Best software for ripping and archiving DVDs

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Dr. Righteous

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Aug 1, 2007
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Hey Guys.

I have been backing up DVDs for a while to keep my originals in pristine condition.
But I have come to the conclusion it is too much of a hassle maintaining the collections, and finding them scratched because my 3 years old was playing with them.
I'm ready for the move to a Media Server/player.
I really don't want to do a HTPC because I don't have a need to record TV programs. I'm more incline to do something like the WD TV box and an external USB2 HD.
The only format I am familiar with for a "disc image" is ISO. To my surprise it isn't supported my most media player boxes.
I have never used DViX or Xvid or MKV. I'm not interested in compressing the video for streaming. I want quality equal to what is on the DVD and nothing else.
With all this in mind what do you guys that deal with this think?
What software would you recommend?
I have seen some expensive software out there, but that irks me because the BEST software I ever tried for ripping DVDs and then burning them to a DVDR was FREE.
Also Blu-Ray is on the horizon as something I would like to dabble in and I know the techniques to rip these disc are totally different.
 
AnyDVD allows you to rip the DVD to your HDD by either preserving the structure of the disc and dumping the files or by creating an ISO. It also removes any copy protection/CSS keys/what have you, but its unfortunately not free.

If you want free, give DVD Decrypter a shot.
 
And typically discussing software which "removes any copy protection/CSS keys/what have you" is an absolute no-no around here, soooo...
 
I typically use DVDShrink to rip the DVD and burn the copy.
I back up my DVDs and play the copies on the many DVD players in the house and the one in the vehicle.
I have a lot of money invested in the collection and a blemished DVD is worth nothing in case I ever
wanted to sell them.
The collection is approaching 400 DVD and it is all getting quite cumbersome to keep up with.
A media player to play back image files is a fantastic solution. Since I don't have to worry about the DVDs getting lost or getting peanut-buttered by my son. Also the prospect of laying out cash to replace some of my aging DVD players wasn't too appealing. The solution works on several levels.
I guess the best solution is to just rip the DVD to a ISO and then use a transcoder to converter it to MKV , Dvix or Xvid which is widely supported by media players.
My only concern is the loss of quality.

Any thoughts??
 
The easiest solution I've found (and while I'm sure Snowknight26 will hassle me about the final image quality to at least some degree) is this:

Rip with DVDDecrypter to a single VOB file (rip in IFO mode, alter the options to No file splitting, and choose only the main movie which will leave you with one .ifo file and one .vob file).

Load that into HandBrake and choose the Film preset. Picture Settings are fine by default unless you have some need to alter them. On the Video tab it should have h.264 (x264) chosen, Framerate same as source, Avg Bitrate will be 1800, you can tailor that to your heart's content but I just use the default. 2-Pass Encoding with the Turbo first pass by default as well.

On the Audio tab I make sure I have the 1st track chosen as Automatic sometimes - note I'm saying sometimes will end up having the French/Spanish/etc so I just choose the 1st one and that's that. I change the Audio Codec to MP3 as I could care less about surround; I don't have a nice home theater setup and my Wife is deaf so most of the time I watch my own movies on the PC (23" LCD) with headphones on anyway. I then change the Mixdown to Stereo, Sample rate to 48 kHz, and Bitrate to 192 Kbps (audio quality is a big thing to me and the default of 160 isn't quite up to snuff). The DRC I leave at 1 - I wish HandBrake had some volume nominalization (not normalizing, big difference) in it but it's never been something the developers gave a shit about.

On the Advanced tab there are a ton of options and the command line options too, and I really haven't gotten into them yet. Snowknight26 can probably offer more info or perhaps even better settings than the defaults which seem to be this as listed when I just loaded a movie while writing this:

ref=3:mixed-refs=1:bframes=6:weightb=1:direct=auto:b-pyramid=1:me=umh:subq=9:analyse=all:8x8dct=1:trellis=1:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=1,1
Click to expand...

I couldn't analyze that if I tried, but there's also more info at the HandBrake community forums anyway.

After this I choose the output filename, verify it's .mkv and then hit Start, and about 1 hour or so later I've got a very watchable rip of the DVD. If it's something my Wife requests for her, I'll alter the options and do hardcoded subs for her. I've still yet to find a decent way to "rip" subtitles from a DVD for her and then have it be an option in the mkv end file.

And no, I don't want 12 steps with 3 demuxers and other tools to do it. I've never been able to comprehend why it's so damned hard to work with subs or captions, it's just a data stream. Seems like there should be a way to create a tool like HandBrake that will allow for creating an mkv file with subs that are in the file but not hardcoded and can be enabled by your media player's subtitle options.

Bleh. At least this is what I use and it works fine for me. Perfect quality? Not quite, but it's very watchable as I said. I know h/x264 offers a shitload of options to get it just so, but I'm not interested in going that deep into it. HandBrake is the closest thing to "one click rip" that I've found so far that gives me the rips I am satisfied with.

