Copy DVD Movie to portable Hard Drive

vicx

I have a few movies on DVD which I would like to copy back to my laptop and/or put straight on to my portable hard drive.

When I have inserted the DVD disc, it is showing 'VIDEO_TS' files in folders. If I copy these folders over to my laptop or portable hard drive.. how do I re-create the files into one movie file?

I have downloaded a program which allows me to copy the DVD to hard drive but it is just copying these 'VIDEO_TS' files over so I think I am wasting my time with that program.

What do I need to do in order to re-create these files into one movie file and then copy it to my portable hard drive?

Thanks in advance for any help

asbokid

I've never tried it, but if they are standard DVD videos you can concatenate the .TS files using a copy command from a DOS shell.

copy /b *.ts one_big_video_file.ts

If you have patience then a tool like avidemux will do a better job by concatenating and transcoding the files from MPEG2 to MPEG4 format.

Encoded in MPEG4 format, the videos will take up far less drive space and with little to no loss of picture quality. However, video transcoding can be a time-consuming CPU-intensive process. Perhaps taking 20 minutes per DVD on a modern PC.

http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/

toastydave

your dvds have been saved in mpeg2 format

once you have a folder with video ts inside that folder is the movie, split into 1 gb chunks with a playlist file

The Video_ts.ifo is the play list file

Click on video_ts.ifo and if you have a dvd player installed you movie should start.

As Asbokid says, you can turn the *.vob files into one big mpeg2 file but i think the code is

copy /b *.vob new_filename.mpg

phxweb

The VIDEO_TS folder contains all of the files you need. The program is working perfectly. There is no such thing as one movie file.

Inside the folder will be files called VTS_ .... these are the video files If you have one which is called Video_TS.IFO give it a double click and it should run the dvd menu.

The other files are all the different chapters of the DVD

phxweb

asbokid wrote: »

I've never tried it, but if they are standard DVD videos you can concatenate the .TS files using a copy command from a DOS shell.

copy /b *.ts one_big_video_file.ts

If you have patience then a tool like avidemux will do a better job by concatenating and transcoding the files from MPEG2 to MPEG4 format.

Encoded in MPEG4 format, the videos will take up far less drive space and with little to no loss of picture quality. However, video transcoding can be a time-consuming CPU-intensive process. Perhaps taking 20 minutes per DVD on a modern PC.

http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/

If you do this then the files wont work, The files are correctly formatted as they are.

vicx

To convert the video_ts files back to AVI on this program I have downloaded would take too much time. I have started to convert one and it's going to take around 2 hours! Is there a quicker way to convert the files back to AVI?

phxweb

vicx wrote: »

To convert the video_ts files back to AVI on this program I have downloaded would take too much time. I have started to convert one and it's going to take around 2 hours! Is there a quicker way to convert the files back to AVI?

READ MY PREVIOUS POST . YOU DO NOT NEED TO CONVERT THEM

The files are in the dvd format. Open them in your DVD player . The files on the DVD are not in AVI format they are in VOB format. VOB is the DVD file format. If your computer plays them off the DVD then it will play them from the external HDD

vicx

phxweb wrote: »

READ MY PREVIOUS POST . YOU DO NOT NEED TO CONVERT THEM

The files are in the dvd format. Open them in your DVD player . The files on the DVD are not in AVI format they are in VOB format. VOB is the DVD file format. If your computer plays them off the DVD then it will play them from the external HDD

No need to shout :rotfl:

I was typing a reply as you posted then the phone rang just before I went to post my previous post. I did see the replies and read them as soon as I posted though.

I will copy these files from one DVD to my portable hard drive and then see if they will play when my hard drive is plugged into the usb port of my TV.

It would be much easier if they were all in one AVI file (as they were before burning to DVD) rather then clicking through folders to get to the Video_TS.IFO file.

eyeinthesky

Best to use a dvd ripper, loads of progs out there to do this. Most new dvd players will handle avi files, and these will be much smaller than your video_ts folders. Nero will do this for you, but not if they are protected.

vicx

The DVD's aren't protected. I do have Nero and also a DVD ripper.

The movie that is converting now (from video_ts to avi) is 2.2gb and taking 2 hours, I'm sure it wasn't that big of a file before it was burned to DVD.

asbokid

phxweb wrote: »

There is no such thing as one movie file... If you do this then the files wont work, The files are correctly formatted as they are.

I'm not sure what you mean. The OP wants to convert all of the video chapter files on a DVD into one big file.

Concatenating those DVD-video chapter files using copy, the in-built DOS shell command, apparently works fine:

From http://www.videoredo.net/msgBoard/showthread.php?t=5732 :

Using the Windows copy command:

Because the VOBs are simply split files created from a previously contiguous larger file, you can reconstruct the larger file using the Windows copy command. To do this:

a) Open a cmd window using the Windows run command.
b) cd to the folder containing your VOB files.
c) At the command line, enter a command similar to: copy /b vob1.vob + vob2.vob + vob3.vob outputFile.mpg

This will concatenate multiple VOB files into one output file.

Note: Don't forget the /b switch.