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  1. Member
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    Is there a DVD ripper that will not force the video into 720x480 with hard letterbox bars, throwing away vertical resolution? I'm looking for one that will stretch the horizontal resolution to restore the proper aspect ratio, like what DVD players and playing software do. If free playback software can figure out exactly how far over 720 pixels wide to stretch, why can't ripping software that costs $?

    I just went through the trials of Leawo, AnyDVD, and Video Solo. All do the same forcing of an anamorphic widescreen DVD into a 720x480 box with hard letterbox bars, and crap quality because they throw away almost half the vertical resolution, and the video plays as a postage stamp in the middle of a widescreen TV, just like a hard letterboxed DVD.

    Ideally I'd like to have the same software rip Blu-Ray.
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    Vidcoder can do it. The latest version 5 beta is good
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  3. Boy is that post full of misconceptions.
    Originally Posted by bizzybody View Post
    ...why can't ripping software that costs $?
    Ripping means to put the DVD on the drive with the encryption removed. 720x480. What you want to do is to convert or reencode after having gotten the DVD onto the hard drive.
    throwing away vertical resolution?
    Since it's stored on the DVD as 720x480, how can any resolution be lost after being ripped. And after resizing it how you like, no vertical detail will be gained. It might have a larger vertical resolution, though. Either you're using the wrong programs for the job, or you don't know what you're doing.
    ...and the video plays as a postage stamp in the middle of a widescreen TV
    It was no longer a DVD, I take it? Then when making your MKV or MP4 or whatever you should have set a SAR to have it resized during playback or (probably better in your case) have the black bars cropped away and the whole video resized. Rippers don't do that; reencoders or converters do. davexnet suggested one and there are dozens more.
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    When an anamorphic DVD is played, the DVD player or DVD playing software *stretches* the HORIZONTAL resolution, according to the VOB file attributes for the Pixel Aspect Ratio.

    What DVD rippers do when converting to other formats is they *reduce* the VERTICAL resolution in order to get the Display Aspect Ratio that matches the Pixel Aspect Ratio, while *constraining* the HORIZONTAL resolution to 720 pixels.

    Thus VERTICAL resolution is lost in the conversion. Ripping and converting software should never throw away any of the 480 (or 576) lines of an anamorphic encoded DVD, yet that's what they do.

    DVDfab can be set to higher resolutions and what you'll get is a converted video that's 480 pixels high, with whatever hard letterbox bars are in those 480 lines, with a correct wider than 720 pixel stretch. But after successfully getting it to rip one anamorphic DVD properly, it sets itself back to 720x480 + hard letterbox for the next one.

    The problem is this should be the *default method* on all DVD rippers but it's not. Without having to fiddle with setting *for every DVD* you'll get your anamorphic DVD rips crammed into a 720x480 box with hard letterbox bars added, or increased in size if the original already had some to conform to a 16:9 display when stretched out to fit.

    So when I have a ripper convert an anamorphic DVD to x265 MKV I'd like it to make the output 864 (or whatever the DAR settings say it should be) by 480 *without having to fiddle with settings for every disc*.

    Think of how inconvenient it would be if you had to go into a DVD player's menu *for every disc* to set the machine to widescreen? Would you be happy with every widescreen DVD being displayed in "postage stamp mode" until you re-set it to widescreen? That's what DVD ripping software does.
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  5. Originally Posted by bizzybody View Post
    What DVD rippers do when converting to other formats is they *reduce* the VERTICAL resolution in order to get the Display Aspect Ratio that matches the Pixel Aspect Ratio, while *constraining* the HORIZONTAL resolution to 720 pixels.
    Maybe some do. Most people, though, have no problems at all cropping away the black bars and then resizing to ... say ... 1152x480, the 2.40:1 ratio that's very common. No vertical reduction there. Sure, if you want a 720 width you might lose some vertical resolution, but it's certainly not necessary. Again, you're either using the wrong tools for the job, or you're using them incorrectly.

    Ripping and converting software should never throw away any of the 480 (or 576) lines of an anamorphic encoded DVD, yet that's what they do.
    But didn't you originally say the DVDs were letterboxed? If so, the effective vertical resolution could be significantly less than 480.

    The problem is this should be the *default method* on all DVD rippers but it's not.
    Nonsense. Films come in all kinds of aspect ratios. What's to say your next one might not be in a different aspect ratio than the previous one?

    That's what DVD ripping software does.
    No, that might be what your encoders do. Why not try davexnet's suggestion?
    Last edited by manono; 11th Nov 2019 at 16:56.
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  6. The consensus on this forum was established (not outside of this forum necessary) , to understand each other that ripping means to just remove protection and converting means encoding that unprotected footage to other video, format.

    AnyDVD is just ripping tool (does not convert), so your assumption that AnyDVD does something to video is not right.

    Other tools do both, they rip content and then convert. Like DVDFab.
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    Originally Posted by _Al_ View Post
    The consensus on this forum was established (not outside of this forum necessary) , to understand each other that ripping means to just remove protection and converting means encoding that unprotected footage to other video, format.

    AnyDVD is just ripping tool (does not convert), so your assumption that AnyDVD does something to video is not right.

    Other tools do both, they rip content and then convert. Like DVDFab.
    To keep bizzybody and those who may read this on the right track, ripping doesn't mean "...just remove protection...". manono and _Al_, you know better than to state that. Some programs like DVDDecrypter allow you to rip a DVD and retain the protection.

