Looking for feedback on ripping dvd's

[Buzzword]

I have a stack of DVD's I created for myself, friends, and family many years ago of weddings, home movies, celebrations, etc., that I now want to rip from the DVD's into video files that can be saved on the cloud or even re-edited. I did some research and Cisdem VideoPaw was a suggestion. I searched this site for any user feedback on Cisdem but didn't get any hits. Is anybody out there familiar with this app or can recommend an alternative?

[ozymango]

Being these are your own home videos and no issues with any copy-protection, you can use free tools such as DVD Decrypter (ancient but still works great) for ripping, and then Handbrake (or free video editors like Kdenlive, OpenShot, Da Vinci Resolve, etc) for converting into other formats for uploading to web sites and such. Of course Cisdem Videopaw may work great for your needs, but I'm coming at this assuming you want the best free (really free) tools, and I use all free software myself. One possible issue may be if you want to deinterlace your videos and convert to progressive for web viewing, you'll get the best results by deinterlacing before editing, but that's a whole 'nother rabbit hole.

[ProWo]

I have a stack of DVD's I created for myself, friends, and family many years ago of weddings, home movies, celebrations, etc., that I now want to rip from the DVD's into video files that can be saved on the cloud or even re-edited. I did some research and Cisdem VideoPaw was a suggestion. I searched this site for any user feedback on Cisdem but didn't get any hits. Is anybody out there familiar with this app or can recommend an alternative?

For unprotected DVD's you could use clever FFmpeg-GUI.
It rips single video titlesets to a complete movie; this can then be muxed as mpg, mp4 or mkv.

Let's say you have a DVD with 3 movies.
On the DVD, you will find the individual titlesets in the VIDEO_TS folder with several files, e.g.

for titleset 1:
Video_01_0.BUP
Video_01_0.IFO
Video_01_0.VOB
Video_01_1.VOB
Video_01_2.VOB

Start clever FFmpeg-GUI, click on select source file, select the _1.VOB of the desired titleset (here VIDEO_01_1.VOB), answer the question with Yes, enter the desired movie name, and click rip.

When the rip is complete, the individual streams of the movie will be displayed.
Now you can change the individual streams if you want, or simply merge them (mux).
To do this, click on multiplex, select the desired container (mp4, mkv, mpg), and click multiplex.
Done.

[Buzzword]

Thank you, ozymango and ProWo, for your suggestions. Since DVD Decrypter was the first tool mentioned—and because I’ve seen it referenced on VideoHelp for years—I downloaded it. It worked perfectly for my needs.

Furthermore, after extracting the VOB files, I noticed a Clipchamp icon in my VOB folder. I didn’t realize Clipchamp is bundled with Windows 11, but launching it gave me a simple, user‑friendly way to convert the VOBs to MP4s. From there, I was able to bring the MP4s into Adobe Premiere and start editing and combining everything into a final product.

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction!

[usually_quiet]

I use MakeMKV for DVDs (using either a DVD drive or a Blu-ray drive) and Blu-rays (using a Blu-ray drive). There is a free license key available at the website (needs to be updated periodically) or you can buy a permanent license for $50 (US). It works for UHD Blu-ray too, but for only specific Blu-ray drives with specific drive firmware work.

[Alwyn]

The easiest and best way (quality-wise) to do this with your home DVDs is to pop in the DVD, open DVDVOB2MPG, select the VOBs for the movie from the VIDEO_TS folder on the disk, then save them into MPG as one file on your HDD. You don't have to rip them as a separate step and you do not lose quality by encoding them to MP4 before you import them into Premiere.

... assuming Premiere will import MPEG2 files.

[Kakujitsu]

I have a stack of DVD's I created for myself, friends, and family many years ago of weddings, home movies, celebrations, etc., that I now want to rip from the DVD's into video files that can be saved on the cloud or even re-edited. I did some research and Cisdem VideoPaw was a suggestion. I searched this site for any user feedback on Cisdem but didn't get any hits. Is anybody out there familiar with this app or can recommend an alternative?

For unprotected DVD's you could use clever FFmpeg-GUI.
It rips single video titlesets to a complete movie; this can then be muxed as mpg, mp4 or mkv.

Let's say you have a DVD with 3 movies.
On the DVD, you will find the individual titlesets in the VIDEO_TS folder with several files, e.g.

for titleset 1:
Video_01_0.BUP
Video_01_0.IFO
Video_01_0.VOB
Video_01_1.VOB
Video_01_2.VOB

Start clever FFmpeg-GUI, click on select source file, select the _1.VOB of the desired titleset (here VIDEO_01_1.VOB), answer the question with Yes, enter the desired movie name, and click rip.

When the rip is complete, the individual streams of the movie will be displayed.
Now you can change the individual streams if you want, or simply merge them (mux).
To do this, click on multiplex, select the desired container (mp4, mkv, mpg), and click multiplex.
Done.

You can also use Smart Ripper and MKVToolNix to do this as well. I also think its possible with AVIDemux.

[Buzzword]

The easiest and best way (quality-wise) to do this with your home DVDs is to pop in the DVD, open DVDVOB2MPG, select the VOBs for the movie from the VIDEO_TS folder on the disk, then save them into MPG as one file on your HDD. You don't have to rip them as a separate step and you do not lose quality by encoding them to MP4 before you import them into Premiere.

... assuming Premiere will import MPEG2 files.

Thanks, Alwyn, DVDVOB2MPG did save me a step.

[Alwyn]

Cheers Buzzword.