DVD Rip - software suggestions - been out of the game for 5 years

[magillagorilla]

Sorry this is a multi-pronged question.

I am starting to (or trying to) rip my DVDs for media center and portable devices again. I used to be able to back up anything with DVDShrink or AnyDVD. Some new DVDs, like Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2 won't even load on my DVD drive. I was going to put the movie on my kid's MP4 player. I suspect they have corrupted the ToC in a way that confuses Windows but not a DVD player.

Anyway, what is a really good ripper anymore? I have DVDShrink and DVDDecrypter. I don't mind spending $50 on something, but I don't want to buy junk. Is AnyDVD still good, I had it, lost it on a system crash/rebuild. It always worked well.

Bonus question: one of my kids has a media player which only plays WMV. What's teh easiest way to go DVD>WMV? Right now I am ripping to x264 then transcodeing to WMV, its quite anoying.

[Baldrick]

LATEST ANyDVD or DVDfab decrypter(free version, only ripping) should support most dvds.

And Nope, I don't know any good dvd to wmv tools...maybe the full dvdfab version but have not tried it.

[jman98]

Bonus question: one of my kids has a media player which only plays WMV. What's teh easiest way to go DVD>WMV? Right now I am ripping to x264 then transcodeing to WMV, its quite anoying.

Actually you are NOT "ripping to x264" at all. Ripping is the act of getting the content off the DVD. That's it. You are ripping and THEN converting to X264. Your lack of understanding is causing you to take extra steps. You need only rip as normal to your hard drive (use one of what Baldrick has suggested because obviously whatever you are using now is hiding the true process from you and causing you to misunderstand what it is really doing) and then convert the DVD to WMV. Windows makes some free encoders.

Here's a guide to go from DVD to WMV by Baldrick himself.
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/259351-DVD-to-WMV-using-AutoMKV

[magillagorilla]

"Your lack of understanding is causing you to take extra steps"

Actually, I do understand the process. I think the lack of codec support in Windows Media Encoder is causing me extra steps. I was ripping the DVD to my HDD first with DVD Shrink. But alas, Windows Media Encoder does not accept VOB/MPEG2 files. Sony Vegas does, but when I import the VOBS to a timeline, there are gaps in the audio between VOBs. Handbrake is able to stitch the VOBs together in to one continuous h.264 MP4 file. I was then transcodeing it to WMV in Vegas, because Windows Media Encoder does not like MP4 files.

I think AutoMKV may help me skip a step. Thanks!

[jman98]

Most of us are hardly experts at encoding to WMV, but I found a post on another forum from a few years that suggests that simply renaming VOB files to end in .MPG is sufficient to get WME to encode them.

[usually_quiet]

1. Rip the DVD using the option for the main movie only, if there is one.
2. VOB2MPG can correctly join the VOBs for the movie into one .mpg file very quickly without re-encoding.
3. Windows Media Encoder to convert from .mpg to .wmv