Putting DVD's onto my computer.
 

Does anyone know a good program to transfer my DVD collection to my computer hard drive. I have tried some free ripping programmas but I end up with a who load of chapters and its hard to keep track of everything.

What I want is a program to put the DVD onto the hard drive so I can click on the icon and watch the movie, just like putting the DVD into the hard drive.

You could always try ripping it to ISO format (creating LEGAL copies of titles you already own, of course!)

Then mount those ISOs using something like Daemon-Tools

I use Virtual CD by H+H Software GmbH

It creates virtual drives to load virtual CD/DVD images. It will create a virtual CD/DVD on disk from the source.

Virtual CD

Provided you have the VIDEO_TS folder or .ISO file on your computer (ripped from the Disk) all you need is VLC Player. Right-click on the VIDEO_TS folder or the ISO file and then choose to play with VLC Player. You'll get full DVD/menu functionality.

If you want one simple MPEG 2 file of your DVD with no menu functionality (for a tablet?), then I suggest VOB2MPG. It will join up the movie VOB files into one large MPEG.

Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't converting the DVD's to the computer eat up the hard drive capacity quick smart ? Isn't it around 8GB per DVD ? I suppose you could convert to .avi files and reduce the size, but perhaps the reduction in quality might be a step too far for some.



SHJ

DVD archiving
 

MakeMKV for the disc conversions, (VLC will play .MKV files) then, Any Video Converter to output from .mkv to .avi, .mpg, .mp4 Et al.

As SHJ says, some DVD's can be up to 8GB with all the trailers and how it was made, etc; but others are around the 4GB mark without.

I have also used Virtual CD in the past, and by and large it works well.

However, there are always some discs (and I found some games and some audio CDs) that could not be accessed in this way - this is not a fault of the virtual CD software, just a copy-protection feature of the media.

Not tried it with DVDs.

I use a program called CarryDVD. This will convert any DVD and save to disc. I originally used it to put some DVD on to a PDA. The output can be used on a computer too. Obviously the definition is reduced but as you will watch a DVD on computer from a few inches it is not noticeable.

An episode of the Prisoner, about 30 minutes, is crunched to 100Meg but could be larger or smaller.

carrydvd.com at about £17 and first rate support.

Handbrake is the best one I've found.

HandBrake

Anydvd: bypasses DVD/Blu-ray protection and runs in the background (not free) - allowing a backup to made successfully.
ImgBurn: creates images of discs to .iso (free).
Virtual CloneDrive: Virtual DVD drive that allows .iso image files to be mounted (as though a disc has been inserted into a drive) and your usual DVD player can be used for viewing (free).

The bonus of the above is the the .iso files can also be burned (for backup, obviously) at a later date. Hard drive prices mean that a lot of storage can be bought for not very much and it's cheaper than always burning discs as a backup.

DVDFab. It is the Westie's Testes.

I use Handbrake too, but only after I've extracted the DVD to disk using another program (DVDshrink). I found Handbrake was unable to handle the encryption on some disks. Then I use Handbrake's "Universal" preset on the extracted files, and it comes out around 2GB per movie. If you watch a lot of foreign films, as I do, the soundtrack & subtitle options are also very handy, though it helps to test them before doing the whole movie. The resulting file works great with VLC Player, and would also work on an iPad if I had one.