DVD episode discs

[-DVD-]

What do you guys use when you copy episode disks. I have used BarryHL's method How to copy a DVD9 to DVD5 with menu & extras using DVD2ONE and have applied it to episode discs and have found that it works perfectly.

[thingimijig]

quite a few ways.

dvd2one, dvdshrink, instantcopy etc.

i personally use maestro and create a little menu so i can get shut of all the extras and menus as a lot of episode disc have big menu vobs.

thingimijig.

[Gazorgan]

DVDDecryptor to rip each episode, then just re-author 2 eps/disk. No re-encoding, goes real fast (ASS-U-Ming you can rip faster than 2x).

[SaSi]

2 episodes per disk is a bit too little. Doing a whole series will get you a box full of disks. But I agree 4 x 45~50min is, for some, a bit too much for 4.36Gb.

However, I too rip the video and audio streams, leave the audio streams intact and re-encode the mpeg-2 episode videos at 200-3230-6000 VBR with Mainconcept.

I also want to keep the subtitles, so I rip them with SubRip.

Some mpeg-2 video streams are a bit bitchy (actually poorly encoded - I should think), and they have their timecodes and GOP link flags go mayhem. They are easily identifiable, as they either crash or lock-up Mainconcept when opening them. For them, I do a Restream pass reseting timestamps and fixing broken link flags first.

I then re-author the DVD with a simple selection menu.

The whole process takes less than you might think. The only slow part is re-encoding the video, which takes 4 x 35 minutes. The demuxing takes something like 3-4 minutes for each episode and subtitle ripping almost as much. Re-authoring (with Scenarist) takes 1 hour for importing and setting custom chapter points as the ones that come with most episode disks are garbage; they appear to be suitable breaks for commercials. Generating the VIDEO_TS takes another 20 minutes. Recording takes another 45 minutes - including verify. (I do recording while authoring or browsing DVDRHelp )