What is a good DVD ripping format and can I attach film infromation easily?

[ngc1967]

Hi to Everyone - I have just signed up and this is my first post,

I am new to DVD Ripping and would really like some advice on the best way to do a few things.

I have about 200 purchased DVDs of Films and TV shows that are taking up a lot of space in a cabinet. I want to take them out of their cases and store them in DVD ‘spindles’ with their DVD sleeves in A4 transparent pockets in folders.

What I also want to do is rip all the DVDs and store them on a stand-alone hard disk media player that I bought 2-3 years ago (HiMedia HD900B). Even though I got this player a few years ago I never really played with it and all I did was to rip two films onto it as ISO files.

I used the program ‘WinX DVD Ripper Platinum’ as I got this software included in a package deal but since then I have changed my PC and the licence for this software is no longer valid for my new system. (I can get a free version of it though)


What I would like to know is what is the best format to rip my DVDs to (ISO, H.264, MKV etc.)?

And how can I attach the Film/TV Show information such as Cast, Directors, Brief Plots and most importantly the Jpegs of the films when I choose the thumbnail view (I think its called the Metadata)?

I want to be able to keep the DVDs to as near as the original style as possible (i.e. the menus and all the little ‘extras’ on the disks) and that was why I ripped the previous two DVDs as ISO files but there is no additional information assigned to them – just the file title.

Can you actually assign ‘Metadata’ to ISO files and if so, how?


Sorry if this sounds basic but I am a ‘Newbie’!

[Baldrick]

If you want to keep everything is ISO best. But it doesn't support any metadata.


MKV and MP4 has better support for metadata(MetaX, Xmedia Recode(under tag) ) but you can't keep the dvd menus. You can use MakeMKV to just rip and remux(no video/audio video reconversion) a DVD to MKV files(main movie, extra material).

[ngc1967]

Thanks Baldrick for your information and links.

So I can keep the whole DVD with all it's original menu system (and extras) by converting it to an ISO but I wouldn't have any of the cover art or film information etc.

But if I convert just the main film to MKV or MP4, I can add all the metadata using something like MetaX.

I have just downloaded a free 'full' version of WinX DVD Ripper and it does the ISO conversions but it doesn't seem to do MKV although it does MP4 and WMV. There doesn't seem to be any tab to click to add metadata to the other formats either.

I'll have a look at MakeMKV later tonight.