Keep the quality, lose the extras... how?

[philipohare]

I want to back up my DVD-9 DVDs onto DVD-R, and all I want is the video, no extras, no extra languages, no subtitles etc.

I assume that once I strip out all this, I may be able to fit what was a DVD-9 disc onto 4.7GB DVD-R. The guides seem to all sacrifice quality though.

So... what free software is out there? I want to keep the quality, if it takes hours to do then so be it!

Am I right in thinking that SmartRipper will do this?

[alchemistresearch]

I'm not an expert to the subject as I've only been a DVD writer owner for a week, but from what I can gather, there will almost always be a little bit of quality lost if the DVD is really large. However, I don't think it's really noticable unless you have a really good home entertainment set up.

There are lots of tools available for ripping and writing, its hard to say which is the best as I think its down to personal preference, just like with normal CD burning software. But, I've been using quite a few programs and methods and have got it down to these three programs:

DVD DECRYPTER (for ripping the DVD to VOBs)
DVD2ONE (to extract just the movie)
COPYTODVD (to record the movie back to DVD)

Before that I was using DVD2AVI, DVDX, IFOEDIT and many others with lengthy processes to rip and convert. Pinnacle Instant copy is supposed to be excellent but I've not really had any luck with it.

[Faustus]

2 ways, if the video and audio streams you want are small enough you can just extract them with DVD decrypter and reauthor them in a DVd authoring program such as Maestro or I assume DVDLab. If it needs reencoding you can use DVD2SVCD to automate the process a bit and reencode the video file.

Also you can use ifo edit if the video is small enough and avoid the DVD authoring program, but its not usually worth the time if you have the software and know how to use it.

there are great guides and suggestions all over the board for different methods... try checking out the guides section, the one there I wrote covers the DVD2SVCD way if you need help in that direction.

[MackemX]

for pure simplicity and no cost at all

DVDTOOLBOX and DVDSHRINK