Hope this helps...
 
Joe Average said:
Seems like there should be a way to create a tool like HandBrake that will allow for creating an mkv file with subs that are in the file but not hardcoded and can be enabled by your media player's subtitle options.
Click to expand...
If your media player can read SubRip-formatted subtitles, you can use that. You can embed the resultant SRT files in the MKV containers (referred to as "softsubbing"). I've never done it before, so don't ask me how, but this is the way it's done :)

As far as getting straight MPEG-2 video and DD/DTS audio into a MKV container, this is entirely possible. Any garden-variety demuxer (such as VirtualDubMod) will allow you to load a VOB and demux the video and audio tracks. Then, use something like MKVToolNix to mux the streams into a MKV container. This is a fairly simple and not-too-lengthy process, and it doesn't re-compress the video or audio tracks.

So, basically: DVD Decrypter (or DVDFab HD Decrypter) to create a VOB. The VOB goes into a demuxer to end up with an MPG and an AC3 or DTS track. Load the MPG and AC3/DTS into an MKV-compatible muxer and you're done. This is absolutely the best way to achieve what you're looking to achieve.
 
Joe Average said:
The easiest solution I've found (and while I'm sure Snowknight26 will hassle me about the final image quality to at least some degree) is this:
Click to expand...
Too true. Here goes. :D

Code: 
ref=3:mixed-refs=1:bframes=6:weightb=1:direct=auto:b-pyramid=1:me=umh:subq=9:analyse=all:8x8dct=1:trellis=1:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=1,1

I don't see b-adapt 2 anywhere, so if you stick with the default value of 1, always use 16 bframes. It actually turns out that 16 is faster than 6. If you use b-adapt 2, 3-5 is probably the optimal number, where 3 is actually better than 16 with b-adapt 1.

As for psy-rd, stick with 1,0 (or 1:0 if you use the x264 notation). The second value is psy-trellis. Since psy-trellis is experimental and does create artifacts, its best to keep it off unless you know what you're doing. ;)
 
So, you're suggesting that I (since I'm guessing you're referring to my post) replace the default command line I posted above with the one you just posted? Hmmm... will give it a shot and create a new preset for it.

I'm all for better quality, but as it is I'm sortakinda happy with the results the defaults seem to provide. These aren't permanent rips anyway, they're fairly disposable as I still have the original DVDs. I'm hoping to grab a 1 or 1.5TB drive soon just to use as a media drive and store a few hundred rips and TV show downloads on it. Those 1.2GB HD TV show rips take up space fast... :)
 
Joe Average said:
So, you're suggesting that I (since I'm guessing you're referring to my post) replace the default command line I posted above with the one you just posted? Hmmm... will give it a shot and create a new preset for it.
Click to expand...

Something like that. Using b-adapt 2, however, is going to be slower than the default of 1. So if you're going to change anything, turn psy-trellis off. :p
 
Joe Average said:
. I'm hoping to grab a 1 or 1.5TB drive soon just to use as a media drive and store a few hundred rips and TV show downloads on it. Those 1.2GB HD TV show rips take up space fast... :)
Click to expand...

This is where I'm going. We had another episode of "where is my choo-choo movie?"
You can imagine how appealing the idea of browsing a collection of childrens DVD movies with the remote control and selecting what you want, and being done is.
Though I'm not interested in download movies, I really just sick of the mountain of DVD disc I have to keep track of.
 
Oh yeah, I can imagine it as my Wife and I have over 600 DVDs we've been collecting over the years, and a few from the local libraries we borrowed and... well... you figure it out. :)

But the idea of getting them all ripped down to something a bit more efficient and still keeping the same level of quality or close to it - I mean 720x480 MPEG2 DVD content, there ain't much you can do to wreck that these days. :)

The HD-DVD/Blu-ray stuff will come later. I've seen a few Blu-ray trancodes that fit on a DVD5 that are REALLY nicely done and the quality is spectacular, but as I don't even own any HD-DVD or Blu-ray content (sold all of it recently) I'm just not that interested in going that far just yet. I do grab HDTV shows when I can, however, and those are typically about 1.2GB for a standard 1 hour episode (about 45-48 minutes of actual show content) so yeah, having a ton of those on a media center is a very appealing thing, definitely.

That's the whole idea I guess. I grabbed the trial version of Windows Home Server from Microsoft the other day and will spend some time learning the ins and outs, might throw together a Celeron 430 box with a few big hard drives and just leave it sitting across the room. Bought a Windows Media Center remote with IR pod recently for $15 and it works fine, so that'll be the control...
 
Dr. Righteous said:
You can imagine how appealing the idea of browsing a collection of childrens DVD movies with the remote control and selecting what you want, and being done is.
Click to expand...
It is immensely appealing and works very well.

