How do I rip old home DVD's

[Simon_]

I have a set of home DVD's that i need to rip. Sometimes I get error messages when it is trying to copy a VOB file. is there any program that can help me with this problem and let me get all of the VOB files onto my HDD. Thank you.

[smrpix]

With home DVDs you can literally just copy the video_ts folder to your hard drive. DVD Decrypter and others are good for ripping but completely unnecessary in your case.

Without knowing the error message there's not much more anyone can offer. Maybe faulty media.

[jman98]

Just use DVD Decrypter. Since you have to ask how to do this, that indicates your inexperience and we've had newbies report the occasional problem with the copy method suggested by smrpix. Yes, it should work, but for what it's worth with all my years of experience I just use DVD Decrypter myself for this sort of thing.

[redwudz]

The main problem I have ran into is scratched or fingerprinted discs. I wipe each one down with Windex and a paper towel. If it's badly scratched, then usually it's best to polish it. Music stores can often do this for you for a minimal price.

Cheaper is to use a program like ISOPuzzle and extract what you can. Often the missing info is minimal and you end up with a decent copy. You can't recover data from the scratched area. Polishing out the scratches is the only way to do that.

If you are getting a consistent error, tell us what it is and we may be able to suggest a different method. I'm assuming these are home burnt discs. Sometimes if cheap media was used, the disc can deteriorate over time. Then a program like ISOPuzzle may be your only hope.

[Simon_]

ISOPuzzle worked the best. thank you for all your help.

[lordsmurf]

Ideally, you want to rip as ISO -- never as files.
The quality of the drive is the most important -- more important than software.

[Simon_]

quality of the drive?

[hello_hello]

I've got several DVD drives and there's been a couple of times when trying to rip badly burned or scratched discs etc, I've needed to use all the drives to copy the entire contents of the disc. No one drive could read the whole disc, but between them.....
Of course if the disc is totally unreadable in places you could be out of luck no matter what you do, but if I have problems the first thing I do it clean the disc if it needs it then try a different drive. If you have access to another drive or PC it might be worth a shot.

[Anonymous2]

Ideally, you want to rip as ISO -- never as files.
The quality of the drive is the most important -- more important than software.

excuse me butting in buy can I ask why this is? Thanks

[wulf109]

I would give the old Smartripper a try. It's very old but it could rip minidvd on CD that DVDdecrypter couldn't.

[usually_quiet]

Ideally, you want to rip as ISO -- never as files.
The quality of the drive is the most important -- more important than software.

excuse me butting in buy can I ask why this is? Thanks

An ISO image is a sector-by-sector copy of the data on an optical disc, stored inside a binary file. When an ISO is burned onto a blank disc, the data is put back in the same location where it was stored on the original. If a new disc is burned from copied files and folders, the data won't necessarily be placed in the same location that held it on the original disc. Burning a new copy from an ISO is also supposed to be a bit faster, but I haven't timed it to verify the claim.

[hello_hello]

I've been ripping DVDs for years and years and I'm fairly certain I've never ripped a video DVD to ISO. I've never had a problem converting the ripped files, nor re-burning them as a backup DVD. If you're using burning software capable of creating a compliant video DVD, it should be able to use the ripped files and burn them correctly. Plus if you're ripping a DVD9 disc and want to shrink it to DVD5 size for burning....

I'm kind of curious myself.... while I understand the principle behind ripping to ISO, when ripping a DVD for encoding, I don't understand why ISO is better than files, and given not all conversion software opens ISO files, most of the time I'd use an archive program such as WinRAR to extract the ISO to files before converting anyway.

[johns0]

I would say your dvd was burned bad and you never verified it so it might be toast.

[manono]

I don't understand why ISO is better than files...

It's not, of course. ISOs are next to useless if you're going to turn around and reencode the DVD for another DVD or convert it to some other format. The only thing I can think an ISO might be useful is for burning to disc, although some players can also play them.

I also have been doing this for many years and have never once decrypted to an ISO if the aim was to reencode it. And I've never had a problem, except for the odd scratched DVD.

I believe both lordsmurf and unusually_quiet were addressing the OP's question about putting files on the hard drive, assuming he was going to turn around and reburn them to disc. If he intends to do anything else with them (such as edit or reencode), then he'd have no reason to make ISOs of them. I wouldn't anyway.

[usually_quiet]

Personally, I don't copy DVDs to a HDD as an ISO except to make another copy of the disc. It is simple and quick to do it that way. However I have read posts from other members who rip ISOs to maintain a backup of their DVD collection or to keep everything on the DVD together in one file that can be played like a DVD the help of Daemon Tools.

[Edit] I forgot to mention that the DVD files and folders stored in an ISO can be accessed with programs like 7-zip or WinRAR.