DVD to Hard Drive

[LeisJosh]

Hey

I was wondering if there was any way to ripp to a hard drive without losing quality of picture and sound also my collection of dvd's is primarily tv shows and i was wondering if there was any way to extract the episodes into several file that way i can look them up and play them and episode at a time. i don't want anything to do with compresion so that i can get as good of quality as possible also i was wondering will any method work on the new HD and Blu Ray disc and will i be able to veiw what i have ripped in hd if i have the apropriate hard ware thanks

[yoda313]

The easiest way is to rip with dvddecrypter or if its a newer disc dvdfabdecrypter.

You could rip in iso mode so it sits as one file. Then you can mount it with a virtual drive utility.

Of course any software dvd player like powerdvd can read normal vob structures assuming you ripped it intact. Just choose ifo mode and copy it to the harddrive. The full structure of the dvd will be copied. Not one bit will be lost (except for the copy protection that is - of course this is all for your personal use ).

[LeisJosh]

What about splitting the vob file if there are several episodes of a show in one

[SingSing]

Use DVDshrink in re-author mode, and use the start/stop to seperate each episodes intoa seperate movies.

[LeisJosh]

What file format does dvd shrink seperate them into because i don't want any loss in quality and i know that will happen if i compress them to mpeg2 or divx or any other format than vob it seems thanks

[hech54]

What file format does dvd shrink seperate them into because i don't want any loss in quality and i know that will happen if i compress them to mpeg2 or divx or any other format than vob it seems thanks

You're not listening. Nobody mentioned compression with any of the suggestions so far in this thread. Ripping a DVD to your HD does NOT need to involve compression of any kind.

[LeisJosh]

I know i thought that dvd shrink would compress when i take the eppisodes out of the original vob file so when i use dvd shrink i will be able to take the vob file and split it up so all there is is the movie and audio stream within a smaller vob file?

[smearbrick1]

DVDShrink in reauthor mode with not compress unless you want it to. Just simply select "no compression" from the dropdown box.

Just a little info for you: DVD is already MPEG2. Also, for storage purposes (if you are just simply going to play them back on a pc and not use these files for archiving) your best bet would be to actually compress the DVDs using some form of the MPEG4 compression codec. The results you can get are nearly transparent to the source (no, this is not an invitation for an arguement, merely an opinion.) and they only take up a fraction of the hard disc space that MPEG2 DVD rips require.

Some more advice: Do a little research into your topic. You may find that being a bit more informed will help your before you make a final decision. Just take a look at the guides to the left, they can help you a great deal.

[LeisJosh]

I understand that they are already MPEG 2 format but from what i understand is that the mpeg2 format is placed within the .vob file on the disk along with the ac3 audio stream. all i want to do is beable to pick and choose which parts of the dvd are in the final file so that i can catalog them my ultimate goal is to write a program using Visual Basic which i am fluent in. that will catalog my movies so i can use a remote to choose wich movies i want to veiw sort of like the new windows media center but when it comes to my dvd's that are tv shows the episodes are put together on one vob file. now according to the posts i can this and split it up. i want to also be able to extract the special features so that they can be veiwed from my program. i hope that makes sence