newbie question on ripping my DVD onto a CD

[bambam]

Hi

I know there are a lot of web sites that talk about ripping, but i have not been able to find an answer for what i am seeking. I'd appreciate any help from some "experts"

I am trying to backup my Lawrence of Arabia and i have ripped the VOB files. There are 7 VOBs and one IFO file. Is there any program that processes ALL the VOBs into one large AVI file...i have found that dvd2avi processes the vobs one at a time...and that means i will have to append 7 VOBS/AVIs into one when the processing is complete...it would be way cooler and streamlined if ther was a program that could do all 7 VOBS in a row...not one at a time...i tried Flaskmpeg...but unless i was doing something wrong (which is highly likely) it also seem to process and produce avi's one at a time...so, can it be done...

thanks for any help...

[Indiana]

Do a search for DVDx. It will rip the whole movie directly from the DVD to an avi or mpeg with a codec of your choice.

[Sciascia]

It's been quite a while since I played with this. Depending on what avi format you want there are several options. First thing that you should do is go to Doom9 and read up and DL all the freeware apps that you will need to do this.

At a minimum you will need the following:

• DVD2AVI
• Vfapi converter
• Vfpai reader and codec
• Virtual dub
• appropriate codec (I suggest DivX)

Open the vobs in DVD2avi, you can do all of them at once, it will automatically append them if they are all in the same directory. Create a project and save it. Open Vfapi converter and create a pseudo AVI from the project that you saved. Open the avi file in Virtual dub and encode it to whatever codecs you want for audio and video. Remember to select full stream processing for both. DO NOT encode the entire movie first time around, select some in/out points in Virtual dub and do some testing. Nothing sucks more than waiting for 12 hours to find out that you left something wrong or just plain looks bad.

This is very simplifed and not a really good guide, in order to do a really good job you need to read the very thorough guides at Doom9. I would suggest using film rate and resizing the video and using mp3 audio to compress it to fit on a single CD and still be viewable. Also, crop the black borders, that is bandwidth that is wasted that could be used for video (it makes a huge difference). You may want to use Nandub as well, it does multiple passes with high and low rate DivX (I assume that this would be the best codec for the job here) and looks really great.

This is not going to be a one button solution if you want it to look any good at all, but with some trial and error, it can look amazing. There are also other options, but this one looks the best for a 1:1 DVD to CD copy. Taks some time to learn about the programs here, they are invaluable video tools and can do some amazing stuff, most notably virtual dub. The authors were kind enough to make them available for free and they are very powerful. Right now you may be looking just to back up a DVD, but once you find out how to use these tools there is a lot more that you can do.

[bambam]

thanks...actually it would be cool if v-dub could parse the IFO (and the associated VOBs) like flaskmpeg...

[Tjalfe]

my buddy who does alot of backups ( I let him worry about the legality of doing such) recommends this program
there is a trial version availalble

http://www.dvdxcopy.net/?a=4603