What do you guys use to convert a DVD to AVI?

J

jordan12

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Dec 29, 2000
Messages
10,217
I cant seem to find anything that actually works without a bunch of shitware, etc.

Any ideas?


Does not need to be free.
 
IceDigger said:
Why avi? Why not hevc?
Click to expand...


it is what I am familiar with. I am happy to have it in a different format. I just want to be able to throw a DVD in my drive, and generate it to a file so that I can copy it into Plex.
 
Yeah, sweet Jesus am I glad people talked you out of Avi. Hvec is the way to go.
 
Not everything can play HEVC at this point - YES it's becoming more well supported but considering that HEVC aka h.265 is designed to offer better compression than h.264 on high definition content then it's safe to use h.264 for DVD resolution materials and be done with it. h.264 is supported on everything in existence nowadays, and h.265 is gaining support obviously: yes most every smartphone has a SoC inside that can support h.265 8-bit playback.

My recommendation: use HandBrake and the typical presets for whatever device you plan to encode for (smartphones, tablets, Apple TV, HDTVs, whatever) but use h.264 as it'll encode faster and to your eyes - since we're talking about DVD resolution source material - it'll look exactly the same and you can be absolutely certain it'll play on any device you put it on for playback.

Also: if these are retail DVDs, you're going to have to decrypt them before you can convert them. HandBrake can't read encrypted DVDs by itself, you can use tools like DVDDecrypter (it still works but some newer copy protection schemes will mean it won't read the discs), or some other tool like the now dead AnyDVD HD (it's out there if you go looking for it in dark places online) or something else that can do the decryption for you. On Linux you can install the libdvdcss libraries and use HandBrake to directly read encrypted DVD content straight to compressed files.

MakeMKV is perfect for this as well (decrypting the DVD content if necessary): it can "rip" the entire DVD (or just the main movie itself) to a single MKV file (which of course will be multiple gigabytes in size since it's a bit-for-bit copy in most every respect) which you can then feed to HandBrake to do the compression necessary resulting in either an MKV container (widely supported nowadays) or MP4 container (plays on anything) of a much smaller size depending on which preset you choose.

Oh, and AVI, it's just a container, it's not a video format. I can put h.265 video and Opus audio streams in an AVI and not even break a sweat doing it, so... having accurate info is actually useful, you know. :) h.264 and h.265 are video compression formats, not containers. It's not that tough to grasp really but some people just never seem to get it.
 
Tiberian said:
Not everything can play HEVC at this point - YES it's becoming more well supported but considering that HEVC aka h.265 is designed to offer better compression than h.264 on high definition content then it's safe to use h.264 for DVD resolution materials and be done with it. h.264 is supported on everything in existence nowadays, and h.265 is gaining support obviously: yes most every smartphone has a SoC inside that can support h.265 8-bit playback.

My recommendation: use HandBrake and the typical presets for whatever device you plan to encode for (smartphones, tablets, Apple TV, HDTVs, whatever) but use h.264 as it'll encode faster and to your eyes - since we're talking about DVD resolution source material - it'll look exactly the same and you can be absolutely certain it'll play on any device you put it on for playback.

Also: if these are retail DVDs, you're going to have to decrypt them before you can convert them. HandBrake can't read encrypted DVDs by itself, you can use tools like DVDDecrypter (it still works but some newer copy protection schemes will mean it won't read the discs), or some other tool like the now dead AnyDVD HD (it's out there if you go looking for it in dark places online) or something else that can do the decryption for you. On Linux you can install the libdvdcss libraries and use HandBrake to directly read encrypted DVD content straight to compressed files.

MakeMKV is perfect for this as well (decrypting the DVD content if necessary): it can "rip" the entire DVD (or just the main movie itself) to a single MKV file (which of course will be multiple gigabytes in size since it's a bit-for-bit copy in most every respect) which you can then feed to HandBrake to do the compression necessary resulting in either an MKV container (widely supported nowadays) or MP4 container (plays on anything) of a much smaller size depending on which preset you choose.

Oh, and AVI, it's just a container, it's not a video format. I can put h.265 video and Opus audio streams in an AVI and not even break a sweat doing it, so... having accurate info is actually useful, you know. :) h.264 and h.265 are video compression formats, not containers. It's not that tough to grasp really but some people just never seem to get it.
Click to expand...

We know its a container.... just nobody uses it anymore.

Also he is using it for just plex so hevc is just fine. It will automatically do the re-encoding if the device needs it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top