Help a newbie out with ripping a TV Show and stuff?

[Chiggy]

hey i want to rip a bunch of tv show DVDs and some BluRays from my aunts house so that i can watch them on my computer and also to use them on my tv's DVD player, i followed a bunch of guides on many sites and tried alot of programs, i pretty much failed at them all, ive just been able to make one DVD rip using DVDFab's decrypter and + Handbrake but the result is less than stellar (it looks and sounds horrible, trust me) ive tried everything from a bunch of trial software that says it can rip DVDs and Blu Rays to freewares but the result is either an empty folder with 0kb files or unplayable Avi's (even using vlc didnt help) or one massive file with all the episodes lumped as one.
Im really not good with computers at all, i just want something as simple as iTunes when it rips CDs, you put in the disk and it shows you the songs on it, it even guesses all of the songs names and fills in the metadata thingy and you choose a format and its done, ive tried really hard to find something like that for DVDs but nothing the closest i found was a program called bitRipper but the rips it made chose the spanish audio in some rips and i dont know how to make them in english again.
please, please, can someone who knows about this help me out? i just want something simple that does its job, just like the iTunes example i gave above if possible. i dont want to meddle with scripting and stuff and mess the quality of my rips, if possible it would be nice if it could make a predetermined size like how AutoGK does, any help would be appreciated!

i have AnyDVD HD ready on my computer to handle any copy protections and stuff if there is any btw, so i guess i took care of that bit

[Baldrick]

You could try Vidcoder, open the dvd video_Ts or blu-ray bdmv folder, select title, select the high profile preset. Under the settings and the video tab can you just target size. Convert to mp4 or mkv.

I guess it will work if you have anydvdhd installed or rip to your hdd first.

But mp4/mkv wont work on most standalone dvd players. You must then either convert to avi divx/xvid (autogk for dvd sources) or dvd-video.

But it will never be as simple as itunes/cdrippers....

[jman98]

If you want easy, then you have the risk that what you produce may not play on standalones and/or the quality may be lower than you like.

If you want something that will almost certainly play on your standalone player without sacrificing quality then it will take longer and be a more manual process, probably more than you are really willing to do.

Handbrake is capable of producing very high quality output so that makes me have to consider that something is wrong in your process, but you are kind of skimpy on the details.

The ONLY reliable ripping programs for BluRay are AnyDVD HD and DVDFab HD. Nothing that is free is worth a crap. Even DVDFab Passkey, which used to be free, is apparently no longer free.

Sorry but you can't have simple AND good. Pick one.

[Chiggy]

ugh i guess i need a compromise them >.<
i havent tried vidcoder yet but it seems good and simple, but if its based on handbrake doesnt that mean itll just convert to mkv and mp4 and nothing else? my video player has DIVX written on it, dont DIVX things only play avi files?
id really love it if you guys knew of a tool that had has these features in it:
-it has an option to make the file be a specific size, (like how AutoGK does)
-it can convert the DVD to more than just mp4 and mkv, i cant really think of much that even plays mkv
-if theres an option to make an exact copy of the sound and video and loose no quality, sortoff like how an ISO does
-it doesnt need me to know how to script (like avisynth) and to calculate bitrates and stuff like that, im not even good at math so that part kills me >_< basically just not to be as confusing as GordianKnot and MeGUI

and i dont know if i should ask this in another thread or not but since its related.... in the VIDEO_TS folder that dvdfab and dvddecrypter make, what is the file that i should select to convert? so far in the past few hours i think decrpyting is the only step ive gotten right

[Hoser Rob]

For encoding I use either handbrake (vidcoder isn't available for linux and I didn't really find it better than handbrake anyway) for h.264 encoides or avidemux for encoding to xvid. You can encode to xvid (and divx I believe) with older handbrake versions.

However, as jman says, there aren't any simple and powerful encoders. Though I think handbrake has the best power/ease compromise of all of them.

Avi is just a container. It's not a codec. You can put divx or xvid or even h.264 video in a .avi file, though making h.264 avi files is a sign of incompetence IMO.

