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

March 13, 2007 11:53 AM

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.

posted by jbickers to Computers & Internet (16 answers total)

Especially if these are half-hour episodes, odds are that individual episodes are their own VOBs. If so, you really do want dvdshrink.

(1) Install vlc.
(2) Run dvdshrink with whatever degree of shrinkenizing you want.
(3) Look at the output directory. There will be a bunch of files with names like VTS_01_0.VOB. Some of these will be small -- 50MB or less. Ignore those. Start double-clicking on the larger ones -- if they don't pop up in vlc, tell them to pop up in vlc. When you find one that's an episode, rename it to something sensible and drag it to another folder. When you've gotten all of the episodes, blow the rest of the files.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:34 PM on March 13, 2007

The easiest, cheapest and quickest way to do this is to not not transcode the dvd into individual avi or mpeg files. Transcoding takes an amazing amount of time and processing power. Additionally you may end up with audio syncing problems, weird video artifacts and other unpleasantries.

Instead, use DVD shrink. Change the compression slider so the output ends up being pretty small (~2GB), and back up the DVD to an ISO file. If you have tons of hard drive space, I'd leave the default compression settings alone. Then put the ISO files on your laptop. Install Daemon Tools and then using it, mount the ISO in the 'Virtual DVD Drive' Daemon Tools creates. Watch DVD like normal on laptop.

Quality will be sacrificed, but I think this is the quickest, easiest, cheapest way to do mostly what you want.
posted by zackola at 12:56 PM on March 13, 2007

I'd forgo DVD shrink and go with DVDFab.

I havent used shrink in a whle, but you can rip only the mainmovie as well as the audio track you want. You can also have it encode to divx (if you have the time).

Also a tip about VLC. If you do choose to rip the whole DVD onto your hard drive, ignore the first tip about opening the VOB files. Just drag the DVD folder or the VIDEO_TS folder into VLC and it will play. Same with ISOs, no need to mount them with daemon-tools. Just drag it into VLC and it will start playing.
posted by mphuie at 1:01 PM on March 13, 2007

I would forget about creating individual episode avi/mpg files, because it'll take a lot of time, and be quite a lot of work.

Zackola's method sounds like the best one to me, and would involve the least time and hassle. Another advantage is that all the tools you need are completely free.

It's also worth having a look at the guides on VideoHelp if you're looking for other ways.
posted by jayden at 1:53 PM on March 13, 2007

Response by poster: One reason I want to go the individual file route is size - it looks to me like DVD Shrink won't make anything smaller than, say, 4 gig (for a whole disc), while I was hoping to have individual files of a half-gig or so. Yes, I know there will be loss, but I'll be watching them on a small screen. (And I'm also thinking ahead to a time when I might buy a PSP or other portable video device, and would want the files to be pretty small) ...
posted by jbickers at 2:14 PM on March 13, 2007

Also a tip about VLC. If you do choose to rip the whole DVD onto your hard drive, ignore the first tip about opening the VOB files.

jbickers already said that he already knew how to copy a whole dvd, and that he didn't want to copy whole dvd's, and that what he wanted was one file per episode of anime.

Having iso's of the whole dvds won't achieve one file per episode, nor will dragging directories.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:20 PM on March 13, 2007

For end user simplicity, Gordian Knot is the tool-pack of choice; it takes forever to do it's thing, but you can batch up a bunch of conversions and let them grind away at night.
posted by nomisxid at 2:26 PM on March 13, 2007

Just one caveat about the possibility of a future portable device... you may end up having to convert them all over again for the specific device as they all can have different requirements to play a video file.
posted by utsutsu at 2:27 PM on March 13, 2007

I have used iriveter to rip dvds into avis with success.
posted by Big_B at 2:44 PM on March 13, 2007

Another vote for gordian knott. However I use auto gordian knott. Thakes about 4-6 hours to encode a full movie to a 1gb divx file. You can get a lot of info at doom9.org
posted by gergtreble at 3:12 PM on March 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

Takes not thakes.
posted by gergtreble at 3:12 PM on March 13, 2007

I use acidrip to do this... It works perfectly and easily. Mostly just click QUEUE, then RIP. You can also specify the size of the destination file (AVI).

The catch? You might have to upgrade your OS to Linux. (I use Ubuntu).
posted by verevi at 4:13 PM on March 13, 2007

All those solutions sound WAY too complicated. Why not just use Handbrake (or whatever it is they're calling the Windows port of handbrake)? Stick the DVD in, push the button, out come some files.
posted by majick at 5:17 PM on March 13, 2007

I use mencoder (part of MPlayer).
posted by janell at 8:52 PM on March 13, 2007

I agree with ROU_Xenophobe with minor difference, copy, sorry, back up the discs to your laptop with DVD shrink. Then you have little digital versions of the dvds. Then use VLC to open the whole directory of the dvd you backed up. Its just like having compressed dvds with you.
posted by tomw at 2:09 AM on March 14, 2007

Response by poster: My biggest problem with DVD Shrink is that it doesn't shrink things enough - I can't get it to go much smaller than 4 gig per disc, and my laptop hard drive isn't the biggest in the world - at that rate, a few discs and I'll be getting close to full. Is there any way to force it to make things smaller, or is that a sort of lower limit?
posted by jbickers at 5:37 AM on March 14, 2007