Ripping Lord of the Rings, got some Ques....

[rubberman]

Gonna rip this movie to DVD-R with just the movie only. This DVD comes with 2 discs(disc1 is the movie and disc2 is the extras). Disc1 is around 7.x gigs. I run DVD Decrypter and select 'movie only'. It hilights the files and decrypts them to my VIDEO_TS folder. The guide i was reading says i need to open IFOedit and select VOBextras and run that which im not sure what it does. Do i have to use IFOedit? or can i burn the VIDEO_TS folder direct to a DVD-R w/o IFOedit? Can Primo burn the VIDEO_TS folder? i hear alot of people have Nero but i dont. thanks for your help...

[Mr N]

LOTR is tooooo big for one dvd, you have to transcode the movie down in size a little. I use ReMpeg and ifo edit to do this and it works fine. I have done LOTR only this weekend and the quality is 100%. Briefly ,i use smart ripper to rip just the movie vobs and the video ts and relevant ifo file to the hard drive, then use rempeg to do the business of reducing the vobs, then ifoedit to rebuild the files and make it playable. There are alot of programs that will burn your finished files to make it playable, i use nero cos it works for me and is very easy, hope this helps.

[rubberman]

I ran the 7 files thru VOBextras and it did its thing. INstead of using rempeg can i select the option to spit to 2 dvd-rs? This dvd to dvdr stuff is confusing!

[Mr N]

Sure you can split to 2 dvdr's, its quicker and you can retain the menu (if you want to), but for me i reduce down to 1 dvd. It is confusing i agree cos people develop their own ways which work for them. Doom9 site has some very good guides, which is where i started, but i have now developed my own way of working which i am happy with and produces no coasters. Before you start decide what you actually want to do, i mean do you want a back up of everything on the original - if you do then go to Blockbuster and buy an x-rental one and save yourself hours of messing. If you want just the movie with working chapters as a personal backup then put it on one disk and saveyourself the cost of using a second disk. If you want any more help let me know. It gets easier believe me.

[rubberman]

If you have your own step by step guide on how to backup DVD movies (dvd5/dvd9) please email me it. Basically i would like to backup movies to 1 dvdr with the same picture/digital sound quality as the original. If i can fit in the menus thats great but if not, then the movie only is fine. I really dont care about the extras, behind the sceens, subtitles or anything like that. thanks a ton!

[medievil]

If you just want the movie then it is easy.
You need:
Smartripper
DVD2AVI
AVISYNTH
mpeg2dec.dll
Bitrate viewer
CCE
Spruceup (or IFOEdit 0.94 or higher for authoring)

Rip the movie with smart ripper (You just need the Movie and the single 6Ch AC3 track)

Load up DVD2AVI and load your ripped VOb's.
Set the audio to DEMUX not decode, this way you will retain the original AC3 track.
This part is optional: Set the video to force film
Save the project, EX: LOTR.D2V

once the save is complete, open Notepad and type the following:

LoadPlugin(mpeg2dec.dll)
mpeg2source("C:\LOTR.D2V") <---Replace with patch where you saved the d2v file.

save as Rip.avs <---I save as this so I just need to change the d2v path for different movies

Start bitrate viewer, load one of the original ripped vobs and note the following:
topfirst, yes or no
progressive or field
DCT 8,9, or10
Scanning order zigzag or alternate
close bitrate viewer

Start cce, load the avs file, right click the file and edit. set it as one pass, Change the file name being save to lotr.m2v(make sure to select all files or it will add mpv to the end) q=60, min= 0, max= 9800
click video and check dvd compliant, set topfield, zigzag, progressive and DCT per bitrate viewer results. make sure to select 16-255 and not 0-255
click ok
click ok again.

click encode. and depending on you CPU speed in a few hours you will have your resized video file.

While CCE is encoding, find your ac3 file and rename it to the same name as your m2v file.

Once done, open spruceup, click 3, right click-add media assist, and select the m2v file (As long as the ac3 file is in the same folder it will be loaded on it's own) author the movie and burn to dvd.
If the movie is 16X9, you will need to edit the Ifo's and change to 16X9. Spruceup only supports 4X3

IFOedit is even easier:
Start IFOedit, click DVD author, load the mtv and ac3 files and click ok..in a few minutes you will have a complete Video_ts set.

[rubberman]

...you call that easy!

[medievil]

Sure, After you do it once you'll see. It's not complicated at all. Total time to do a movie (including burn) is about 3 hours with my Thunderbird 1.3gb

[kitty]

With the cost of buying CCE you can but lots of commercial DVDs & not worry about ripping to DVD-R

[Revilo]

So true Kitty. However, is everyone here actually just trying to make copies of movies they already own for their own personal backup? Doubtful. Most everyone here probably has no problem finding and using warez.. which cuts the cost of that expensive software down quite a bit(hehe).

Rubberman, there is a guide here on VCD called "simple dvd2dvdr guide" by mij. It has a very easy to use method which I have followed many times with perfect results each time. It is written specifically for backing up DVD9 to DVD-r. I think you can use Tmpg with his method, even though he suggests CCE. Most of the software for his method is free. I think spruceup would be the only program you might have a problem with since it isn't sold any more. There might be something that will work in its place. One note on his method: make sure you untick min avg bitrate, he states to do this but it isn't very clear and I saw many posts where people had obviously missed this (results in a file too large).

[rubberman]

Well when i use DVD decrypter to send the files to VIDEO_TS all goes fine. But when i open up IFOedit and select the file in VIDEO_TS, the info pops up the box. But if i try to play it i get errors messages. Then i try to strip the extras out i get different error emssages and that.

[RexEscape]

I was able to rip LOTR successfully. I only wanted just the movie with no extras. It all fit onto one DVD-R (4.7GB)...the entire 165min (widescreen) I used the following:

DVD Decrypter (to extract vob files)
DVD2AVI (to extract audio files)
TMPGEnc (to transcode video files)
ChapterXtractor (to extract chapter files)
DVDMaestro (to put them all together into an image)
and DVD Decrypter again (to write the image onto my DVD-R.)

Total time spent: 10hours on PIII 800mhz slow computer.