I've played around with compressing to different formats in the past and, while I've been impressed with the size / quality ratio (without trying to wade through the stuff already given) it seems much easier just to rip what you've got and keep it there. HDD space is amazingly cheap at the moment and there's not much out there that won't play a video_ts folder. The time it takes to compress (granted, I don't have a blazing machine) is waaay too long for the return.

^ Joe's got it right, I think. Oh yeah, the AnyDVD and DVD Shrink combo is flat out awesome and worth every penny.

And one other thing, if your kids scratch up the discs too bad, I'm willing to bet there's a CD store somewhere around (ok, unless you're in the boonies) that can resurface (or whatever the term is) for $3-4. Every time I've had it done, it was brilliant, even on discs that I didn't think would play anymore.
 
phide said:
So, basically: DVD Decrypter (or DVDFab HD Decrypter) to create a VOB. The VOB goes into a demuxer to end up with an MPG and an AC3 or DTS track. Load the MPG and AC3/DTS into an MKV-compatible muxer and you're done. This is absolutely the best way to achieve what you're looking to achieve.
Click to expand...

Any recommendations on a good demuxer and MKV-compatible muxer?
 
Out of curiousity, how much quality loss would i get using FFmpeg compared to h.264? Is it absolutely worth the ~3hour process time compared to the ~30minute process time?

I'm sure the answer will be to "just try it" but i really dont want to waste ~3hours.:p

BTW:I'm using an True 1080p projector on a 200in screen, so DVD looks like crap as is, Im just wondering how much worse it could look.
 
Snowknight26 said:
ffmpeg is a codec library (including H.264), so what are you asking?
Click to expand...

Using Handbrake, I select the Format as MKV, and then Im presented with which "video codec" to use. MPEG-4(FFMpeg), MPEG-4(XviD), h.264(x.264), or VP3(Theora)

If I rip using MPEG-4(FFMpeg) I can do a complete rip in ~30minutes. If I select h.264(x.264) it takes about ~3hours. . .
 
Ah. It's because the x264 settings you're using are much slower/better than ffmpeg's.
 
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Uhmmm... requires a shitload of space since you're basically just copying the DVD content locally to the hard drive, but in terms of quality, there's nothing better than the original bits... that's the only downside: the space required. And yes I know people with 20TB servers nowadays loaded with DVDs and now Blu-ray content too... crazy crazy stuff.

"Lemme see here, do I want to spend $4000 on hardware just to save me a few feet of walking to put the disc in the drive, or..."

For me, it's an easy question to answer, but for some folks they have home theater systems that cost 'em an arm and a leg and they want it all accessed with the touch of a button. More power to 'em...
 
Joe Average said:
Uhmmm... requires a shitload of space since you're basically just copying the DVD content locally to the hard drive, but in terms of quality, there's nothing better than the original bits... that's the only downside: the space required. And yes I know people with 20TB servers nowadays loaded with DVDs and now Blu-ray content too... crazy crazy stuff.
Click to expand...

Well that's what the op wanted no compression, full rip. Only thing is I noticed that hes on XP, not vista so no go anyway.

Joe Average said:
"Lemme see here, do I want to spend $4000 on hardware just to save me a few feet of walking to put the disc in the drive, or..."
Click to expand...

As for this, well that is asumming you will always have that dvd. But either way the OP wanted full rips with no compression and an easy way to play them and everybody is giving him hoops to jump through, its just to bad hes not using vista and he could take those rips and play them right through windows media center with orgnaization and a display to boot
 
Joe Average said:
Uhmmm... requires a shitload of space since you're basically just copying the DVD content locally to the hard drive, but in terms of quality, there's nothing better than the original bits... that's the only downside: the space required. And yes I know people with 20TB servers nowadays loaded with DVDs and now Blu-ray content too... crazy crazy stuff.

"Lemme see here, do I want to spend $4000 on hardware just to save me a few feet of walking to put the disc in the drive, or..."

For me, it's an easy question to answer, but for some folks they have home theater systems that cost 'em an arm and a leg and they want it all accessed with the touch of a button. More power to 'em...
Click to expand...

With as technical as you can be Joe, right now you are sporting a lot of drama...especially with your $4k number.

FACT: kids will destroy discs unless you beat them senseless for even looking at them the wrong way.

FACT: your discs will disappear into the void if you have kids...they have played D&D and know how to make one time use portable holes.

FACT: The average person does not have 100's upon 100's of DVD's.

If you factor in the time to compress and verify disc, you would be better of $ wise working at McDonalds for minimum wage. If you want to make it better yet, donate plasma once a week and you will be WAY ahead.

DVD disc = 9GB worst case, 1.5TB drive = 167 DVD's minimum. While many people may have very large collections...at least with children, you need a few dozen videos to be online at any given time. My current favorite method is AnyDVD + MyMovies. It is, for all intents and purposes, zero effort. I open the bay, I drop in the disc, I come back and the disc is done and ejected. That is it...done. No more effort on my part.
 
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