Best software for ripping DVD's to AVI format with full Dolby 5.1

Thanks Mike but I know nothing about MKV or Containers.  I’ll need to do more research.

I “assume” that (ugh - I assumed):

  • MKV is a file extension(format) which the WD Live Plus can play ?

  • you’re suggesting I rip to MKV rather than AVI ?

But, I infer that I cannot rip directly to MKV, but must first do something else, and only then put it into a different container ?

Sounds like too much effort for me.  Ideally I’d like to rip and watch - nothing more.

I am familiar with ISO and have used them to burn DVD’s, but they are too big for my needs.

And, I use the UpNP access for my media, not network shares, and ISO does not work for UpNP w/ WD in my experience.

A 1.5 GIG AVI with Dolby 5.1 was my current average target.

Regardless thanks and I will investigate.

MKV is a container type, like AVI.  They are sort of a “wrapper” around which the various video and audio streams are inside.  Those streams are encoded (and then decoded – thus CoDecs) in various forms like DTS, AC3, H264.

The MKV container is relatively new (“new” being a difficult thing to define in this fast paced world – in the last four or five years) but has become widely accepted as THE container type, replacing the cantakerous AVI container (AVI was so ill-defined that it often would not work in many situations).  The Live *loves* MKV containers and it also offers advantages over many (it can hold DTS, sub titles, meta data of all sorts, etc.).

You can’t rip directly to MKV (nor can you to AVI) but need to first rip and then process.  But it shouldn’t scare you – Handbrake just points to the rip and using the High Profile preset (but changing the output type to MKV and passing through the DTS or AC3 audio) is all you need do.  It will reduce your DVDs to about 25% of the size of them without changing quality one whit, and you can queue it up so that it will process many of them overnight (so you can rip 10 or so DVDs and have them converted to playable files by the morning).  My typical encodes are around 700MB for a quality DVD  movie (however, I usually encode blu-rays, which are considerably bigger).

There is a free trial of AnyDVD and, as I said, Handbrake is freeware, so you really aren’t out anything to give it a shot.  Many of us (most?) use this workflow – rip with DVDFab or AnyDVD, and encode with Handbrake.  Nothing plays better with the Live (which is why we call it the gold standard).

Again thanks.

Am still uncomfortable somewhat with the price of AnyDVD, as well as the multiple steps required to rip.

A quick Googling returned many other products which rip straight to MKV, here’s 2:

Shine DVD

WinMKV

I will try AnyDVD as well as others listed above and post my general experiences…

Ultimately my real needs are:

  • Time! Needs to work fast.  I cannot mess around with multiple steps (2 youngin’s at home)

  • No desire to tinker.  Some things I want to play, tinker, and learn - this I do not.

  • Small-ish size.  anything under 2 gig average per movie is good.

  • Must have Dolby 5.1 sound

  • Lack of DVD menus no big deal

  • And most importantly - IT must work 99% of the time or better. (Not sometimes Dolby, sometimes not…)

  • B

Probably the most popular program for mkv is MakeMKV.

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OMG!

MakeMKV ripped a 1.5 hour movie to 2.8 gig in under 6 minutes on an OLD 1GHz machine.

I used Mediainfo and have verified the 6 channel audio.

Going to try and play it on the WD Live plus in a bit - once the wife and son have finished watching YouTube Dionsaur stuff ;-).

…and, I think MakeMKV is free (saw no sales ads on their site and it ripped whole movie)

Will post more later.  AVI may be a thing of the past for me.

  • B

MakeMKV does sound quick but (someone please correct me if I’m wrong) I don’t think it actually compresses the file, so they’ll be as big as ISOs… in which case you could just use ISOs and save yourself the hassle (plus you then have files you can easily burn to disc if need be).

My preferred method for making MKVs is to use DVDFab HD Decrypter to rip the DVD, then run it through Handbraketo make an MKV.

Both are free.

The resulting files should be significantly smaller for little to no quality loss.  The downside is it’ll take longer to encode.

You’re right, Grant – no encoding.  That’s why it’s fast, of course.