However, if your dvd player says divx, it'll have to be that codec, in an avi file. It's been so long since I encoded to divx I don't even remember if there's any other modes than target bit rate/file size. I always use quality based encoding in h.264 or xvid, which doesn't closely control file size but does about as good a job as 2 pass bit rate/size mode ... never use 1 pass ... in a reasonable time.

You can't think of anything that plays h.264? Maybe not dvd players but any computer software player can. I think most br players too.

As baldrick said, you cannot compare itunes cd ripping to video. Digital video is much more complicated than audio because it's so hardware dependent. There's an appalling lack of standards as a result. This is why I'm not really a video geek like some here. It'[s too frustrating. You'd have to pay me. Most of the best encoders recommended by the serious geeks here are not beginner tools.

And FWIW, I actually think the itunes cd ripper/encoder is crap. I always use something that uses the lame encoder, to cbr and 320K if it's a crap recording that won't sound worse than FLAC. In linux sound converter but I used foobar for that in windows.

Is there a simple method with no quality loss? Yes, but you'll have to be able to plug your computer into your tv (with hdmi ... even cheap netbooks have hdmi now) or watch the video on your computer. And have lots of disc space. Plus your computer will have to be powerful enough to play HD at high bit rates found in BR video.

It involves just ripping (ie. decrypting) the disc ... skip the menus ... to HD and playing with software, which, like encoders, should be able to just open the video_ts folder. I actually think this is the best option for noobs who don't understand the complexities of encoding and don't want to/can't learn how to do it properly.

[hello_hello]

Run AnyDVD in the background to decrypt the DVD. Open the disc with DVDShrink. Go into DVDShrink's preferences and change the target output size from DVD5 to custom and make it something large like 50000MB so DVDShrink won't try to re-encode anything.
Select the re-author button at the top. In the right pane you'll see a large single title for a movie DVD, or several smaller titles for an episodic DVD. Drag the single movie title or each episode title from the right pane to the left. Under the compression tab you can choose the audio/subtitles to keep while selecting each title in the left pane. When it's done, use DVDShrink's backup function to rip the disc to your hard drive.

There'll be a folder full of DVD files wherever you told DVDShrink to save them. For zero quality loss playback, open the folder with MPC-HC (use the File/Open DVD menu) and you're done. To convert to AVI for your DVD player.....

Use AutoGK to open the single "VTS_01_0.IFO" file if you ripped a movie DVD. If it was an episodic DVD, there'll be an IFO file per episode which you can open with AutoGK for encoding. Set the output width to a maximum fixed width of 720 for a 16:9 DVD. If it's a 4:3 DVD I'd probably use a width of 640 (you really won't see an improvement by going higher). Select "keep original" for the audio option. Use AutoGK's single pass encoding method set to 100%. You can leave it on the default of 75% though and the quality will probably look the same but the files sizes will be smaller. Run a single pass encode and let the file size be whatever it needs to be.
If you must pick a file size, leave the video width and audio settings both on auto. AutoGK will pick the resolution and audio type to give you the best quality it can. Single pass encode = picking the quality without knowing the file size. Picking the file size means the quality will be unknown (at least until AutoGK runs it's compression test and tells you).

For 100% DVD player compatibility, go into AutoGK's hidden options (CTRL+F9) and select "ESS" as the hardware compatibility option.
With a hardware compatibility option selected, AutoGK will give you a warning about ignoring some compatibility settings when you select single pass encoding. That's because the Xvid encoder can't limit the bitrate when running single pass encoding whereas it can when running 2 passes. Chances are it won't matter, but if you use single pass encoding and find the video stutters in places when played using the DVD player, then you'll probably have to stick to 2 pass encoding.

My advice.... if you decide to re-encode the DVDs as AVIs, keep the files you ripped also. One day you'll probably want to re-encode them using a better method (ie the x264 encoder and MKV or MP4) for use with a Bluray player etc, and if you don't, you'll probably wish you had.
Alternatively, you can future proof yourself a little by encoding each DVD twice now. Once using AutoGK for Xvid/AVI, and a second time using a GUI which can encode using the x264 encoder. I did just that myself for a while when I was still using my old DVD player regularly. Now I use those old Xvid/AVI encodes with my smartphone. Xvid, x264, 408p or 1080p.... it'll all pretty much the same on a 4" screen.