Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with ripping

How can I quickly name and tag TV episodes ripped from DVD?

sun-el — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:59:22 -0800

Is there an ripping/converting application that will automate naming and labeling of TV episodes copied from DVD? I own a lot of TV on DVD, and with my newly rebuilt Windows Home Server, I'd like to rip it to hard disk so that I can view it anywhere in the house at any time. I normally use Handbrake to rip and convert, but in this case the problem is that I don't want to spend endless hours naming, labeling, and tagging episodes individually. Is there a program or service that will automate the naming and/or tagging of the video files by episode that result from each disk being ripped? Ideally, I'd insert the disk, rip the episodes from it, and they would save with the name of the series, the season and episode number, and the episode title. My main system with the fastest drive is running Windows 7 Professional, but I'd settle for OS X, Vista, XP -- I'd even drag out my Ubuntu box and update it if need be.

High fidelity DVD ripping

sloe — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:28:33 -0800

High fidelity DVD ripping: collecting short videos from separate DVDs without losing any quality Hello

I have a bunch of short movies on separate DVDs that need to be strung together without losing any quality. This is for a screening so, if it is possible, preserving the image fidelity is important. Also note that these are independent artists so there are no copyright/encryption concerns here. I was thinking of a couple of different ways of tackling this and I was wondering if anyone with experience could let me know which is most likely to succeed and suggest software to accomplish this. Different solutions:

I) Rip the DVDs uncompressed to laptop hard-drive and play from there

My concern here is that the uncompressed DVD video will be gigantic and I don't know if the laptop graphics card can handle the data rate (I don't have the specs handy - it's not mine that will be used - it's about 1 year old and mid-range quality). Will the laptop play them back smoothly? What software would you recommend for lossless rips?

II) Rip the DVDs to a hard-drive, burn a new DVD containing all of them

This will work - but will there be quality loss in the uncompression/recompression? Any tricks for eliminating/reducing the quality loss?

III) Copy the video data directly

I don't know if this can be done, but it'd be great to just grab the raw DVD data, copy to the hard-drive, and burn it to a disk containing all of them - either to play consecutively or with a menu (the entire image as an iso won't be useful as it's not just a copy of a single disk I need to make). If this can be done, what software does it?

Thanks for any help in advance.

No libdvdcss? Curse you, Handbrake!

dunkadunc — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 17:40:52 -0800

What's the best (free) way to back up DVDs these days? Back when I had a Mac, I used to use Handbrake to rip DVDs to MPEG4 files- It was quick and easy, you select the titles you wanted to rip and (shazam!) it ripped them for you to the format you wanted.
However, I'm using a PC now, and it's a couple years later. I've installed Handbrake, but much to my frustration they no longer include libdvdcss, which is needed to rip most DVDs. They do say it automatically detects an copy of libdvdcss on Linux and OSX, but I can't even find a Windows binary of the libary online to see if that would work.

So, what's a good, free (as in beer) program to rip DVDs to MPEGs these days? Everything I see people talking about online seems to either (a) involve multiple programs to decrypt and re-encode or (b) is something you pay money for. With the open-source community out there, I can't believe there isn't some slick program that can both decrypt and encode- is there some way I can just feed a copy of libdvdcss to Handbrake to get it to work, or is there another program out there now?

How to Handle Partial Subtitles with Handbrake

snap_dragon — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:52:54 -0800

Using Handbrake, is there a way to put subtitles onto DVD when they are interspersed in the real movie? Example: the movie Defiance had some English subtitles when characters spoke Russian/German. These didn't come through when I made my first trial run disc. So basically I'm asking for situational subtitles if I can call them that and not the full movie-lenght subtitle added throughout the whole movie. Thanks for your input.

DVD Shrink rips slower on my new Vista laptop! HALP!

wastelands — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:23:25 -0800

Speeding up DVD Shrink ripping on my laptop? I bought a new MSI laptop, which is otherwise powerful (Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz, 4 GB RAM, etc.). But ripping DVDs in DVD Shrink is about 3x as slow as on my old Dell!

How could it change so dramatically? Is this Vista related? I went from XP to Vista.

I tried turning on the "overleaving" or whatever feature in DVD Shrink; didn't help.

