Best software for rIpping from DVD

[Saracen]

I need something for ripping, in decent (but DVD not HD or Bluray) quality, video on DVD discs to PC.

To be clear, these are NOT commercial discs I'm talking about, and I don't care about defeating copy protection because there isn't any, and yes, I do have copyright holder's permission. In fact, they want the job done.

It is home-shot video, transferred and finalised on DVD-R, but they want some editing done.

Which brings me to point 2 ..... decent editing software, capable of simple but frame-accurate edits, and perhaps a few basic transitions.

I want some effective but simple to use, as I'm doing someone a favour and want a car with auto gearbox, not having to learning how to drive a Formula 1 racer. i.e. something aimed at ease of use, not Premiere, etc.

Any suggestions gratefully received. TIA.

[Agent]

I need something for ripping, in decent (but DVD not HD or Bluray) quality, video on DVD discs to PC.

To be clear, these are NOT commercial discs I'm talking about, and I don't care about defeating copy protection...

Do you actually mean ripping?
That term is used to remove copy protection from the disk, as in "to rip the disk/film". If it has no copy protection, just drag and drop the files in explorer.

Do you actually mean encode? Not being a pedant but they are two very different things

If so, are you looking to take the footage from the disk and get it in a video file on the PC? In this case, you'll almost certainly want something like Handbrake.

[TheDutyPaid]

I use Magix movie edit pro 2014 premium, which can handle and then render any type of film you can think of. You can get a copy on Amazon download for about £54, which is about half price.

[AETAaAS]

Second Handbrake for the DVD part. As far as video editing goes, my favorite has always been Sony Vegas. TBH, you can get away with Vegas 9.0 as the newer versions don't add much more. Saw some on eBay for £12 or there is version 11 for £19.

For me when I was first starting to make non-crappy videos, Vegas was really easy and intuitive. Drag and drop stuff into the editor, easy to use effects and transitions and it is pretty powerful. The criteria you mention of 'frame accurate edits' is also possible because you can 'scroll into' the timeline immensely to edit items, or you can bring up a dialogue for even finer control.

[jim]

I would consider this as a 3-step process - 1) get the files off the DVD, 2) edit them and play around, 3) encode them into a suitable format.

DVD Decrypter works pretty well in my experience to get files off DVDs and onto the PC.

On the editing part, I have no idea. I've never dabbled in it beyond Windows Movie Maker and there have to be better solutions out there.

On the encoding part, Handbrake should do the trick.

[directhex]

Handbrake is fine if you want to rip, modify, and re-encode, all in one app. However, if you don't need to actually rip anything (i.e. no copy protection) then you can just... copy the .vob files off the DVD. Use whatever the preferred Windows solution is to concatenate all the .vob files from the same series together (i.e. the main feature, not special features or menus or whatever). The result is an MPEG2-TS file which you can feed into your preferred editor

[Saracen]

I should clarify. Perhaps "rip" is the wrong term. The footage is analog camera footage, recorded to files on a standalone HD/DVD recorder, edited into chapters on that device, written back to DVD/R, and the disk finalised. Original source analog material no longer available.

All I have to work with is the finalised DVD.

So, I need to get the video (and sound, obviously) from the finalised DVD into an editable form on the PC. Make some edits (primarily clipping out some garbage), join the edited bits into a "movie" and burn back to finalised DVD/R suitable for playback on conventional DVD players (not necessarily in a PC, but standalone).

Oh, and I should have said, I'm doing it as a favour. I'm not about to start buying software to do it, and the person I'm doing it for can't afford to. So, free software is necessary, or it becomes unviable.

I've always considered the process of extracting video from disk to PC to be "ripping", copy-protection or not, but if I'm wrong, I stand corrected. It's just the bit involving getting it from finalised disk onto PC, mainly because my standalone Pioneer machine which could have done this, entirely PC-less, appears to have died, and Pioneeer appear to have stopped making these excellent machines.

All I used to do is put the disk in the Pioneer, copy to HD, edit, and burn back to DVD/R because there was no copy protection (the Pioneer's firmware doesn't permit copying if there is).

Now, it seems, I'm going to have to faff about with PCs, when before, it was 10 minutes work, entirely on the Pioneer HDR/DVD recorder.

[Agent]

Okay...makes a bit more sense now

The DVD/R disk will have no copy protection, so it's a simply case of copying the files in explorer.
This will give you VOB formatted files, unless it's something really specialist.
VOB files can be edited with all commercial packages, but free still is a bit more limiting. You might need to convert them to something a bit more 'mainstream' first.
- If so, use one of the many free VOB to avi converters, just make sure you do it as lossless. File might be equal size / big, but don't worry, you can compress it after the editing.

Free editing software is limited for video editing. Microsoft does their basic movie maker, which is actually fairly decent for its target audience. Otherwise, take your pick: http://www.techradar.com/news/softwa...wnload-1136264

Once done, just burn back to DVD. Almost all editing packages will have a profile to export to a DVD profile.

[Saracen]

Thanks, Agent, and all.

I must admit, copying the .vobs didn't occur to me, and it should have. My excuse is that it's years since I've done much with video. I still have a boxed copy of Premiere somewhere, but first, I'd have to find it, and second, it's probably a good 10 years old.

Copying the .vobs should work. After all, as I understand it, the DVDs the Pioneer produces are to the DVD standard, not Pioneer's. What distracted me was that the Pioneer machines have a habit of doing things in a strictly proprietary way. I guess that's justified by the results they produce, and the ease of use. But, of course, as soon as I burn and finalise, they OUGHT to be industry-standard-compliant.

I'll test just copying the .vobs, as all I need is the video/audio. One of the progs on page two of that Techradar site appears ideal, in that it apparently allows clipping, etc, without format conversion. Perfect. Then, title the files, combine those that need it, and burn back to DVD. Hopefully, job done.

Lightworks does look intriguing for playing with. Maybe I'll dabble after this project is done, but it's overkill for a quick and dirty job.

Amy other suggestions or ideas still welcome, but thanks guys. It looks like a plan.

[KeyboardDemon]

If you are only planning on spending a few days in the edit stages then you can use a trial version of something like Corel Video Studio, Adobe Premier Elements or one of many other great, yet simple, packages out there that will give you 30 days to mess around before you have to buy them. Many will let you make full use of the features, but some might disable a final render stage until they are fully licensed.

[Marcvs]

You could try Sony Vegas, most of the people I know use that for their home movie editing love it and say its easy to use, I always use premiere tho as I have it for work.

You could also try makeMKV for VOB to single file or Handbrake works well too for it.

If you have nero premium that has some edit thing built in too which might be worth looking at (though I dont use it)

[jimbob9713]

You could also try makeMKV for VOB to single file or Handbrake works well too for it.

MakeMKV and Handbrake are pretty different, aren't they?
MakeMKV takes the raw video/audio/subtitle streams and dumps them all into one MKV file (a-movie-in-one kind of thing), with no encoding, so it's lossless.
Handbrake reencodes both the video and audio streams into an MP4 or MKV.

... and neither seem very relevant in the OP's case.