In general the old “Good, Fast, Small” rule applies (pick any two).  Thus you can definitely use MakeMKV to make good, fast MKV files, but they won’t be small.  You can use other software to make small, fast MKV files but the quality won’t be any good.  And, of course, Handbrake produces great, small MKV files (at the cost of taking a few hours on a slow machine, although on my i7 I can generally do a DVD movie in around 30 minutes).

Quite frankly, anyone with a kid shouldn’t be scared of the AnyDVD (or DVDFab)/Handbrake combo – it’s FAR less complicated than raising a child .

Oh, and I should also mention that I’m a *very* old man, and if I can handle the AnyDVD/Handbrake combo (and rip thousands of DVDs and blu-rays without a single issue) anyone can do it.  And don’t complain to me about time – I have FAR less time than any of you kids around here .

Thanks all !!!

I’m testing DVDFab now but have a quetions for all…

Seems like there are 2 steps…

  1. Rip

  2. Encode

My questions ?

  1. Rip

    What format do I rip to?  i.e.  ISO? MPx? …?

    I assume when using DVDFab that I use the “DVD Copy” option since I see no “Decrypt” option?

  1. Encode

    Is encoding synonymous with compressing for our purposes?

L8R

Contrary to AnyDVD trial DVDFab’s ripping tool will stay free indefinetly.  So just decrypt your DVD in main movie mode to your HDD which results in VOBs and IFOs and open the Vts_01_0.ifo in free AutoGK to encode/compress to xvid in an AVI container which the LIVE handles just as good as MKV (which is overkill for SD material anyway) and can be played back on a lot of DVD standalones. If you need cropping use StaxRip instead of AutoGK.

I only use AnyDVD but I suspect DVDFab works the same way – rip to a full DVD copy (which includes the VIDEO_TS folder) and then point Handbrake to that folder.  It will select the main movie – use the High Profile Preset (but change the output type to MKV) and pass through DTS and AC3 audio tracks.  That’s all.

Nothing will work better (or, in most cases, as good).

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Hi!

When it comes to generate AVIs from DVDs, I’d like to recommend avi.NET after the ripping step (with DVDFab). This is a very handy and easy tool to convert any mpeg2 source to xvid within an avi container. And of course, it can mux the 5.1 AC3 stream into the avi.

Take a look at http://www.clonead.co.uk/

For MKV and h264 I prefer using StaxRip.

Cheers,

Zap

Thanks Pix…

PixelPower wrote:

MakeMKV does sound quick but (someone please correct me if I’m wrong) I don’t think it actually compresses the file, so they’ll be as big as ISOs… in which case you could just use ISOs and save yourself the hassle (plus you then have files you can easily burn to disc if need be).

 

My preferred method for making MKVs is to use DVDFab HD Decrypter to rip the DVD, then run it through Handbraketo make an MKV.

When you rip using DVDFab, which option do you use ?

  • Full Disk

  • Main Movie

?

High_Yield wrote:

 Ultimately my real needs are:

  • Time! Needs to work fast.  I cannot mess around with multiple steps (2 youngin’s at home)

  • No desire to tinker.  Some things I want to play, tinker, and learn - this I do not.

  • Small-ish size.  anything under 2 gig average per movie is good.

  • Must have Dolby 5.1 sound

  • Lack of DVD menus no big deal

  • And most importantly - IT must work 99% of the time or better. (Not sometimes Dolby, sometimes not…)

__________________________________________________________________________________

You have a choice:

Size or Time?

I just built an UnRaid server, therefore storage space is not as much of an issue, And I  want to retain the original disc since I don’t know what TV I will own in the future. Therefore the time I spend “ripping” is greatly reduced.

MakeMKV/AnyDVD/DVDFab and Handbrake are a great combo to retain a high quality mkv.  Higher end processors can reduce the time required significantly.

Here is a great resource of information (dbone from avsforum)

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/08/24/mkvmania-ripping-to-mkv-with-blurip/

http://dbone1026.blogspot.com/2010/08/using-blurip-to-rip-to-mkvs.html

If you decide to go the mkv route, you can burn a disc from the mkv by converting to AVCHD.

http://www.makemkv.com/faq/item/13

or create a m2ts file, which doesn’t require converting to burn to a disc (m2ts can also be played by the WDTV Live)

http://www.makemkv.com/faq/item/4

High_Yield wrote:

Thanks Pix…

 

When you rip using DVDFab, which option do you use ?

