DVD software help please

[Ferral]

Before I start with my request I have to state that I am not wanting to do this for piracy purposes at all, just backup. I have 3 kids that keep going into mine and Shelleys bedroom and helping themselves to our DVD's and they are getting ruined. Eg : My youngest wanted to watch Spiderman 2 (I paid £18 for this in Woolworths the day it was released) Next thing I know is that it has been discarded on the floor next to the DVD player, not good !

So, How do I go about pulling the films off the origional discs (just the film with english language, no subs or additional audio streams) so I can then put a few of the kids frequently watched films onto one DVD so that our origionals stop getting damaged / ruined.

This is perfectly legal as I own the origionals, just need a bit of help with the software required, codecs and how to actually do it. I have Nerovision Express 2 and have no probs using that to put multiple files and menus etc onto a dvd disc from the video camera.

Have no idea how to pull the movies off the origional discs though and turn them into avi files ready for dvd conversion.

Can someone help please before the kids ruin more of our discs.

[Rave]

I use DVDShrink: www.dvdshrink.org <---although the site seems to be down ATM

I think you can use it to put more than one film on a disc, but doing that will start to degrade the picture quality very noticeably. With DVDRs (both + and -) now available for less than 20p each you might as well just do one film per disc.

Rich :¬)

[Ferral]

Films are for the kids so it doesnt overly matter if the quality is reduced from the origional, its literally just to keep their hands off the origionals.

All I need is for the program to pull the sound and picture off the origional disc and convert it to avi format (sound and pic basically) and store it on my hard drive.

From there I can do the rest with Nerovision.

I managed to download that dvdshrink a little while ago, will give it a go a bit later this evening (have installed it, looks a little complicated at the min, should imagine it will explain itself / fall into place once I load a disc in and look at it from there), currently converting the daughters school nativity (she was a sheperd !) that we recorded just before Christmas and Nero can take a while to convert the avi file to dvd format (hence why a bit later !!)

[Rave]

To just rip the DVD to your hard disk you can use DVD Decrypter. I don't think it'll convert it to .avi though. If you're shrinking DVDs then some recoding is nearly always going to be required; DVD Shrink does it pretty well.

Another option would be to use a DiVX capable player and recode all the content to MPEG-4. I'm not sure if DiVX DVD players can play MPEG-4 DVDs or just CDs though.

Rich :¬)

Edit: Come to think of it, have a look at www.doom9.org

[Ferral]

Right, I've managed to pull a few films off their respective DVD's using that DVD Shrink, they are stored on my hard disk as Audio TS and Video TS. Now I need to convert them to avi format, I have DivX and X Vid and the AC3 audio installed, I need to do it this way as I want to put a few films onto one disk, saves messing as with kids they never watch anything all the way through so a few on one disk is going to help here when me and my other half are busy.

Ideas anyone please ?

[Ferral]

Ok, just realised I havnt got the files. I have the video files but there is nothing in the audio files folder so I get silence.

This is completely baffling me (My side of things is usually hardware not software !)

[Oakey]

Erm, the AUDIO_TS folder is always empty, you shouldn't get silence, chances are you didn't encode the audio track as well. Wouldn't it be easier to rip the film to hard drive, DVD shrink it to 4.6Gb and then burn it to a Re-Writable DVD (DVD burners are £60 now, no excuse not to own one!!). Then when they're fed up watching one film, erase and burn another. Better than encoding to DivX/Xvid that's for sure.

[Ferral]

Yeah, its just a few on one disk and you dont have to drop what you are doing to constantly swap films every half hour or so, just keep hold of the remote control in the kitchen ! (they never watch anything all the way through).

So I was thinking convert them to X-Vid or DivX and then just put a few on the one DVD disk (Got a Lite On 16x +- DVD Rewriter for Christmas) I know it takes a while to convert the files (if the avi from the vid camera are anything to go by ! an hour approx for a 20 min file, burning time isnt to bad). I can just set it going when I go to bed.

Also with the films if I use rewriteable disks and just put the one film on it then re use the disk you can guarantee they will want to watch that film I have just deleted and then it will be helping themselves to our origionals again. Loads of our disks have been scratched to hell because they just get discarded on the floor and on the coffee table, not to good really.

I have CloneDVD 2 for direct disk to disk and a program that will remove the CSS encryption, good thing with CloneDVD is that it automatically resizes the movie and removes the layer break etc to fit it onto the 4.5 Gb disk (Backed up Monsters Inc for them as their tape version is getting tatty and didnt want them using my origional disk) Thing is that we have loads of stuff that they want to watch and we dont have time to sit with them alot of the time with such a big house.

Hence why I want to put 2 or 3 films on 1 disc for them to hopefully save ourselves hassle in the long run.

[Jonny M]

There is no need at all to convert them to AVI then back to MPEG-2, simply use DVD shrink to get the VOB files you require, and a decent DVD creating package to put these VOBs onto a disc with menus etc.

Can't recommend a decent piece of software I'm afraid, not really my area.

[Oakey]

What are you going to play the divx's on? you could always build a Windows Media Centre PC and just stick the DivX's on that.

[Lemming]

Conversion to a good DIVX format avi will take a little time and effort, one click solutions are not that good generally.

Check out the guides section at doom9.org for a list of methods and downloadable program links.

If you have a dvd writer already then dvdshrink can write a copy of each film to a seperate disc, if you want compilation discs then you will have to recode to divx/xvid to achieve at a reasonable quality.

I have no idea of the legality of making a copy using divx/xvid, If its legal then I dont see any reason why you couldnt download a copy using DC++....would be easier than playing for hours with recodes. As a mod I am sure you know more about the legality of this than me :s

[Ferral]

I should imagine it is legal as I am not going to be distributing anything at all and own the origionals, its literally just making a backup for the kids to use so that our discs dont get ruined.

[Knoxville]

Right, Get dvd Decrypter here - http://www.dvddecrypter.com/ and extract the biggest file as that'll tend to be the film.

Then get vidomi here - http://www.vidomi.com/,its very simple and easy to set up as long as you have the codecs, and convert the files you just extracted to an avi which'll take about 3 hours on a decent pc.

Then that can either be burnt to a cd or several on one dvd and used in a divx capable dvd player, or then converted to kvcd with loss of quality but it gives you the capability to use cheaper media and you don't need a divx compatible player.

There are several million other ways and other pieces of software you can use but i've always found this one of the easiest that doesn't require you to pay for software