Ripping a TV series in Handbrake

snap_dragon — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:52:59 -0800

I can rip movies to Xvid using Handbrake and it is all good....it rips the movie but no special features which is fine....But lately, when I tried John Adams (miniseries) or the TV show the 4400, it only took one chunk out of the whole disc and ignored the other episodes. Is there a way around this so I can get all the episodes even if they are lumped into one .avi file? (I really don't mind all the fast-forwarding). Thanks...and to all of those reading/responding...have a great weekend.

Why do my books skip?

arniec — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:10:38 -0800

Why can my mac (macbook pro) not rip audiobook CDs without skipping near the end? I love audiobooks, but I hate carrying around CDs. Best solution for me? Buy CDs, rip them using iTunes "Join Tracks" feature, put on iPod and go.

However I have a constant problem ripping audiobook CDs (all of which run close to the full 70 minutes available on a CD). Near the end of the CD I end up with skips, audible artifacting, and sometimes completely un-listen-able audio.

It is always near the end of the CD, though the point at which the problems come in may vary. It may be as early as 50 minutes in a 70 minute CD or as late as 65.

I'm importing the CDs using Apple Lossles Encoder. I have tried both with and without error correction when reading Audio CDs.

I don't seem to get this problem at all with Audio CDs, no matter their length. It's just an audiobook problem (perhaps audiobooks aren't pressed at the same quality? I don't know...)

I was hoping someone might be able to offer a suggestion, or if this is a known issue.

I'm using my MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Core Duo Intel system (4GB RAM, 360GB 5400RPM hard drive), so 2 models back from the current. I'm using the internal Superdrive for the reading (are there any known problems with this drive? Might I do better with a USB 2.0 external drive?)

Thanks!

How can extract audio from my DVD's on my mac?

fishthefly — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:25:24 -0800

How can I extract audio from DVD's on my mac? I have an iBook G4 and am trying to sample audio parts of movies for a music project I am working on. Also, what program can I manipulate said files (i.e. Audacity maybe?) with?

Thank you for your help!

Bypass encoding when ripping DVDs

Deflagro — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:12:39 -0800

I need a program for ripping DVDs to get past the encoding (I think that's the term). I've got most of them covered by my DVD Ripper, but I'm having some trouble on a few. I've been trying to rip a certain DVD using #1 DVD Ripper. It get's to a certain spot (about 10 minutes into it, exact same spot to the second every time) and stops. No errors, just stops. I figured my DVD was scratched, so I borrowed a friends of the same version of the movie. Exact same spot and it stops. I was told it was something with the DVD's encoding and I need a program to get past it. Any good ones? I don't need an entire new ripper, but just something to get past the ones I have trouble with. I'm not sure of the encoding used on the DVD, but I know it's not regional encoding. Also, the DVD works fine in a player.

DVD/Handbrake Divx Burning Woes

snap_dragon — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:59:36 -0800

I using Mac the Ripper than Handbrake to turn DVDs into mp4 files. (I use DVD dual layer)...When I use Roxio Popcorn, I can fit several movies on a disc (4) but it takes honestly a day and a half to burn on DVD !!!! But the DVD plays perfectly in my cheap player. Trying a different route, I tried dragging the mp4s to a blank DVD disc and then clicking "Burn" -- it burns and takes only 30-40 minutes but this version will not play on my DVD player. Anybody out there have an idea what I can do to make the process more efficient? Different software or different method? I appreciate your insight. By the way, I am running Mac OX X 10.5.5.

Modernize My Spins

nomisxid — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:30:14 -0800

Best place to get some vinyl ripped to electronic format, in Seattle? I've got a bunch of LPs that I'd like to get converted into an electronic form of some sort. I'd prefer someone local, so I can avoid shipping the vinyl half-way-cross the country and back. Anyone know of a reliable service in Seattle?

Ideally, I'm looking for someone who will split albums into tracks, and can scan the original 12" cover art.

External sound card for laptop. Recommendations wanted!

watson415 — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:55:45 -0800

External sound card for laptop. Recommendations wanted! Application: Ripping vinyl records to .WAV and MP3. I have a good (old) turntable. A good (new) RIAA equalized preamp and plugs to go into a sound card. Works great on my desktop, but I want to use it with my Dell/XP laptop. I tried it in the audio in (laptop sound card) but it clipped or...? otherwise sounded like crap. No knobs to tune it either. I'm looking for a moderately priced audio in (from the preamp) to USB that and associated drivers. Two channels are all that are necessary. A mic would be nice, but not req'd.

