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DVDs to computer

Can I first say that I own all the dvds!

Can anyone help me please - I want to put all my dvds onto my hard drive so that they can be watched on my laptop when we go away.
I dont want to copy them back onto discs so if they are in a different format (preferably one that doesn't take up as much space but wont affect the quality) then thats ok.

I would appreciate any help please - I have done some searching but everything I found is very technical or goes way over my head!

Just to confirm that I own the dvds and will not be sharing/ selling them etc.

Thanks in advance:o

Comments

  • http://www.dvddecrypter.org.uk/

    Check this, very easy to use
  • googler
    googler Posts: 16,103 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    How many DVDs, and how big is the Hard Drive?

    Assuming you won't be compressing the video to fit onto the disc, you should probably bargain on around 3Gb per hour.

    4.5Gb per 90 minute movie.
    9Gb = 2 movies
    18Gb = 4 movies
    36Gb = 8 movies

    etc

    If the laptop has a DVD drive, just put the DVDs into a slipcase and take them with you, surely? Must be easier,
  • My big laptop has a dvd drive but the small one i want to take doesn't, just usb ports .
    Thanks everyone I will look at whats been suggested. What is the best format to save them as please?
  • GunJack
    GunJack Posts: 11,947 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    Freemake video converter...pointed to it from a thread on here a few weeks ago and it's pretty good. It will extract the A/V from the dvd and you end up with around 2GB per film, play it with Media Player Classic or VLC :)
    ......Gettin' There, Wherever There is......

    I have a dodgy "i" key, so ignore spelling errors due to "i" issues, ...I blame Apple :D
  • vale46_2
    vale46_2 Posts: 202 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker
    edited 18 December 2011 at 7:34PM
    DVD Shrink open disk back up to a folder done.

    http://www.afterdawn.com/software/cd_dvd/copy_dvd/dvd_shrink.cfm

    they back up as VOB Video files in VIDEO_TS folder
    they will play in VLC PLAYER

    ps if you want to make the files very small from 4.7gb to good quality 700mb avi format
    try autogk
    http://www.videohelp.com/tools/AutoGK
    select inputfile (your dvd back up folder).select output (make a name for your file)
    Select output size 1cd 700mb
    add job.start

    depending on your laptop speed each dvd might take a hour or two to convert to avi.
  • esuhl
    esuhl Posts: 9,409 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Unfortunately the DVDs are probably protected by copyright and it's against the terms of this website to offer advice on copyright infringement. They keep threatening to legalise ripping/copying/transcoding for personal use, but until then such discussion is forbidden. Plenty of info on search engines, of course!

    This forum once deleted my posts describing how to connect a PC to a network because I mentioned file sharing! Obviously the only reason to connect to a network is to share files (like the ones that make up this web page), but since what you're proposing is unlawful (unless the law's changed recently) I guess this thread will be deleted soon anyway...
  • http://www.dvddecrypter.org.uk/

    Check this, very easy to use
    That is very old and probably wont work with any recent DVD's.

    DVDFab HD Decrypter, will copy his DVD's to his hard drive and it is free to use for the basic functionality. DVD's are fairly big, from 4 to about 8GiB, so expect to use up lots of disk space. I doubt that it is worth the time to convert them.
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