What is the preferred output format?

Thanks,
George

I'm curious to see what others have to say also.

We've been backing up all of our movies onto book drives so that we can play them through the Western digitial HD movie player. BTW the WD HD Movie player is the NUTS, great playback quality etc. and only $120 or so.

What we have been doing is using DVDFAB, DVDShrink or DVDnextCopy 3 to copy the DVD's onto the hard drives. That way you get full quality copy's and you can make new DVD's if your original gets messed up. Note: that we are making legitimate backups of DVD's we own (figured someone would ask).

The down side is that the full version copy's take up a good bit of room, we have apx 5 Terabytes copied so far. But with the prices of the portable drives coming down it's at least workable. I like the idea of taking 100+ full quality movies with me when I travel in a disk the size of a stack of 3x5 cards. With the Passport drives you don't even need a power cord, just plug them into a USB port and they work.

The other advantage to DVDFab etc. copying the disks is that it only takes 20-30minutes per movie to copy them depending on how fast your DVD drive works. I bought a DVD to Ipod converter and it took almost the full movie play time to copy each movie.

Let me know if you find a better way but if you haven't tried it you probably should download DVDfab for a free trial, it's the best I've tried so far:

http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm


Good luck!.............................DJ

DJ,

I got WinX DVD Ripper Platinum, and am looking to put some movies on my laptop's hard drive (it's an 'ultraportable', so it doesn't have a built-in optical drive) in advance of an upcoming vacation.

20-30 minutes to rip a movie isn't bad, at all. What output format do you use?

George

We haven't been converting them to a different format. The programs we use just copies the actual DVD files in their full Native resolution. It takes 4 to 8gig to copy a DVD.

Not having to recode it into another format is probably why they are so much faster than say converting to an MP4 or the like, plus there are no compression artifacts or quality losses.

You might look at the portable Passport drives. Just use your desktop to copy the movies onto the passport drive and then play the movies on your laptop directly from the drive. That way you don't take up internal Hard drive space. This one is my favorite:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/We...=9498466&st=passport drives&cp=1&lp=7

It comes with a little hard drive dock that you put the drive in and isn't as sensitive to movement as just a straight cable is............................DJ

Rip the movie only portion as a dvd file, select the IFO file created and convert to AVI using AutoGK (free). The finished file will be aroound 1G compared to 4-6G std dvd and the quality and sound will be just as good as the original. AVI can be played on most all media players as well as windows media player.

Gentlemen,

For best results, we have found that it is better to keep the VOB files as they originally were, without conversion.
We use ANYDVDHD from slysoft. This program removes the copy protection from the DVD, and allows you to use file explorer to copy the VIDEO directory to your hard drive.

We then use VLC, a free medial player from the Internet, to play the files.

The quality remains the same.

DVD ripping is not always as easy as it sounds, with differant formats or file types being used especially for some already copied DVDs.

I use DVD-Cloner to rip DVDs and then if they are in ISO format use ISO-Buster to unzip this type of compressed file.
From then just use Any Video Converter to convert to a common file for playing on a computer or ordinary DVD player.

I use InterVideo Win DVD Creator to burn the DVD. This is a good stable programme and burns without the failures you may get from DVD-Cloner (which does burns DVDs) or Media Centre which does burn but can fail quite often.

Seems a complicated process but I do end up with a good 'back up' copy. All the programmes are freebies except DVD-Cloner which I bought.

George,

Bottom Line up Front: What do you want to do with the files after you rip them (i.e watch them from a computer, iPod, Mvix box, etc.).

The preferred output format depends on what you want to do with it. Currently I lean towards the Matroska MKV format because I can include multiple audio streams and subititles in a single file. However, I can't use MKV for my iPods, or the Mvix box that I shuttle between Africa and Korea so for the iPod I use Mp4 and the Mvix box uses old format AVI.

Colin,

I just want to watch them on my HP laptop.

George

quote:

Originally posted by GeorgeS:
Colin,

I just want to watch them on my HP laptop.

George

-Download DVDFab and rip a couple to your hard drive. It won't cost you a penny to try and I think you will like what you see...............DJ

I have tried DVDFab, but I prefer ANYDVD.

One can download ANYDVD and use it for 30 days without charge.

Thank you all, for the information and responses.

George

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
I have tried DVDFab, but I prefer ANYDVD.

One can download ANYDVD and use it for 30 days without charge.

Thanks Saeed, I'll try ANYDVD too..............

I like watching old movies, which I buy through Amazon.

I copy them onto SDHC cards - 32GB - and just plug one into the slot of my Soni Vaio laptop when I travel, and watch them on the plane ride.

I normally can put about 4 full DVDs on each card.

Saeed,

That's essentially why I want to do this. When traveling to places with scant entertainment options, it would be nice to watch a movie.

Thanks,
George

George,

My recommendation for you would be a program called Handbrake

http://handbrake.fr/

While it will not rip copy protected DVDs, it does an excellent job of converting the video.

For copy protected DVDs, I use MactheRipper, but it is a Mac Appliation. I have no recommendations for PC based software to remove copy protection.

Colin