Episodic DVD Rip Question

[Eternal7331]

OK, I have been looking around and have not come up with a definitive solution to my problem.

I just bought Season 2 of Supernatural, and I would like to rip it to my hard drive, so that I can watch it through my XBMC. Now I can rip them in DVD format just fine, but all together they take up to much room on my HD, like 37.9GB exactly. The question that I am faced with is, what would be the best way to rip the episodes from the DVD files, and convert them to make a smaller footprint on my HD, without losing to much quality.

Cost aside (reasonably) for software, what would be the best way to go about doing that. Currently I have DVD Fab Platinum 4, that I am using to rip the FULLDISC DVD to my hard drive. I also have Intervideo DVD Copy5 which I have been using to encode my movies, but when I use it in customize mode and try to convert the episodes to DivX, the quality is alright, but the aspect ratio is all wrong, it looks scrunched. What is the best formate for compression.

Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated, I turn to these forums for experienced advice on the best tools and procedures out there to get the job done right. Ideally I would like to have a folder that contains the best quality copy of each episode that I could watch at my leisure.

Thank you

Eternal

M$ Windows Vista Ultimate\M$ Windows XP Pro duel boot
AMD Athlon X2 3800
1GB OCZ Platinum cas 2 RAM
X-FI Platinum
nVidia 6800 GS OC

[Squash]

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic301015.html

[Eternal7331]

Thanks Squash, I have actually read this thread on "how to". As we all know with all of the different products out there, there is always more then one way to skin a cat. And I am always on the hunt for the best way to do things.

I am actually looking for a better or the best way to rip an Episodic DVD, and also keep quality while leaving a smaller footprint.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post....

[t0nee1]

Since you already have DVDFab Platinum,why not just use the DVD to Mobile "generic mode" and backup to avi/xvid or mp4.h264...try it....
I normally use MeGui for DVD to xvid/avi or mp4. h264....but trying out Plats conversion,so far I'm liking it....

[Squash]

You might also give Fairuse Wizard a shot. It has a method for ripping and encoding episodes from series DVDs with very little effort. I've never used that function of it, but it generally worked well for movie encodes when I tried it out.

[Eternal7331]

Hey thanks for the great ideas, I will give DVDFab, and Fairuse Wizard a try and see what comes out better....

If anyone has anymore ideas keep them comming....

[Eternal7331]

So the results are in for DVDFab, I used it in Generic Mode to convert 4 episodes off of D1 to .avi, the results were not very good, watchable but not very good. It did a good job of compressing the file to a much more manageable size, but did not impress me during the playback at all.

I even used it in 2 pass high quality mode, which did not seem to improve upon the output quality much. So far DVD Copy5 has produced the best quality playback. Supernatural has a lot of dark shots, which DVD Copy5 seems to have absolutely no problem encoding, everything looks crisp, dark, and clear were as DVDFab seemed to brighten the picture up considerable, also DVDFab created a noticeable amount of static in the picture. It reminded me greatly of the kind of bad transcoding one might see from using DVD Shrink.

Intercopy DVD Copy 5 = 1
DVDFab HD Platinum = 0

[t0nee1]

Hmm, I used Fab to convert DVD to mp4/H.264 and it looks good to me....
Try H.264 instead.....

[Helltrain]

I am trying to do the same thing. Currently I am ripping the contents of the DVD with DVDdecrypter and batch converting to DVR-MS with the demo of Videoredo that I downloaded. It is very easy and quick, the only problem is I get jerky video at the end. Other than that the quality of the video and audio seems to be excellent. Since DVR-MS is a version of MPEG2, the file size is fairly large (approx 1.5 GB /hr) but I think it is smaller than what I record on my MCE 2005 PC. I was working with DVD-WMV as it is a more compressed format, but I gave up on it because the batch encoder kept giving me audio errors. I could only get it to work when I did one vob at a time. If I can get the videoredo soltion to work without jerky video I will be happy. I am going to try it on another machine with better resources and see if that doesn't help.

[Eternal7331]

The more I think about it the more I see that this is turning into more of a question of quality for me, as I have several tools that will actually get the content. Its the compression quality that is more of a concern for me.

So, I pose this question "What is the best DVD to AVI\Xvid encoder"? Money aside....reasonably.

[alwayssummer]

What is the best DVD to AVI\Xvid encoder?

Eternal: Good question, put perhaps you should make a new thread for it . It will likely get very big. I personally am fond of the quality I got using MeGUI and x264 when encoding to MP4, but that's not AVI/Xvid, although I suspect you have the choice of your preferred container.

But... returning to the original question, one which I have not solved yet myself... is there an easy way to encode TV on DVD to multiple output files (preferably using MeGUI). I.E. I'm looking for one script which I can add cut points to in order to output one file per episode instead of one huge file that contains all of the episodes in the VOB. I'm using MeGUI and as it stands I have to create a new script and a new cut file for each episode. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

[Bradskey]

But... returning to the original question, one which I have not solved yet myself... is there an easy way to encode TV on DVD to multiple output files (preferably using MeGUI). I.E. I'm looking for one script which I can add cut points to in order to output one file per episode instead of one huge file that contains all of the episodes in the VOB. I'm using MeGUI and as it stands I have to create a new script and a new cut file for each episode. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

I don't know about scripts, nor do I use MeGUI, but I encode a lot of episodic DVDs. I think the key that doesn't get stressed very much is to find a way to extract program chains to get the individual episode files. Working with the raw VOBs and trying to do cuts and edits is messy and sometimes gives unexpected or sloppy results. I use pgc.NET (from same author as avi.NET) to perfectly extract the individaul episodes (after I've ripped the DVD structure to my drive with DVDFab). It outputs each episode in a VOB containing only the stream for that episode. It appears to be a frontend for vstrip. I only wish it had a batch mode, but at least you don't have to set a bunch of cut points.

[christophergrier]

I would emagine everybody has their opnion about software, but I have use 123Copudvd platinum for several years and beside the lack of included help I really like it. They support chat at times and will respond to help questions.. You can do, well a lot with this program, as well as download videos from several website like you tube, then if your looking for a song and get the video too, you can strip it off.

[christophergrier]

Can someone tell me the difference in episodic and title when you copy a dvd?

[manono]

Can someone tell me the difference in episodic and title when you copy a dvd?

They don't really compare. A title is also known as a PGC (ProGram Chain). All the episodes can be part of the same PGC within the same VTS. The episodes can be separate PGCs within the same VTS. The episodes can all have their own PGC, each in its own VTS. The last example is the easiest to handle. The second isn't hard. The first scenario can be difficult if you want to separate out the individual episodes, especially if subtitles are involved.