Ripping DVD's to hard drive. What do you use?

[rideswings]

Im trying to rip all my old non-commercial DVD home movies to my hard drive, and Im not sure how to get the best mix of quality and smaller file size.

I downloaded a program from Cnet called Free DVD Video Converter, but it ripped my first 2 hour movie into a monstrous 4gb AVI file which way too big for me to store since I have alot of movies to rip. I chose AVI because I have used it before and Im not really familiar with other file types.

Can anyone that has ripped some movies give me some advice? I would be happy with file sizes of around 700MB.

Thanks!

[rgs2001uk]

What size is the file you are trying to rip?

700 meg, heck thats about VCD quality.

4 gig sounds about right, the only other thing to do is to get into the root files and not bother ripping all the crap you dont need, eg Korean subtitles.

Does the programme give you a choice of which file format to save the original file?

[sustento]

DVDshrink or Freemake

http://www.dvdshrink.org/

http://www.freemake.com/

Edited July 8, 2014 by sustento

[Jdiddy]

Handbrake is good, all in 1 program

Read up on some guides, use the x264 video codec, some guys are getting good quality rips with 720p material with a file size of 800mb, DVDs are 480p so you should be fine aiming for 700mb.

You can reduce the audio footprint by only using your preferred language track and downmixing to 2 channels, use AAC codec at 128kbps, much better quality then mp3 at low bitrates, if you want to retain surround sound use Ac3 at 384kbps

[rideswings]

What size is the file you are trying to rip?

700 meg, heck thats about VCD quality.

4 gig sounds about right, the only other thing to do is to get into the root files and not bother ripping all the crap you dont need, eg Korean subtitles.

Does the programme give you a choice of which file format to save the original file?

Most of them are almost full discs, so the VOB files were big, around 4gb.

700MB does sound small, but I just dont have enough space for much larger files.

My videos were mostly shot with a camcorder, so they didnt have any subtitles, menus, etc, so that wont need to be ripped.

Yes it gives me a choice of MP4, MKV, or AVI.

[rideswings]

DVDshrink or Freemake

http://www.dvdshrink.org/

http://www.freemake.com/

Thanks for the info.

[rideswings]

Handbrake is good, all in 1 program

Read up on some guides, use the x264 video codec, some guys are getting good quality rips with 720p material with a file size of 800mb, DVDs are 480p so you should be fine aiming for 700mb.

You can reduce the audio footprint by only using your preferred language track and downmixing to 2 channels, use AAC codec at 128kbps, much better quality then mp3 at low bitrates, if you want to retain surround sound use Ac3 at 384kbps

Thanks Diddy. Im gonna try Handbrake too and see what it gives me. These are mostly home movies, and the quality to begin with wasnt great, so I dont care abotu losing a little resolution.

[SpaceKadet]

+1 on Handbrake. Use it all the time to recode or rip. MP4 format is far superior to AVI, and native to all the handheld devices too. 2 hour DVD should compress to below 700GB with very good quality. You cannot set the target size with the latest Handbrake, however, only the average bitrate. Which makes it kind of hit and miss if you're shooting for a particular size.

[dave_boo]

I second habdbrake. Version 0.9.5 was the last to support target size. However, just using the iPhone & iPod touch preset will net ypu about 350 MB files for 45 minute clips.

The cool thing about handbrake is that it allows batch file trancodes and leverages your gpu if supported. Batch trancodes means you click on spurce icon and than xhoose the folder containing the files. Add all to queue means after you click start you just need to wait for it to finish.

The opencl support helps cut time off the transcodes...just don't expect miracles because quality is held most important.

Before I forget, here's the link to the old versions if you MUST have the target size option.

http://handbrake.fr/old.php

[rideswings]

Thanks again for the help. I started using Handbrake and I like it so far, but the first MP4 I made was almost 3gb, even though I changed settings to downmixing to 2 channels and used AAC codec at 128kbps. On quality I used 20, but now I am trying 25, but not sure how it will look. I hope it will reduce file size.

For sound, I think stereo will be fine. Here is a screenshot of my video settings. My original video is 4 hours long, but really only 2h34m in content, and Handbrake let me cut it down to a shorter length, from 85 chapters to 78, before starting the encode, a very nice features.

[Jdiddy]

Change to average bitrate and tick turbo 1st pass, the encoder will throttle the bitrate in slow scenes so it has reserve for high movement scenes, so better quality less file size

Your cut is almost 3 hours long so your going to really have to ration the bitrate to get 700mb, try 600kbps and see how it looks, don't worry, 264 is alot more effecient then older codecs

Also change audio to 64kbps, if it's a home vid you won't notice the difference

[rideswings]

Thanks for the info, Im trying that now.

