DVD's to HDD - Best Method

[u751920]

Hi All,
I shall shortly be on a contract with work that will take me away from home for quite sometime. I don't want to take my dvd's with me, also my laptop does not have a cd drive. I was just wondering what the best way to get my dvd's onto a portable hard drive would be? Anybody have any useful suggestions?
Thanks

[ThinkRob]

Lossless backup? dvdbackup

Lossy (i.e. re-encoded)? Handbrake

[u751920]

Sorry I'm not that up to date with the language of back ups. What will provide me the best picture quality to play on my laptop? Also is handbrake free? And on a related note will WMC recognise and play the movies?
Thanks

[A31]

It's a bit of a grey area and I hope it can be discussed on this forum (on other forums I am a member of, the discussion of ripping DVDs is not permitted), but I'm going to recommend you take a look at DVD Decrypter. It rips DVDs to VOB files, which are great quality, but can only be played by a number of players (PowerDVD seems to be able to play them). You could however always re-encode the VOB files to another format such as MP4.

[ThinkRob]

I'm assuming that the DVDs he's looking to backup are either not copy-protected or (if they are) may legally be backed up for personal use in his legal jurisdiction.

[rkawakami]

I have found that ripping to an .ISO is easier from the standpoint of having to deal with a single file, rather than a bunch of files that are all named the same no matter what the source disk was. Also, by using MagicDisc, you can mount the .ISO file as a virtual drive and it is playable just as if you had the DVD drive installed in your system.

[u751920]

When I burned my music collection to itunes I don't remember there being so many issues, this was nearly 10 odd years ago and I have not bought any music for over 5 years, but still how complicated should it be.
The ISO route seems the best for my situation - I used that for my language DVD with Daemon tools, I did that about 5 years ago so I assume the technology has moved on.
So it seems that I need an up to date program that can create ISO images, and then I can play them on my Daemon tools. What are the draw backs of using ISO files? Also to create ISO images of Blu Ray discs do I need a Blu Ray Player?
Regards

[craigmontHunter]

The biggest drawback of iso files is that they are a disk image, meaning they are uncompressed, and while they offer the best video quality, they are substantially larger files (anywhere from 4 to 8gb). I have had good luck using a program called "Freemake video converter" to rip DVDs to smaller files, while maintaining a decent quality level, and should the disks be copy protected (this is only applicable if you are allowed to make backups in your jurisdiction ) it will disable the copy protection. It also uses cuda and DXVA acceleration if available on your system - I don't know how the quality compares, but it helps with the speed of the conversion.

For blueray, you need a blueray player, and you will probably want to compress those as they are ~50gb per disk image.

[u751920]

As an update:
First the legal bit - here in the UK under fair usage policy I am able to upload my DVD's to my hard drive for my personal use. It is unlikely to ever be challenged in a UK court as any litigation is likely to fail thus setting a precedence. Also EU law is much more in favour of the consumer.

I used dvdfab to get the dvd to my hard drive and then played the file in Windows Media Center. I chose the whole disc option. The disc was Black Adder which is a television series from the 80's. It thus played as the dvd would with all options. To be honest I was not that impressed with the quality not sure if it's because it's a series from the 80's or the poor screen on my X301 (although youtube plays a lot clearer). I will in the coming days try the same with a more recent film.

Thanks All

[rkawakami]

With DVDFab there's an option to compress the source material. I believe it's located in a dropdown box labelled Quality near the bottom of the main menu. If it's showing DVD9->DVD5, then that means if the original disk is dual layer (i.e., 9GB of data), then it will be compressed to a little bit less than 5GB. This could explain the loss of quality. Then again, the early '80s (if we're talking Series I) video may be the problem .

[ThinkRob]

Eh, if I were willing to re-encode, I'd go with Handbrake and some sane x264 settings. You can get a 25-minute TV episode down to 200-300 MB pretty easily without much of a visible change in quality.

[u751920]

As a further update:
I used DVDfab to copy just the main movie of Bourne Identity to my hard drive, this time I was offered the choice of dvd9 or dvd5 I went with dvd9 for 100% quality. The results are impressive (as expected I guess if it's taking 5gb). I then out of interest plugged into my main tv (40") to see the output quality - again it's very good.
Now initially I didn't mind the size ie, 5gb per movie considering how cheap storage is, however my wife pointed out that I should do this for my childrens DVD's as they have ruined a few with play. This means I will have to look into compression - so i'll look at Handbrake now and other compression utilities.
Overall I'm impressed with the way Windows Media Center displays and handles the movies. So I'm now looking at an Acer Aspire Revo to use as a HTPC. Does anybody know if I can use my PS3 as a device to upload and play these files - and does it provide an elegant UI?

Thanks all for the help

[BillMorrow]

just FYI this subject IS allowed..