Ok so heres the thing. I own a ton of TV shows on DVD and Im getting sick of swapping disks. I thought it would be nice to rip my South Park collection so Im not swapping disks.

So far I've been able to rip em to VOB files, but i cant find any good software to encode them into a high quality (space isnt an issue) avi file.


Anyone do this that could give me a few pointers? Imt looking at ripping 30+ dvds of south park alone, so any suggestions that include batching would help.

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COBRA KAI DOJO NEVER DIES
RIP Shiloh

You know, I always find encoding to be such a pain in the ass I usually just download stuff I own. True story.

Kind of depends whether you're hoping to keep them in VOB/DVD format (so they keep all their menus and what not) or if you just want to rip all the episodes so each episode is a separate file in some folder somewhere.

If you keep them as DVDs then a lot of media software (like Windows Media Center) can display them as a collection with box art and stuff. Space becomes an issue of course. A good idea for this route is DVDShrink because it'll turn an 8GB DVD into <4GB, because it's designed to fit dual-layer discs onto a single-layer DVD without losing any of the disc contents. All it does is reduce the bitrate, the files stay in MPEG2 format, so it works exactly as it did before, but they still use a ton of disk space.

If you want to just rip the episodes, you're better off using MP4 or something. Unfortunately I've not done this in ages so you'll probably need someone else to suggest a decent batch ripper. A decent encode would drop the episodes, even in HD, to something like 300MB each. If you're space concious and/or would prefer to just be able to double-click episodes in a folder and jump straight into them, this is for you.

What I can suggest is don't just go googling trying to find a program. There is a LOT of crap out there for this, and most of it is just that, annoying shareware/trailware/adware crap. Again, this is why I just download them.

EDIT: Incidentally, the absolute fastest way to rip these is to just copy the contents of the disc (usually a VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folder) into their own separate folders on your hard disk. You'll find most media players, even the windows one, will happily play a DVD off your harddisk if you just copy it into a folder. Obviously this will take the largest amount of space.

Like Ket said there are tons of programs out there for this type of thing, but if you're seriously thinking about ripping a whole DVD set then i'd advise using these programs:

Handbrake - I couldn't recommend this anymore it should do everything you need it to do, and more.

MeGUI - This is a more complicated program but you can rip/convert your movies exactly how you want them, it requires a variety of plugins to function properly (all free of course) and a good idea of how to use AviSynth and FFmpeg.

AVANTI ver:??? - This is another universal type program for FFmpeg / AVIsynth, very very useful but can be complicated for new encoders. Both FF and AVI are originally run from command line but somebody added a GUI so its alot more user friendly.

tsMuxer - You can use this to rip subtitles/language tracks/chapters/audio/movie tracks from your movies and mux it into another, the original tsMuxer is a command line based program but there is a GUI version around somewhere.

MKVmerge - This does exactly what it sounds like, similar to tsMuxer you can extract anything from the movie file (chapters/languages/audio/video/subtitles) and merge them onto another movie file.

Eac3to and More GUI - This one requires a ton of plugins and seperate programs to run at all (eac3to/xport/NeroAACenc/tsMuxer/VC1CONV/MKVmerge) but its useful and it used to do everything. It's been a while since I've used this and i'm not sure if it's kept up-to-date anymore.

SUPER - This is a nifty little program as it covers just about every container from SD to supposedly HD (i've never used it for encoding HD movies) along wiith a variety of audio containers.

These are mostly what I use, but it's been a bit since i've encoded anything so some of these could be out of date or are no longer maintained. But saying that, they should still work.

There are some limitations with a few of those programs, they're not compatible with some containers (.avi/.mpeg etc) so when extracting/ripping i'd advise using mkv or mp4 containers if you decide on using any of these programs. That way if you decide you want to import it into another program to add or rip subtitles etc you won't get an unsupported format error. All good encoders support mkv and mp4.

So all in all i'd recommend using either Handbrake or SUPER as they're both quick and dirty with awesome results, the other stuff is heavy duty.

Honestly though unless you want to learn and really get into encoding, i'd just advise downloading a complete pack, as it will take weeks to fully encode a serious amount of tv shows. I snagged 14 seasons of South Park (including the first 3 pilot episodes and the movies) for just short of 20GB a while back, there are new seasons out now right?

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New season of SouthPark starts this Wednesday!

I use a program called Aisseoft DVD suite (it was like $30), but it's for ripping DVDs directly to MP4 for my iphone/ipad. It works really nicely and crunches a DVD file to about 1-2GB. I just extract the raw video file, so there is no menu or special features (my preferance). The I7 sure is nice for encoding videos.

btw good info guys, I'm gonna check out Handbrake.

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yeah a lot of great info, right now space isnt the issue for me, quality is.

Ive got my system down and the only encoding i do is more of a conversion than encoding. Thats to say the VOBs start at 900 megs, but when I covert them to mpeg they end up around 1.2gigs. Again, space isnt my issue, getting a flawless copy of the dvd is my priority.

I ended up going with DVD Shrink (is great) to rip the episodes and then I use Power Director v8 to convert them to the mpg format that wmp will read.

Im up for the challenge and the result of having a video library thats all mine.

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COBRA KAI DOJO NEVER DIES
RIP Shiloh

I can't help but think you're adding an extra step here. Especially if the files are suddenly getting bigger.

Windows Media Player should play VOB files by itself. If the files are inside a VIDEO_TS folder on your hard drive, i'm pretty sure you can tell it to open the IFO file and media player will load the DVD, no conversion necessary. VOB files are nothing more than a different container for the MPEG2 format.

Do something like:

C:\Users\Me\Videos\Some Movie 1\VIDEO_TS
C:\Users\Me\Videos\Some Movie 1\AUDIO_TS

C:\Users\Me\Videos\Some Movie 2\VIDEO_TS
C:\Users\Me\Videos\Some Movie 2\AUDIO_TS

C:\Users\Me\Videos\Some Movie 3\VIDEO_TS
C:\Users\Me\Videos\Some Movie 3\AUDIO_TS

Inside each VIDEO_TS folder should be an IFO file. If you tell Media Player to open it, the DVD should load exactly like it would if it was from a disk. It's probably not associated by default though.

I'm pretty sure you can even get windows media center to treat them like a digital DVD collection somehow.

If wmp won't play vob files then you're just missing the codec.



I know exactly what you mean lol

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Im not sure ket. I'll try that again. I wasnt happy with the studdering that happens during scenes that pan from one side to the other. It looks a little to choppy for me. Thats even with the vob files.

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COBRA KAI DOJO NEVER DIES
RIP Shiloh

Yarr I think I done this before, so I will do some testing to help out so give me few day or so and I let you know.

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PS3 Friend list name: Pantherxx Wii code 1629-0463-4657-0263 (revised 9/28/07) Steam ID - Pantherxx010 62BLU 75PLD Reactived 7/5/10 I dare you Click this!

DVDFab can convert dvd folders of .vobs to avi or any other format you wish

http://www.doom9.org/ is a great place for any kind of video program

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"all men die, and no brave man lets death frighten him from his desires"