The main thing that I want to know is how to capture the best signal. These are rare records (1950s jazz) and I'm going to sell them after I rip them. The PolderbiTs software that I use has good pop and crackle filters, but I need to rip at a DVD quality sampling rate for those features to work well. I'll compress later.

Does a USB bus provide the bandwidth to achieve such a throughput? I'd consider a USB turntable, but the one I have is probably better than what I could get for the $40-$80 that I expect to pay for the audio/USB converter (unless convinced otherwise :)

Creating new CDs from old CD tracks -- how not to lose quality? (OS X)

deeper red — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:20:47 -0800

How do I create my own CDs from existing CD tracks, without losing quality on OS X? It seems iTunes will let me rip to WAV but will it then burn back to CD in the same quality? I don't want to go through any encoding/decoding stage.

How do I copy a DVD movie to DVD-R on a Mac?

rentalkarma — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:26:40 -0800

MacFilter: Mac DVD copying on the ~~cheap~~ free? I'm a Mac user now. Hooray!

I want to be able to backup DVDs that I own. (So this is legal, see?) On Windows, I'd use DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink. The first gets rid of the copy protection, the second squeezes the DVD image down to 4.3GB, the size of a blank DVD.

It's a painless process, and it's free. My goal is to play a copied DVD in ANY player I run across, not just some fancy smancy iPod or XBOX or whatever.

On Mac, I've found MacTheRipper (free) for stripping the copy protection. If the resulting DVD is small enough, I can burn it to a DVD with Burn (free). It plays on any player, and makes me happy.

However, if the DVD is greater than 4.3 GB, I've been unable to find any FREE DVDShink equivilant software for the Mac.

Does such an animal exist?

I keep seeing Handbrake appear in discussion threads, but Handbrake doesn't handle VOBs and VIDEO_TS folders and the like.

Thoughts? Or have Apple fanboys been lying to me all this time?

DVD ripping with both menus and compression

leakymem — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 08:50:55 -0800

I need a way to rip DVDs to a hard drive whilst maintaining menu structure and picture quality, but also compressing the data. Something like the DVD-like features offered by DivX Author but with an automated front end to convert DVD menus to DivX menus My flatmate is moving away to study film production for a year and would like to take as much of her DVD collection with her as possible without actually having to lug the disks along. We've been ripping the disks to a 500 gig USB drive using Mac The Ripper, but her collection is large and the drive is filling up fast.

Given how far video codecs have come since the initial release of DVDs, it seems like an awful waste of storage, but any tools I've found that rip DVDs to modern video codecs are only for converting the main feature. Given my flatmate's line of study, special features and directors commentary are a must-have.

She's got a Powerbook G4, so the resultant files must be playable on that. I have access to Ubuntu, Leopard and XP Pro, so the conversion tool can run on pretty much anything. Free would be nice, but anywhere up to $100 is probably acceptable.

Thanks in advance.

DVD ripping on linux

mzurer — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:04:44 -0800

What do I use on Ubuntu to do exactly what Mac the Ripper does on Mac? For all my attempts I can't seem to find an answer for this. I want to rip only. I do not want to compress to a smaller size, I do not want to change format.

M3U CUE LOG WTF?

hazyspring — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:09:17 -0800

Please explain to me what a cue, m3u, and log file are in layman's terms. (In regards to audio files.) I just starting ripping a few cds using EAC.

Why are these files useful and also, if I have FLAC files that include these 3 files and if I convert the FLAC to a different format, are these old files still useful?

Why do the sound and video sometimes get out of synch when ripping DVDs?

psmealey — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 04:31:33 -0800

When ripping some DVDs to my hard drive, why do the sound and video get out of synch? I generally use Mac the Ripper for doing this, and yes, I only do this for DVD's that I own. My question is that for some DVDs (particularly "Almost Famous", and "Woodstock: the Movie"), the audio gets out of synch with the video by several seconds. For other DVDs ("Rock Star", "24 Hour Party People"), it works just fine. Why does this happen, and is there anything that can be done to adjust for it?

