Best Software and Hardware to Convert Some DVDs to a Portable Media Player?

[TenaciousJP]

Hello! Wow, it’s been several years since I’ve been here and I’m glad to see this place still going!

I had no idea where to post this, so I chose the general forum. I hope you’re able to help me, as I have many questions and am not sure what the best equipment would be for the task.

I’m going to be traveling in the near future and want to chill with some friends in our hotel room and watch some movies. The movies I want to bring are on DVD (I don’t have a Blu-Ray drive on my PC, anyway, and SD quality is good enough for this.) I have no idea if the hotel Wi-Fi will be good enough to stream my digital copies I own from various services, and I don’t want to risk there being HDMI copy protection issues somehow from using my iPhone, so I’m wanting to just rip the DVDs, convert them, and place the video files on a card or stick to play on a portable media player of some kind to hook up to the TV.

It’s been years since I’ve ripped a DVD and whatnot, so I apologize for asking so many questions. Here they are:

1. What would be the best software to rip my discs? I don’t think I’d be ripping any recent movies, so I don’t think the protection on them would be too complex. Looking for something secure (to tell you how long it’s been since I’ve ripped anything, I remember people were always paranoid about software phoning home and whatnot. Hahaha.) and easy to use. I think I used to use DVDFab HD Decrypter as the DVD ripping portion was free.

2. What kind of codec would you recommend? Also settings and whatnot.

3. Do any of you have one of these portable media players? Any recommendations? I’m guessing HDMI output would be best since just about every hotel has a flatscreen HDTV. Of course, I could always get some composite cables as a backup.

4. Do you think this would be the best way to accomplish my goal? If not, I’d love some recommendations.


Thank you very much for reading. Have a great day and I hope you can help me!

[redwudz]

I use VidCoder with a decrypter program running in the background, and convert directly from the DVD disc in the optical drive.
I use MKV (H.264 and AC3 audio, but AAC is probably more compatible. You can store the converted vids on a 2.5" external HDD
powered by the USB port on the laptop. Or you could use USB sticks, but the external drives usually hold a lot more data.

Most of my DVD conversions end up about 2GB with decent quality. I use constant framerate, and a constant quality of 18.5.
Larger quality settings get you smaller filesizes but lower quality. A one TB HDD can hold quite a few videos. I mostly leave
the other settings at default. I use AnyDVD for decryption, but one of the DVD Fab programs may work.

I've never tried using the hotel TV and a HDMI input. But I'm sure other members have tried it. Hopefully no HDCP problems.
Most hotels I've stayed at had really slow internet, so streaming may not work that well.

My laptop has a HDMI output, so I use that for larger screens. There are a lot of portable players out there also if your LT doesn't have HDMI out.
'

Other members may have better suggestions. And welcome back.

[johnmeyer]

I used to do this quite a bit. I ended up with a workflow that was easy and produced great results. I haven't done it for awhile, but I created some notes for myself. They are a little cryptic, because I didn't intend to publish them, but perhaps they can help you. Here they are.

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If starting from original DVD, use DVD Decrypter to create one single VOB file for just the movie (select the PGC that matches the main movie using IFO mode, and change settings so that DVD Decrypter creates a single VOB)**. You then use the Indexer built into MeGUI to create the d2v file.

If DVD is already on hard drive, use DGIndex to create the d2v file, demuxing all audio tracks.

Then, use the AVS Script creator to create a script.

Then, open this script in the main MeGUI interface, and use the iPod (or other) preset to encode the video. Open the appropriate audio stream and again, use the appropriate preset.

Click on AutoEncode, click on OK on the next dialog, and then open the Queue, and run all the jobs.


** Faster approach: take the VOB file and input it to the “One Click Encoder.” Then, go directly to the “Queue” tab on the main interface and start the project. That’s all there is to it. For portable devices, I use the iPod preset I created.

[TenaciousJP]

I apologize for the long delay in replying. Life got in the way. Hahaha.

Thank you both for the wonderful replies and the warm welcome back to this place! This place really did refuel my love of all things video, and your replies were both incredibly helpful!

I'll check out all the programs mentioned and give them a try. It definitely looks like I'll go the route of getting a portable player and playing my movies off a stick or hard drive. I realized that my iPhone doesn't have much storage space and that if I get a call, text, or other notification, it would interrupt the movie. Plus, no need to worry about HDCP problems or slow wi-fi from playing digital copies from various services. Since the video files I would make will have no encryption, there shouldn't be a problem playing them from a portable video player, either.

My trip is still a little ways off, so I'll have plenty of time to test out all these great suggestions and make sure everything plays and works perfectly.

You both are fantastic! I love this community! Have a wonderful week!