Rip DVD to .MKV

[adjaq]

Hello,

I am completely new to this field. I recently bought a WD-TV HD Player. I thought it is a very good way to convert all my DVDs to digital files and have everything ready in a hard drive.

Somewhere I read that if I convert DVDs to .MKV files, it will carry all the subtitles and bonus features of the dvd too. My question is how do I rip dvds to .MKV files?

Your help is very much appreciated.

Thanks.

Jacques

[redwudz]

You can convert DVDs to MKV, but it takes quite a bit of time and computer power to do this. Playback is similar.

That said, try XviD4PSP or RipBot264 or FairUse Wizard for H.264 formats. Probably others that don't come to mind at present.

You will lose menus. And any 'extras' would have to be separate files. You can have multiple audio and subtitle tracks, though.

And welcome to our forums.

EDIT: BTW, 'ripping' is just transferring the contents of the DVD to your hard drive. You may need a program like DVDFab HD Decrypter to do that. The actual encoding is a bit more complex process.

[adjaq]

Thanks redwudz!

What is the best way to put my dvds to a hard drive so that I do not loose the menus & extra features?

Thanks

Jacques

[poisondeathray]

If you use AnyDVD or DVDFab you can choose to transfer parts (e.g main movie only) or all (exact copy incl. menu, extras, subs) of the DVD to your hard drive

As redwudz pointed out, you can't keep DVD menus in an .mkv format

[craigarta]

The only option that comes to mind would be RatDVD. But I tried it and didn't like it

[RickA]

-snip-
you can't keep DVD menus in an .mkv format
-snip-

That is true currently, but is in the pipeline for future mkv usage. http://www.matroska.org/technical/menu/index.html Well, unsure if the exact menu from the DVD. Certainly DVD-like menus.

Cheers,
Rick

[lovelove]

That is true currently, but is in the pipeline for future mkv usage. http://www.matroska.org/technical/menu/index.html Well, unsure if the exact menu from the DVD. Certainly DVD-like menus.

Any progress on this front in the last 3 years?
After all, that's the stated goal:

What we'll try to have is a system that can do almost everything done on a DVD, or more, or better, or drop the unused features if necessary.

Already back in 2006 there seemed to be a basic implementation of DVD menus in a mkv file. See placebo.mkv:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=768801#post768801

[lovelove]

ok, given that nobody commented on this, should I assume that mkv cannot handle DVD menus yet?
so what is the bottom line?
when you want to keep DVD menus, you can't reencode the video?
absolutely no way around this?

[redwudz]

If you really want the menus, try DVD Shrink.

[lovelove]

this is a mpeg2 -> mpeg2 conversion
I want to encode to H.264.

[Revamp!]

Basically, if you wish to convert to MKV, keeping the menu's are not yet an option with even some of the best applications.
As stated previously, there have been signs and such of it being possible, but nothing has been perfected.
If you're really in to learning about it, your only hope is doing a lot of reading and seeing if you can figure out the complexities.

Try DVDFab for ripping to MKV x264 - it has always given me the best results.

[smitbret]

this is a mpeg2 -> mpeg2 conversion
I want to encode to H.264.

Why would you insist on degrading image quality by re-encoding to h264, when you can accomplish your task in 20 minutes using DVD Shrink?

[lovelove]

Why would you insist on degrading image quality by re-encoding to h264

with the right settings you can achieve considerable file size reduction with virtually no visible image quality degrading. And it's not as if DVDshrink-ing were a lossless process.

when you can accomplish your task in 20 minutes

why would I care how long it takes? I have someone doing it for me (my computer), I don't have to do it myself.

using DVD Shrink...

... is no match for H264 when it comes to file size reduction.

[smitbret]

Why would you insist on degrading image quality by re-encoding to h264

with the right settings you can achieve considerable file size reduction with virtually no visible image quality degrading. And it's not as if DVDshrink-ing were a lossless process.

when you can accomplish your task in 20 minutes

why would I care how long it takes? I have someone doing it for me (my computer), I don't have to do it myself.

using DVD Shrink...

... is no match for H264 when it comes to file size reduction.

Wow, slow down. If you are just interested in shrinking DVD to h264 because you think it sounds like an interesting task, then I understand. I do lots of stuff simply because I want to. If you are really looking for a solution to getting DVDs onto a HDD, then I was just throwing out what I thought was the best idea to accomplish this task.

Since it looks like you can't currently achieve what you'd like (full DVD to .mkv), using DVD Shrink offers the quickest, best quality solution. Even though the computer is doing most of the work, you'll still be tied to it, switching DVDs and setting up job queues. Using DVD Shrink I could do about 3 per hour instead of 3 per day (using h264). If I had 50 DVDs, I could set aside 2, 8-hour days and get most if not all of the project done using 300-400GB of HDD space. That seems preferable to me than spending the next month converting them to h264 using 100GB and ending up with degraded quality, no matter how slight.

Everyone knows that MPEG-2 is no match for h264 transcoding. It seems that you were unaware that the transcoder can be turned off in DVD Shrink. If you do this, then DVD Shrink can be used to simply get the movie off of the DVD an onto the HDD with no degredation in quality.

[guns1inger]

Your only option at the moment for keeping everything intact and have playback on your WDTV is to rip the disc to ISO format (DVDFab HD Decrypter) and live with the filesize. You may have to update your WDTV firmware to ensure ISO playback support.

[shahzadashraf30]

i have downloaded HD movies from torrents and are in mp4 and avi formats on my HD. they in huge size, i wanna reduce the size but dont wanna reduce the quality. advise me

[dragonkeeper]

i have downloaded HD movies from torrents and are in mp4 and avi formats on my HD. they in huge size, i wanna reduce the size but dont wanna reduce the quality. advise me

My advice would be to buy the movies, laws are become more and more strict about pirating copyright material. it's just a matter of time before emphasis shift from persosn distributing the content (seeders), but to the persons downloading as well (leechers).

Reducing the file size of a movie that has been compressed already is going to reduce the quality. If your not satisfied with the movies your downloading, why not buy the movie and do the conversions yourself. You'll get better quality that re-encoding a movie that has already been compressed.

[aedipuss]

Hello, there is something new coming: Rip DVD to MKV - Backup DVD to MKV with All Audios, Subtitles, Menus and Chapters. Check-out this link

This is what you want, but not yet available.

why would anyone be stupid enough to buy any of that crap from a no name company that doesn't list a business address or phone number?( i laughed pretty hard at the nice picture of busy phone operators on the contact page) not only is it shady, they use avangate.com to collect the money, so good luck getting service or a refund.

[gonwk]

... Try DVDFab for ripping to MKV x264 - it has always given me the best results.

Hi Revamp,

How fast does it convert!?!? I know it depends on my CPU and so forth ... but some Apps run faster than others!

Thanks!

G!

[dw817]

To Gonwk:

* DVDFab8 is actually pretty fast. I would =LOVE= to use TMPGenc Video Mastering Works 5 as it's a gem for editing and tweaking your videos but for some darned reason it is the slowest encoder out there today. Really.

DVDFab8 on my 1ghz computer encodes 8-minutes of video to MKV 2-pass in about 8-minutes.

TMPGenc takes 24-minutes for the same-length video, sometimes more depending on how much action there is.