DVD to MPEG/AVI..... Movies backup question

Aiadi

I have many home made movies that I've transferred over the years onto recordable DVDs using various DVD recorders and DVD formats. What I am trying to do now is to copy these DVDs into my hard drive for back up but finding it extremely difficult to get the various formats into one that I can save onto the HD (like .iso) as different DVD are giving me different errors on ripping.

My second thought is to try and convert and then save them as MPEG or AVI if this wouldn't cause any quality loss (something I am uncertain of) but don't know the best utility to do this with and would greatly appreciate any help from the DVD backup geeks in here.

Alltheloginsaretakenappar

Aiadi wrote:

different DVD are giving me different errors on ripping.

If you are getting errors on ripping then the problem is with the original burn or file, converting won't fix this I'm afraid.

Aiadi wrote:

My second thought is to try and convert and then save them as MPEG or AVI if this wouldn't cause any quality loss

This depends on what you convert from/to. If you convert for example from a large dvd (vob or mpeg) to a smaller avi file then you will lose something as it's smaller, but these days the codecs and software are very good and many would argue that dvd->avi any loss isn't really noticeable unless shown on large screen. If you convert up for example from a wmv file to dvd, it's not really worth it as you'll get larger files without any improvement in quality.

To be honest, I wouldn't bother converting them at all, I'd just back them up as they are. Especially if you're not too knowledable just yet, it's a good learning exercise but you may find at a later date you wish you done some things differently. I always keep the originals for home movies as well as whatever edited version I've made, and the more I've learned by authoring dvds etc the more I see where I've gone wrong in the past whilst learning.

Aiadi

Thanks for the rapid reply. The original DVDs are Ok as they play fine on my PC using Power DVD so can't be corrupt presumably. I've tried to just copy the DVD folders (VIDEO_TS & VIDEO_RM) onto the HD but I get an error that the files can not be moved from the source disc or something like that.

Quality is really paramount to me as original videos were made by old VHS and 8mm cameras and quality was poor to start of with so can't afford further deterioration.

Alltheloginsaretakenappar

Try an extraction program to "rip" the dvd to the hard drive. I always use dvddecrypter, it was freeware but can be hard to get hold of these days. Hopefully someone can suggest a similar program for you. With dvddcrypter it checks for errors as it extracts the files. So even when a dvd has played without problems it may still have some "sector errors" which make it very hard to just copy the files over, but dvddecrypter can skip the sectors with errors to give the remainder of the video file

If you haven't already heard of http://www.videohelp.com it is a very useful resource for everything dvd-related, with lots of how to guides

Aiadi

Yep, already tried DVD decrypter but it doesn't seem to be able to handle VIDEO_TS. also tried ImgTool with no succes and that is why I was wondering about actually going to MPEG or AVI.

Alltheloginsaretakenappar

Dvddecrypter should handle video_ts. In what way can't it handle it? Did it give any error message or anything like that? The video_ts folder is part of the dvd structure, so if it was burned correctly as a video dvd (and not just as a collection of files and folders) then it should be able to extract the whole dvd either to an iso file or to a video_ts containing the vobs etc, depending on the settings. There's a great guide here including how to get the settings correct

Inside the video_ts as I said there are vob files, these are actually mpeg2, vob is a container. So there would be no need to convert to mpeg (vob files can actually just be renamed to .mpg). You could convert to avi (which is mpeg4) but I see no reason to do this as the problem seems to be the extraction. If you can't extract or copy the files you won't be able to convert them, as conversion programs would still need to extract first and many all-in-one programs aren't as effective as programs just for extracting/ripping like dvddecrypter anyway. Do you remember how you burned the discs in the first place? Was it part of the authoring program or did you burn them afterwards and by what method?