Problem ripping DVDs issued by Network DVD

[evibenstein]

Hi all, wondering if anyone can help me with this problem?

I've been backing up my DVDs to a network drive in XVid format for a while now. Normally I use Aiseesoft Total Media Converter Platinum for this; it does the job in a straightforward manner and usually gives excellent results. The only problem I have is that, for some reason, it doesn't like DVDs released by Network. When I try to rip these discs (regardless of what format I want to convert them to), the audio plays fine but the video plays at something like twice or 3 times the normal speed, making the rip completely unwatchable.

I'm assuming this is some kind of strange copy protection that I've never encountered before, because it only happens on Network DVD releases of ITV-owned material. Their box set of The Goodies, for example, works fine on the six discs of BBC shows but not the two discs of ITV shows. I have the same problem on other ITV shows such as "Morecambe & Wise: The Thames Years" and the recently released LWT series "End Of Part One".

The thing that really puzzles me is: I can use DVD Shrink to copy the discs to another DVD without any problem, they play back perfectly, but I can't even rip the backup DVDs to XVid - the same speed problems occur. I've tried pretty much all the tools listed here under "DVD to AVI/DivX/Xvid" but none of them work. The closest I've been able to get is using WinX DVD Ripper Platinum, which rips the files with the video in sync with the audio, but looking awful with lots of blocking and pixelation even at the highest video bitrate.

If any of you have any ideas of how to get around this problem, I'd be really grateful!

[jman98]

Try using something like the free version of DVDFab or DVDFabPasskey for ripping and then convert to Xvid with a different tool like Xvid4PSP. Sounds to me like your DVDs have some kind of copy protection that Aiseesoft doesn't understand. You need to break this up into a 2 step process to get your desired results - rip THEN convert. "Ripping" really means just getting the contents off the DVD and onto your PC. Unfortunately various companies use the term incorrectly to refer (mostly) to the conversion process, which really and truly has nothing to do with ripping.

[evibenstein]

Thanks, that's kind of what I've been trying to do, ripping the DVD with WinX DVD Ripper at the highest bitrate and then converting it using Aiseesoft, but I'll give it a try using the tools you suggest.

[hello_hello]

If the video is just playing at a faster speed (no missing frames in the encoded version) it's probably either because it's converting using the wrong frame rate or it's getting the sample rate of the audio wrong. Are you converting the audio or copying it?

If using a different program to rip the DVDs doesn't fix the problem, maybe use MediaInfo to post the video and audio info of one of the ripped vob files (one that's definitely part of the movie) and the same for the encoded AVI.