Ripping DVDs - After hours of tries I have nothing that plays

Hello all. I've been trying some free DVD rippers to no avail. I'm new at this and have been searching and sifting through threads for straightforward information, but am still confused.

What I would like to do is have some movies on my hard drive so I won't need to carry extra discs when I travel. I just got my first laptop (a shiny new Dell Inspiron 6400).

I've tried FairUse ... it took about two hours to rip the DVD, but all I get is the audio in Windows Media Player.

I've just tried DVD Decrypter and after a half an hour of ripping I dont have any files that Windows recognizes.

What am I missing? Can anyone please point me in a direction I should go to?

I found these 'reccomended' rippers in the 'Best Free Software' thread.

thanks for any help.

 

Try DVDFab Decrypter.

 

DVD decrypter is useful. You can do two things:
Decrypt to make an ISO image
Decrypt and burn direct to a CD

Here is a link on how to use this program. You can navigate around and find additional information.

http://www.dvd-guides.com/content/view/23/59/

DVD Shrink is another popular program to look into.

The fact that windows doesn't recognize your files is that you those VTS directories that are not executable by Windows or media player. You can probably use something like PowerDVD to recognize it or use 'Daemon tools' to load the images into a virtual DVD drive.

 

DVD Decrytper is good, but is not being updated anymore. It is useful, but will not work on some newer DVDs. DVDFab will.

 

Do as he says!

I get tons of questions about this (I'm local tech support ) and this is what I always reccomend; DVDFab Decrypter.

You can then back up the files if needed with any burning program or play them with Media Player Classic.

 

FairUse is one of the easiest programs to use. The fact that you get audio means you did it right - all you need now are proper codecs. Codecs are kind of like video drivers. When you rip a DVD, you compress the video. You need to install a codec to tell your media players how to uncompress those files on the fly. I recommend you download and install the K-Lite codec pack. This is an automated installer that installs the most often-used codecs. Get the basic or standard version, install, restart, and try playing the file again. It should work fine.

DVD Decrypter extracts the information from the DVD, but does not compress it into a useful format. You would need to use an encoder to convert that into an avi file. FairUse Wizard does both steps for you (remember, at the beginning, it takes like 10min to do 'something'? It is copying the DVD to your hard drive, exactly what DVD Decrypter does). Once it copies the info, it gives you the option of encoding it, which you did.

So the point here is, download and install the codecs you need for playback, and keep using FairUse Wizard to rip the DVDs. The non-registered version prevents you from making files larger than 700mb, but you shouldn't need that anyway, and if anything, you can pay the 20-30 bucks for the pro version. Or you can research and find tools that are free, but slightly more complicated. If you're going to do this a lot, you might want to read up on it. Check Doom9, it is a great resource for anything DVD-related.

 

Alright...thanks. I'll give DVDFab Decrypter a try later on. When I do so, how long should it take to process a 90minute movie? When I used the FairUse program it took about two hours...the DVD Decrypter took about 25 minutes.

System:

Dell Inspiron 6400, Dual Core 1.83ghz cpu, 1gb ram, radeon x1400, 80gig 5400rpm drive with acoustic mode set to performance and most of my 'bloatware' removed.

thanks.

 

THANK YOU!!! I just installed the K-Lite and it the FairUse movie works now!

 

any word on FairUse's compatibility with MCE? I've had some crashing issues with my E1505, and 2 of them were while using FairUse. I think it may be unrelated, but now I'm suspect of everything.

 

I've been using DVDShrink to copy my movies to my hard drive and PowerDVD to play them. My comp also came with Nero but I haven't tried burning yet.

 

I use DVD Decrypter to rip the dvd to my hard drive. I then use DVD Shrink to resize and edit out all the extras that I do not want. Finally, I use Nero to burn the DVD.

Some movies I just keep on my hard drive. Those I rip with DVD Decrypter,use TMPGenc DVD Author to pull the mpg file out. This mpg file will be recognized by windows and you can do further editing/converting using any program that accepts mpg files. I use Video ReDo to edit out the final credits before converting to Divx or AVI using either AutoGK or Dr Divx.

 

Those times seem about right. DVD Decrypter simply copies the data to your hard drive (unwatchable with Media Player, and takes up lots of space), while FairUse copies and encodes/compresses it as well (creates an AVI file and takes up 700mb), which is why it takes longer.

 

Note that if you don't want compression and plan on using the movie as is (say, for watching a DVD on a computer with no optical drive), DVDDecrypter can be put into .iso mode. Do that, then mount the .iso to a virtual drive via DAEMON Tools or a similar program, and watch as you would a DVD.