Ripping and listening to my CD collection

GernBlandston — Wed, 23 May 2007 10:14:51 -0800

I'd like to rip my CD collection and be able to listen to them when I'm not at my computer. I want to be able to listen to them in the living room or kitchen. I've got several hundred CDs. And I don't want to spend a ton of money. So I've got a couple questions:
1. Does Windows Media Player, set to (WAV) lossless do a decent job? I like how it catalogs the CDs on my computer at the same time, and I don't know if it's worth going with FLAC, EAC, etc

2. Is there a better way to store them than on my harddrive? Are there inexpensive players for this kind of thing?

3. If I store on my computer, how can I setup speakers off of my computer so that I can wire them around the house? Can I buy some kind of card or amp or whatever a regular stereo uses?

Thanks!

Maybe the problem is that the world CAN'T listen.

punchdrunkhistory — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:24:13 -0800

Why won't this CD rip properly? 12 out of 18 songs are completely garbled, regardless of which program I try to use. I've been trying to rip the Smiths' "The World Won't Listen" to my computer for about three weeks now, and it always fails. The first four and last two tracks are fine, but 'Shakespeare's Sister' through 'You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Baby' are garbled completely -- each song is at the proper running length, but is made up entirely of approximately five-second bits and pieces of other tracks from the album. Occasionally it plays the correct song for about fifteen seconds, and then returns to the mishmash.

This has happened no matter what program I use. At first I used solely iTunes to rip and play the tracks, but I've had the same results ripping in CDex and playing in foobar2000. The CD plays fine in regular CD players, and is in no way scratched. I get bad results when I try to simply play it as an audio CD through iTunes as well.

I don't believe that the CD is copy-protected. I purchased it new from a record store in Omaha, but it appears to be an Australian import -- if it matters, the inner bit on the underside of the CD reads "D.A.T.A. IFPIL 311 4509918982 D E1" (D.A.T.A. apparently stands for "Digital Audio Technologies Australia).

This hasn't happened with any other CDs I've ripped -- only this one, so I don't think it's a problem with the drive. Thanks!

Let 'er rip. Um, I mean, let me rip.

jbickers — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 11:53:40 -0800

What's the easiest, cheapest, quickest way to move content from a DVD to individual files on a hard drive? I've acquired a number of anime DVD box sets, and want to be able to view them on my laptop, on the go - and I don't want to lug the discs around.

What I really want is to be able to rip each of them to individual AVI, MPEG, whatever files, one per episode. Don't care about menus or special features, just want to be able to watch the episodes.

I've tried DVD Shrink, but it appears to be suited at making copies of the full disc (menus and all). I've looked at a few other ripping tools, but they all make my head hurt.

Is there a simple, open-source (i.e. free), trusted way to get individual episodes off a DVD and onto the hard drive? It would be especially nice if there were a preference that allowed me to adjust the quality to fiddle with file size.

How do I get everything off of a CD?

reventlov — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 22:39:53 -0800

I want to make sure that the next time I rip my CD collection is the last time. What should I know? I want to rip all information that I possibly can from my CD collection--CD TEXT, CD+G, ISRC codes, data tracks/sessions, audio tracks, audio in the space before track 1, audio in the gaps between tracks, and index marks. Am I missing anything? And if I am, is there a tool available for Linux that will let me read it?

How to split a.iso into 2 .iso?

wile e — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 18:34:45 -0800

Can you split an .iso (DVD burn image) file in two? I've been ripping all of my Netflix movies into .iso files before realizing that my burning software (Nero burning rom) doesn't split an image file (.iso) that is larger than 4.7gig into two smaller files. All of these movies require dual layer blank DVDs, but since I have a 100 pack of blank DVDs I would like to try to see if I could split the movies to 2 different discs rather than buy the larger blanks. That was my full question. Any help is appreciated!

Turn DVD into separate clips

IZ — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 03:31:58 -0800

DVD Rip Filter: I want to rip several movie clips of a DVD and convert them into separate mpeg files. Please help me out. I would like to be able to decide where I cut the separate takes to be converted. It will be short sample clips to put on a website, I'm not talking complete chapters here. I would like to know which piece of freeware you recommend to do this fast and easy. Thanks.

Why can't I rip mp3s?

Ash3000 — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 06:35:43 -0800

For some reason, when I try to rip/import anything off a CD, all the audio on my laptop slows down to a choppy crawl. In the past few weeks, I've noticed that any time I try to rip something off a CD, be it with iTunes or any other program, the audio on anything else playing turns into an indecipherably slow and choppy crawl, be it an mp3, a website or whatever. I use a Toshiba Satellite. Any obvious culprits?