Can i ask, would it rip faster if I used a desktop instead of my laptop? My laptop is a few months old with 4gb ram and a 1.9ghz processor. I never tried ripping on a desktop, just curious.

Thanks again!

[Jdiddy]

Depends on cpu core count, clock speed, efficiency (intel is more effecient at same speed then Amd)

[rideswings]

Depends on cpu core count, clock speed, efficiency (intel is more effecient at same speed then Amd)

Im looking at a Dell desktop with 3.4ghz i3-4150 chip and 4gb ram.

Something like this:

http://www.itcityonline.com/shop/index.php?id_product=3877&controller=product&id_lang=7

[NanLaew]

On processor speed alone it should be quicker on the i3 desktop but not in any great order of magnitude.

[rideswings]

Do you think it could save me 10 or 15% of time in the process? I have a bunch of these to do.

[rak sa_ngop]

I use Format Factory. Just select the files you want (main feature, episodes etc) and convert to .avi files. You can reduce the size and quality, although sometimes it becomes too degraded. Time taken can be 2 or 3 times longer than the film length depending on your computer.

Note there is a bug in the latest version of FF which places sub-titles when you select 'subtitles - none'. I googled and found a work around .

Also somebody mentioned DVD shrink. I tried to find a download for this recently but had to give up. Has it been withdrawn?

Another thing is that some more recent DVDs have become more sophisticated in their copy protection. A few years ago I copied a number of DVDs and usually found a way of getting round the protection. I now have one recent DVD I may have to give up on. But maybe I just need to devote more time to finding a download program that will open it?

[astral]

700Mb+ should give you a reasonable copy

Many of the torrents of DVD rips are no bigger

and still acceptable on a 50" screen

[SpaceKadet]

In Handbrake you can use the Preview to check the quality. Handbrake will encode a short sequence (10 sec or your choice) of the source material with the setting you chose. Good to quick check that everything, including audio, subtitles, etc, will be to your satisfaction before you commit to hours of encode.

[Jdiddy]

Count yourself lucky your not dealing with 1080p, takes all day

[sustento]

Can Handbrake do subtitles? I just tried ripping a Taiwanese DVD with both Handbrake set for what I thought was subtitles and Freemake. Freemake ripped the subtitles - Handbrake didn't.

[dave_boo]

Can Handbrake do subtitles? I just tried ripping a Taiwanese DVD with both Handbrake set for what I thought was subtitles and Freemake. Freemake ripped the subtitles - Handbrake didn't.

Yes it can...but it's a bit of work to add them in. Also note that the mp4/m4v container doesn't seem to allow subtitles that are not burned in for some reason.

[rideswings]

Thanks again for all the advice. Handbrake is a good program, and Ive been getting the file sizes down to around 700-800mb with those settings for a 2 hour movie.

I have done around a dozen of them, and Handbrake seems to crash about 50% of the time, gets to a point and then freezes and I need to start over with a different DVD. I am using 2 laptop computers to do this, and it takes around 45 minutes to an hour to encode one DVD. If a DVD fails in one laptop, I just use the other and hope it works.

Im not using subtitles, these are all home movies,

[pieeyed]

I have been using JRiver Media Center 19 for making my music file into Flac.

[Shurup]

OP, your freezing issues maybe be related to reading the DVDs themselves, not to the program. I've never had any issues with handbrake.

To store the subtitles, use MKV format, but I'm not sure what other options in handbrake need to be enabled as I've never tried encoding with subtitles.

[sustento]

Can Handbrake do subtitles? I just tried ripping a Taiwanese DVD with both Handbrake set for what I thought was subtitles and Freemake. Freemake ripped the subtitles - Handbrake didn't.

Yes it can...but it's a bit of work to add them in. Also note that the mp4/m4v container doesn't seem to allow subtitles that are not burned in for some reason.

That was my problem - I didn't select 'burned in'. I'll give it another go soon.

Edited July 10, 2014 by sustento

[JSixpack]

Give VSO Video Converter a try. It's great! Same company that produces the excellent ConvertXDVD.

[Jdiddy]

Be aware burning in subtitles introduces still hard edges agianst a moving background in the video thus demanding higher bitrate for the same image quality, seperate subtitle files makes it look much neater but its not the end of the world