DL'd Ripbot, opened the app and loaded a DVD. I noticed that Ripbot would not allow me to highlight all the VOB files so apparently I need to combine the files. I opened VOB merge which I have used quite a bit (though I'm not sure that I've used it with the W7 64 bit OS) and it throws an error message when I try to merge the file after selecting a destination I get "File access denied", never had that happen before.

So let me ask....is there an easy way to convert an actual DVD to a file I can play from my HDD that maximizes video quality and audio quality (after all these are concert DVD's, a lot of them in Dolby or DTS) while keeping the file size manageable?

[Atak_Snajpera]

What happens if you just select first 1GB vob in ripbot264?

[hech54]

So let me ask....is there an easy way to convert an actual DVD to a file I can play from my HDD that maximizes video quality and audio quality (after all these are concert DVD's, a lot of them in Dolby or DTS) while keeping the file size manageable?

There WILL BE quality loss when you are talking about "manageable file size"....no doubt about it.
First decrypt the DVD with DVDFabDecrypter, taking "main movie" only - DVD9 quality(no compression).
RipBot is not the only game in town. Look into HandBrake and WinFF too.

[rocks911]

The DVD spins up and Ripbot indicates "Please wait...indexing video stream" and has been stuck doing that for five minutes with no progress. I have a fast enough processor with plenty of RAM so I'm saying its stuck.

So I ripped my DVD to a multiple part VOB file and VOB merge was able to combine the 5 parts so hopefully this will work. But still looking for any advice to do this straight from a DVD to make the process one or two steps easier.

Thanks for taking the time to reply

[rocks911]

I've got it worked out. Definitely have to get the info from the disk and combine the VOB files. From there it's a breeze. The default settings converted the 4 Gb VOB file into a 500 Mb file with good picture quality and the original Dolby sound format.

Excellent piece of free software!

[smitbret]

Might I suggest using DVD Shrink to rip the DVD. Just uncheck the box in "options" that says "Split into 1GB chunks" and turn off the transcoder. 12 minutes later, you'll have a single .vob file that has the same quality as the original DVD. DVD Decrypter will do this, too, but I have an easier time with DVD Shrink's interface.