  • Full Disk
  • Main Movie

?

I always use Full Disc, mainly because I have no fixed schedule for encoding and a lot of the time the ripped ISOs will sit on my drive for a while and I at least want the option to play them with DVD menus on the Live.  I don’t think you save an appreciable amount of time (or space) choosing Main Movie.

mkelley wrote:

And, of course, Handbrake produces great, small MKV files (at the cost of taking a few hours on a slow machine, although on my i7 I can generally do a DVD movie in around 30 minutes).

 

use the High Profile Preset (but change the output type to MKV) and pass through DTS and AC3 audio tracks.  That’s all.

 

I’m using handbrake now and it is taking, what is says, to be 8 hours on the “High” profile setting - which is simply unacceptable.  3 hours would be max for me.  I may cancel this and try at the “Normal” preset.

But - do you have other suggestions to speed up Handbrake somewhat yet retain decent video ?

Most of my rips don’t need to be “perfect”, some do - like lord of the Rings, Matrix - but other kids movies - no.

High_Yield wrote:

I’m using handbrake now and it is taking, what is says, to be 8 hours on the “High” profile setting - which is simply unacceptable.  3 hours would be max for me.  I may cancel this and try at the “Normal” preset.

 

But - do you have other suggestions to speed up Handbrake somewhat yet retain decent video ?

Most of my rips don’t need to be “perfect”, some do - like lord of the Rings, Matrix - but other kids movies - no.

 

I’m running a fresh rip of Final Fantasy VII through Handbrake now (High Profile) and it’s going to take about 2 hours.  My PC is an older E6400 dual core (and it’s maxing out both cores!).  What kind of machine are you encoding with?

The encodes I’ve done using Normal came out ok (and I think took a little less time), I just wanted max quality for this one as it’s an eye candy film.  :)

Something that may or may not make a difference is that I’m using one of the Nightly Builds.  It’s not the most recent but it’s newer than the version on the handbrake.fr site by 6 or 7 months.  It requires downloading separate CLI and GUI files from build.handbrake.fr but isn’t particularly complicated to acquire and set up.  

-update-

Looking at the log, it took exactly 2hrs and 26mins.  

The resulting MKV file is down to 1.33GB from an 8GB ISO, including both Japanese and English 5.1 tracks, subtitles, and chapters.

As Grant says, time may vary greatly.  On my i7 machine no DVD encode takes more than 40 minutes (a blu-ray encode, OTOH, can take four hours or more).

You ARE encoding from your hard drive and not the DVD, correct?  IOW, you first ripped the movie to your hard drive?  Because 8 hours is a long time even for a very old machine (although if you DO have a very old, slow processor it’s possible – my five year old machine takes about four hours for a DVD).

The other thing to remember is you can queue up the encodes to run at night or while you’re at work – I assume your machine isn’t busy then .  So even if it does take a while in the morning all will be well.

High_Yield wrote:> When you rip using DVDFab, which option do you use ?

  • Full Disk
  • Main Movie?

Main Movie cause I don’t see any reason to rip stuff I don’t need anyway. Plus it’s easier for encoders like AutoGK and Staxrip to pick the right title. Plus: only with main movie you can be certain all copy protections have been removed so the encode will have no troubles like sync issues with sound and subs.

I’m confused, why are you guys ripping the movie first to the hard drive? Or did I miss something? Handbrake will encode it to a MKV right off the DVD. I use:

DVD43 (it’s like AnyDVD to remove encryption, but it’s free)

Handbrake

 I created my own profile with tips from people in this forum:

Picture Tab: Default

Video Filters: Sometimes Use Deinterlace (slow) setting.

Video Tab: Video Codec H.264 / Target Size 700MB / 2-Pass Encoding

Audio Tab: MP3 (most people will want to change this, I personally don’t care about Surround, DTS, etc)

Subtitles: Whatever you want…

Chapters and Advanced I leave as default

It takes maybe 30 minutes to rip from the DVD to an MKV on my older Quad-Core PC, and the movies look great on either of my 46" LCDs or the 65" in the living room. What would be the benifit to ripping the disc to folders before encoding with Handbrake? Better speed? Maybe my encodes go faster because I am using MP3 Stereo for my audio, I don’t really know.