Need help backing up (ripping) DVD's

I'll start by saying its 100% legal to rip your own DVD's for backup & protection. Just so nobody thinks I am asking for shady advice.

So I am building a HTPC and I want to put all the DVD's we have on the hard drive so we can watch them instantly and do away with the disks.

I have explored far and wide for the best encoding methods/programs/codecs ect. This is where I stand.

For ripping by far DVDFAB 5 is working best. So far as best I can tell it has not failed to rip even a single movie. The widely used DVD Decrypter could only get about half my movies due to new copy protections it cant circumvent. Even better yet is that DVDFAB lets you only rip the main movie and not all the extras to save time & HDD space.

It rips to the standard .INF & VOB files.

For encoding I am using AUTOGK - Its fast, good quality and incredibly simple and lets you que many jobs at once. It works with DIVX & XVID. All the tutorials I read say use XVID as it works better.

So I usually encode to 700mb like most people but figured since this is a HTPC and I am basically replacing the DVD's I should go for quality and not size (1TB HDD going in there) so I have been encoding at a target size of 1800mb and that gives me about 75% or higher quality and it looks great.


So going with the above methods I ran into my first problem. The Mummy Returns & the Scorpion King DVD's both of them failed to mux the audio. I tried re-ripping to no avail so then I figured I need a different encoder.

The format I wanted the most was x264 but it gave me way too much trouble. I tried MeGUI, x264, Nero Recode, and FairUse Wizard.

MeGUI - Totally did not work right for me

Nero Recode - Works so good! except the audio it uses would not play right for the life of me. FFDShow decodes it to have this horrible low frequency "hum" like if you touched the amped input of a sub woofer with your finger the reverb that makes. I found I can get around it by using AC3 Decoder instead of FFDShow but that only works for my players like Media Player Classic. It will not work in Windows Media Center where all of the movies will be playing so it was not an option.

Fairuse - Its working but the trial only lets you encode to 700mb files and sometimes I get a thin line at the bottom of videos.



So what to do? Well I rolled back to one version older of Fairuse (2.8) and it had full options for me. I tried the Scorpion King and it worked!

Quality is soooo much better in x264 than DIVX/XVID and you can use AC3 sound. The sound is terribly low volume for AC3 again a codec issue I think but unlike Nero's version of AC3 there is no horrible reverb and it plays in x64 Windows Media Center. Takes about 3x maybe 4x longer to do a x264 encoding though but it encoded the scorpion king with 100% quality into a 1.23gb file!

(Fairuse can not use the files ripped from dvdfab, it rips them off the dvd itself, but it will not work on copy protected dvds so you have to use anydvd)

So problem that I need help with:

The Mummy Returns - Again audio muxing / transcoding issues.

Even FairUse is not able to encode the files from the DVD! It worked for scropion king but it wont work for the mummy returns. I was hoping for guidance on how to fix it and why it wont work and also a share/tell deal where everybody can toss in there knowledge about ripping & encoding videos.

I am especially interested in x264 I think after I get the whole collection on there in XVID I will go back and redo it in x264. FairUse Wizard is ok but there still has to be some better programs/methods.

 

Have you tried using avidemux or MediaCoder for ripping to x264? I used those programs to do those jobs and never had a problem. Everything is in good quality and smaller file size. This is a tutorial to encode to h264 using Avidemux. I'm 100% sure it works, as I've tried it more than one time before. With avidemux you can use the vob from DVDFab, as avidemux doesn't rip DVD by itself.

Can't help you about FairUse.. never used that program before.

 

Thank you checking it out now. I wonder if part of the problem is my mess of codecs. I have installed so many due to the WMC not working with x86 codes that my computer is probably going to explode.

 

VirtualDubMod|x264| Guide

 

Read no further Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate is IMHO the BEST! Ive tried pretty much all of the best software out there even the ones you mentioned and ive found that Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate does the BEST DVD rips. And the best part it will rip it for you in Divx Xvid x264 and did i mention it supports the MOST codecs out of everyone


http://www.xilisoft.com/dvd-ripper-ultimate.html

 

Avidemux is pretty good! It uses the .vob files and I like that.

It has good x264 support I was able to configure it for 2 pass high quality but it was still faster than the other encoders. Lots of options with a bit more advanced stuff but easier to use than the really advanced "push & go" programs.

It did not solve my issue though folling the tutorial and making a AAC audio encoding the sound was way way way out of sync. I tried again with AC3 and I had no audio at all.

I re-ripped with anydvd to see if that was the cause and same deal. Something about this movie because it has so many audio tracks it wont work right.

