I finally decided to digitize my dvd collection. Two things prompted this, 1 the rack is running out of room (see below) and 2 they are all at my parents house.
This prompted research as how to break the annoying dvd decryption and obtain personal use backups of dvd’s I actually legally purchased (as opposed to many of my other collections). Googling quickly showed a few programs that work and I find useful. The first being the zombie program DVD Shrink.
While DVD Shrink is no longer being worked on, you can still find it floating around the net. The most recent version is 3.2.0.15, note it is freeware so avoid the sites that charge for it. Or just download it here.
The next piece of software used is called Handbrake, which takes dvd formatted data and converts it to normal video files such as mp4, avi or ogm. It is open source and therefore free. The thing I am liking most about it is the ability to queue up multiple conversions and let it run overnight, which is important as it takes around 1.5 hours on my gaming machine per movie.
The two afore mentioned pieces of software work most of the time but since DVD Shrink is a few years old it can’t break some of the newest encryption methods (damn you Disney). This is annoying because Wall-E is an awesome movie. So to get around this I found AnyDVD HD. It tears out the encryption on all dvd’s, the HD version even works on blue-ray and HD discs which is awesome. The only not awesome part is the price, 79 euros = $104 real dollars. There is no way I was dropping that kind of money on software for a single week long ripping party, luckily they have a 3 week trial version. The only downside is it forgets your settings when it shuts down, which only matters if you turn off your computer (I don’t).
With my newly assembled arsenel of software tools I began tearing into the rack of disc’s like a rabit badger, or at least a wounded chipmunk. Here is my method.
DVD Shrink makes fine backups but as they are huge (4+ gigs each, some over 8 ) I decided to convert them to the more portable and popular avi format. Max quality avi’s of these work out to be around 1.6 gigs tops (Lord of the Rings), pretty close to 1.4 gigs on average though. If space is an issue then they can be shrunk later on. Let’s start making the MPAA cry.
First you insert the dvd in your machine and launch DVD Shrink. Then choose open disk. If you have it AnyDVD should be launched first as it intercepts dvds before you open them in DVD Shrink. Closing or modifying AnyDVD settings while ripping with DVD Shrink causes it to lose connection to the disk and you have to start over. When the fox icon is pink it is thinking, when it is red it is ready.
Wait while it analyzes the movie, this takes about 2 minutes. Usually mine start off at a pretty slow speed, like 2,000 kbps then work up to 9,000 max. The encoding phase does this as well.
If you want to back up the entire disk, menus extras etc, then just choose backup after the dvd is analyzed and skip the next step. If like me you are only interested in the feature film go to re-author and drag the title from the “Main Movie” area over to the empty area on the left. Now when you choose backup it will only save that one, cutting down on important disk space. I have a 1 terabyte drive as the buffer for this but 7 gigs adds up pretty quickly.
Once you have the tracks to rip, let ‘er rip. It takes anywhere from 7 minutes to an hour, depending on how much there is to work with and if you chose any other fancier options. Generally get less than 10 minutes though. Again it starts off slow and works up to a decent speed.
This is the message you are looking for, the a-ok to move on. Congratulations, you are now out a large chunk of disk space. If you are ripping multiple disks at once make you to switch back to “Full Disc” mode as otherwise it pops up an annoying message and beeps at you. Also you can’t open a new disc until you change to full disc mode. Note the discrepency in times between the previous picture and this one.
Next we can start converting the big honking mess of dot vob files into a usable format. Start up Handbrake and choose Source in the upper left corner, then select the DVD / VIDEO_TS Folder. Find the folder you want to convert on your hard drive and select it. Sometimes you have to choose the VIDEO_TS folder itself, the immediate parent one won’t work.
Then you choose the file name, type and all the other settings I don’t mess with to create the actual file you wanted in the first place. Normal has worked in all cases, I just change the file type. Make sure to look at the title drop down and check that the file length is appropriate (seen here), some of them have multiple ones to screw you up. Annoying to waste 2 hours to find out you chose the wrong chapter to burn.
Choose where you want to save the file and what to call it. Also the file type, I went with avi as it is widely supported and ogm didn’t work on my machine (will figure that one out later).
Go over all the settings to make sure it looks good then start it going. The start button makes it go right now, alternatively you can hit the “Add to Queue” and make a big list of them for your computer to work on while you sleep. It is very cpu intensive so best to let it run alone on your machine if at all possible. When you hit Start you get a friendly CMD.exe window that has an eta on it. Don’t close this window. It works in two stages, the first is encoding which is the fast phase.
Then there more encoding which eventually writes it to disk. Takes over an hour for my machine per dvd so settle in. This next picture is just to show what the second phase looks like.
The next to final stage is to verify the rip actually worked. Choose your favorite media program (I highly recommend VLC) and load the file, make sure the sound is sync’d right and other such things. Note the video did work, the screenshot capture method didn’t.
When you know the video ripped correctly go back and delete the raw dvd folder as it is just a waste of space. Now you too in around 2 hours can make digital copies of stuff you already owned. Sad fact of the day: with a fast internet connection it is quicker to pirate the movies than convert the ones you own. But piracy is wrong, and backing up dvds is mostly legal.
One final tip, you can run as many copies of DVD Shrink as you have dvd drives. I crank on two at a time, tried to put in a third pulled from an old computer but my motherboard didn’t have a second ide cable.
Have fun backing up you movies!
Recent Comments