Best quality lowest size DVD rips

[Sicklyboy]

I have a bunch of movies on (fully legal, mind you ) retail DVDs that I'd like to rip to my server's hard drive for in-house streaming. If I remember correctly, DVDDecrypter can rip the main section of a DVD to an MP4, but is there anything that can do it better? What I am looking for is a way to keep the best audio and video quality that I can off of a DVD, while keeping the size as low as possible.

 

[kirlac]

Handbrake is pretty good for ripping/converting to x264 mp4/mkv format.

 

[ZAFDeltaForce]

I'd stick with DVD Decrypter, nothing gets the job done better and you'll get the best quality IMO. I'd probably get a 2TB external/ internal HDD to accommodate the large sizes of my rips.

Handbrake is good but it can get painfully slow some times.

 

[Sicklyboy]

Well I've got a 1TB in my server, and soon (within the next month hopefully) I'll be adding a 3TB internal to it because I am running out of space.

 

[FAST6191]

Most decrypting programs will rip the main title (or longest so be careful with some DVDs that have extras longer than the film) and have options to tell you not to touch it (either to remove extraneous tracks and/or to transcode it to a lower bitrate which I tend to use DVDshrink for).

I love DVD Decrypter and it is my go to tool to this day for most things however there are things it falls short on (like Sony's ARccOS) and newer tools like DVD Fab (there is a basic free version that just decrypts and does it very well) can get around those and spare me the hassles of say using DVD decrypter and fixVTS and/or messing around with PGCedit plus PSL plugins or using that small toolkit I have forgotten the name of (edit- ripit4me). Certainly if I have to teach someone how to rip DVDs they will be getting DVDFab.

Frankly though modern automated conversion tools are really good and if you add on 100 megs to the film (especially on H264 conversions) you will do about as well as a properly ripped DVD (I assume you are not stuck using antiquated ideas like having to fit things on a CD or having to use ancient standalone players). Afraid I am not sure what the better options here are as I am a tart when it comes to this sort of thing and still go manual if I convert at all.

 

[pyromaniac123]

Don't be noob. Copy dvd with dvdshrink and convert with autogk. Much better results.

 

[shamiko_]

You could try ripping the dvd's with imgburn, and store them as .iso files. then you can use VLC to play those iso files

 

[fischju]

Copy with DVDShrink then convert with whatever you like. Make sure the devices you want to stream to can handle x264 if you go that route.

 

[Sicklyboy]

lolhandbrake.

I dumped the main title vob off of a shawshank redemption dvd with dvddecrypter. all checked out, vob plays fine in xbmc, a bit over an hour long as it should be, 6 gigs and change in size.

Pop it into handbrake, convert it to h.264 + ac3 in a matroska container... jumps down to one.something gigs in size and 2 and a half hours long.

Double feature?

disregard that, apparently my computer doesn't like to properly pick up video lengths from vob files.

 

[FAST6191]

Most computers will not pick up much of use from VOB files- all the good stuff is housed in the ifo files (and technically the bup files but most ripping tools ignore them). Some ripping tools will bundle everything into one vob file which can help and others will autoload/parse the ifo files if it finds them.

You then want something like http://neuron2.net/dgmpgdec/dgmpgdec.html and indeed most freeware tools that rip DVDs well will use it somewhere along the way but this again is where I have to stop as I usually prefer to manually do things.

Others suggesting DVDShrink as a primary ripping tool- it is a wonderful tool but it stopped being updated long before the corrupt sector protection methods and workarounds for them appeared and will fall short there. If you combine it with something like DVD43 or better anydvd (actually I do not know- dvd43 was not great back when (as in system instability not great) but it has been improved since then it seems) it will work wonderfully as they handle the protection.