    As I've posted dozens of time, ripping an optical disc means making extracting the EXACT BIT FOR BIT DATA from the disc to another storage device (HDD, SSD, flash drive, etc). Always meant that, always will in correct usage. I wish I could find who originally posted this, but saying "I'm going to rip into a smaller .mp4, .mkv, .avi, etc." makes as much sense as "I'm going to rip me a sandwich".

    I've never understood DAR, SAR, PAR, but there are only four (two for NTSC and two for PAL) resolutions that a DVD (and a rip) can be:

    From "What is DVD?" on this site: https://www.videohelp.com/dvd

    NTSC (NTSC Film)

    Video:
    Up to 9.8 Mbit/s* (9800 Kbit/s*) MPEG2 video
    Up to 1.856 Mbit/s (1856 Kbit/s) MPEG1 video
    720 x 480 pixels MPEG2 (Called Full-D1)
    704 x 480 pixels MPEG2
    352 x 480 pixels MPEG2 (Called Half-D1, same as the CVD Standard)
    352 x 240 pixels MPEG2
    352 x 240 pixels MPEG1 (Same as the VCD Standard)
    29,97 fps*
    23,976 fps with 3:2 pulldown = 29,97 playback fps (NTSC Film, this is only supported by MPEG2 video)
    16:9 Anamorphic (only supported by 720x480)

    PAL

    Video:
    Up to 9.8 Mbit/s* (9800 Kbit/s*) MPEG2 video
    Up to 1.856 Mbit/s (1856 Kbit/s) MPEG1 video
    720 x 576 pixels MPEG2 (Called Full-D1)
    704 x 576 pixels MPEG2
    352 x 576 pixels MPEG2 (Called Half-D1, same as the CVD Standard)
    352 x 288 pixels MPEG2
    352 x 288 pixels MPEG1 (Same as the VCD Standard)
    25 fps*
    16:9 Anamorphic (only supported by 720x576)
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  8. Originally Posted by lingyi View Post
    To keep bizzybody and those who may read this on the right track, ripping doesn't mean "...just remove protection...". manono and _Al_, you know better than to state that. Some programs like DVDDecrypter allow you to rip a DVD and retain the protection.
    If all you want is to put a DVD on the hard drive retaining any possible protection, then there's no need for DVDDecrypter to begin with. From the DVDDecrypter page here:

    DVD Decrypter was one of the best DVDDecrypter tool, it enables you to decrypt and copy DVDs to your HD.
    And that's what it's used for. Yes, it has other uses, such as demuxing, decrypting by chapters, etc. The definition of "Rip" as defined in the DVDHelp glossary:

    To take off the audio or video from a CD or DVD. Often CD Audio is "ripped" to MP3 files or DVD video ripped to VOB files.
    No conversion or reencoding as bizzybody seems to think. And as for "bit-for-bit", that's understood. Pure decrypters such as DVDDecrypter are incapable of doing anything with the data besides removing the protection and putting that data on the hard drive. Notice the definition uses quotation marks when referring to ripping to MP3, but none when ripping to VOBs. The quotation marks tell me that while the word might sometimes be used in that sense, technically it's wrong.

    ... but saying "I'm going to rip into a smaller .mp4, .mkv, .avi, etc." makes as much sense as "I'm going to rip me a sandwich".
    Our point exactly. All you've managed to do is muddy the waters.

    _Al_ in his previous post laid to rest the notion that AnyDVD should be expected to do something besides decrypting to the hard drive.
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    Originally Posted by manono View Post
    Originally Posted by lingyi View Post
    To keep bizzybody and those who may read this on the right track, ripping doesn't mean "...just remove protection...". manono and _Al_, you know better than to state that. Some programs like DVDDecrypter allow you to rip a DVD and retain the protection.
    If all you want is to put a DVD on the hard drive retaining any possible protection, then there's no need for DVDDecrypter to begin with. From the DVDDecrypter page here
    Sorry if I'm muddying the waters even more and getting off topic, but I know I can copy the contents of an unprotected DVD to my hard drive (I still use AnyDVD or DVDDecrypter just in case) and can play it directly from there (either through the .ifo or .vobs). But if it's a protected disc, I can't do anything with the copied files, even running them through a decrypter like DVDDecrypter or MakeMKV correct? Sorry, I don't have any protected DVDs handy to experiment as my collection is almost all Asian movies with no protection.

    I do remember experimenting way back when, copying the .cda(s) from a CD and not being able to play them.
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  10. Capturing Memories dellsam34's Avatar
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    I've used DVDFab and makeMKV to rip some DVD's (that never existed in Blu-ray) to hard drive, some were full screen some were anamorphic (meaning non square pixel) and I never had any problems with the aspect ratio whether I chose full disc or just main movie, I have a feeling that the OP had some DVD's that are hard letterboxed and he thinks that was resulted during ripping.
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  11. Originally Posted by lingyi View Post
    ...but I know I can copy the contents of an unprotected DVD to my hard drive (I still use AnyDVD or DVDDecrypter just in case) and can play it directly from there (either through the .ifo or .vobs).
    Oh, right. When I wrote my previous answer I wasn't thinking of using DVDDecrypter on unprotected DVDs. I use it for that as well, as I work with DVDs from a country that doesn't apply any copy protection.

    If you play copy protected VOBs that are on the hard drive, they play ugly, all broken up into blocks. If you happen to have a copy protected DVD on the hard drive and want to remove the protection, you create an ISO from it and mount it in a program that creates a virtual drive so that DVDDecrypter thinks you have a DVD in an optical drive and then you can easily decrypt it. One such program is ImgDrive, but there are several.
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