This last rip with Anydvd had it que me that there are multiple track though so I will test it and see what happens. I'll try the others later. I uses Xilisoft before as a converter and didnt like it but I will give it another shot. I do prefer to rip & encode seperatly so I can rip a bunch and then encode them while I am away. I also like using stand alone programs that specialize more I feel you get more options that way. (like dvdfab how it can rip the main movie only)

Hmm looks like xilisoft may work, it had the right audio in the preview. I started encoding/ripping but I did not like the limited options. for x264 I had to use the "apple tv" profile. It did not let me set my cropping manually so I hope it picked it right. No target size option, no real customization for the options, and worst yet its only using 1 of my 4 cores...

 

Have you tried MediaCoder? it is also very easy to use (and free!)... Did you tried avidemux with shift 0 checked?

Unless you get the trial ver of Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate, I rather have it as the last resort. $55.

 

Well Xilisoft managed to get the Mummy Returns working. But it did it in a way I wouldnt like for other movies. It did not crop off the black bars on the top and bottom and thus it made a regular 4:3 movie and waisted a ton of space and wont full screen in a player than cant zoom past the black bars.

I think I will be trying Avidemux for the rest of my movies until I find a problem with it. The only thing it did not have that some of the others have it is manually has to have filters set for things like deinterlacing and no method to check that I know of if you need it or not.

 

I was just checking my RSS reader and you might want to check out AutoMen. It seems quite easy and straight forward. It also supports encoding to XviD and x264. It's free so try it out, maybe it'll produce the best Mummy encode.

 

I really like avidemux... but it seems to be random on if it works. Half my movies have audio sync issues and the other half dont.

I had to learn that it does not give the correct aspect ratio automatically.. it was 1:1 instead of 16:9 but it has a great video & audio codec system and its fast and has all the options I want/need. I just wish I could sort out the audio sync issues and I would be all set!

Even has easy cliping so I started to cut credits off the end of the movies.

Anybody have a clue whats up with the audio problems? I can play the VoB files fine in a player so I know they ripped ok but soon as I open them with avidemux I can tell audio is messed up in the preview player before I do any sort of encoding or filters.

I figured out the issue with the mummy returns. There were 9 vob files 0-8 and I was starting with #1 because thats the start of the movie. If i started there it would be out of sync, if I started with #0 it was in sync but it had like 10 minutes of dvd menu animations. I could correct that easy by cliping. Odd thing though if I start with VoB#1 I can select any of the 3 audio tracks, if I use VoB#0 it only let me choose 1 and that was the directors commentary & dvd menu music so while it was in sync it was the wrong stuff

I guess for now I will use avidemux for the ones that work and autogk for the ones that dont.

I still think the problem may lie in my system some due to all the codecs and stuff. Is there a way to wipe out every codec so I can start from scratch non destructively?

I also need to try mediacoder still I guess.

 

Aha! I think I got it.

I tried simiar with the last movie that would not work right but this worked for Shark Tale.

There are a few fields that populate WRONG in Avidemux, namely like I said before the aspect ratio always defaults to 1:1 and thats wrong.

You can use the resize option where it will shrink the video correctly to fit 1:1 and thats the best way for small files or portables. Or you can manually change the pixel aspect ratio to the proper one like I do to keep the full video size (im doing 1600mb x264 files so plenty big enough for the full resolution)

I sat there this morning for 45 min messing with the audio shift time to fix the audio and finally gave up. So encoded it with AutoGK and just tested that file to see it works ok... I opened up the details tab in my player and saw the frame rate was 23.98....

I then reopened my VOB in Avidemux and saw that like I thought it defaults every movie to 29.98fps just like how it defaults to 1:1 aspect ratio so I manually changed the frame rate and the sound was perfect!

Now I just need an easy way to know that information so I can fix it properly without encoding a test file. I swear the VOB shows 29.98 FPS when I opened it directly...

Aha more backup: Now that I know what to search for I found 2 places that confirm it:
http://avidemux.org/admWiki/index.php?title=DVD_to_AVI#NTSC_versus_FILM
and
http://bugs.avidemux.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=357

So looks like when I find that audio issue I need to manaually set frame rate to 23.976 and I will be good to go!

So this program is near perfect but it requires some good background knowledge for it to work right for you.

So far I found I need to manaually fix the aspect ratio, the frame rate, and also the last thing I have yet to track down is figuring out if I need to run a deinterlace filter. Most DVD are progressive and I have not seen any interlacing artifacts so have not bothered yet. Most of these things are auto detected in other programs but they do not seem to encode as good.

The original vob did show 29fps because of something called telecine and thats what really messed me up. I am glad I figured *most* of it out and that I can help others. I am definitely going to write a guide on how to rip dvds and avidemux will be the main program I use in the guide.

Good guide on x264 options adding it for reference: http://avidemux.org/admWiki/index.php?title=H264

and another: http://avidemux.org/admWiki/index.php?title=Presets