Ripping of Commercial DVD -- poor result

[Pdeanb]

Recently, I attempted to rip a commercial DVD, which I bought and paid for, to make a backup copy. This was more an experiment than of real practical use. I attempted to use ripit4me, dvddecrypter, and dvdshrink. Everything seemed to go well. Several .vob files were generated, as well as .ifo and .bup files. Using CDBurnerXP, I wrote these files to a DVD-R. However, the DVD would not play in either my living room DVD player or my computer.

So, I tried to make an .mpg file from the vobs using vob2mpg. This worked OK. Then I opened this file in Intervideo WinDVD Creator, and burned a DVD. When played on either the living room player or my computer, it played well except the picture was stretched horizontally quite a bit. The original disk aspect ration is 1.66:1. But the image viewed on the TV is clearly stretched.

Does anyone have suggestions as to how I should have done this operation, so as to get undistorted images?

[Kerry56]

Ripit4me, DVDDecrypter and DVDShrink are all good tools. Their output is known to produce dvd video that can be used in most any dvd player or drive. The reason your backup failed to play is unknown, but may be due to poor media or particularly picky players.

I personally use AnyDVD to break encryption since it is still being updated, but Ripit4me should work with the vast majority of dvds still. And DVDFab HD Decrypter is another choice for a decryption/ripping program that is still being updated. You can find it here: http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm

What make and model dvd burner do you have? And what disks did you use? It would help to know the mid code of those disks. Download Nero CD/DVD Speed (free) and examine the disk using the Disc Info tab. This will tell us exactly what you are using.

It may help to use +R disks and bitset them to look like DVD Rom disks. We would have to know which drive you have though, before we could determine whether or not you can use it to bitset (change booktype is another term for this).

The problems in your second attempt were almost certainly caused by WinDVD Creator using the wrong aspect ratio.

[Pdeanb]

The DVD-R has a MID code of CMC MAG, AM3 (whatever that means?)

The drive is HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4040B A113. I think that is Hitachi? It came with my IBM machine (now Lenovo).

I know the DVDs are about the cheapest I can find. They almost always work well for recording TV programs.

I know nothing about bit setting (changing booktype).

Could you explain how to change the aspect ratio in the WinDVD Creator program? I can’t find the means! I have V2 (pretty old).

[Kerry56]

Looking through user media tests in the Blank Media forum, it seems CMC MAG AM3 can be ok, but varies quite a lot. You may have a bad batch of these particular disks.

Another problem might be that these disks do not have good support in the firmware of your drive. The firmware you have now is A113 and the drive itself is made by LG. You can check with LG for newer firmware, but this drive is fairly old now, (I found a review from 2003) and newer disks will often times not work well with older drives. These CMC disks are 16x speed and probably not a good match with your drive.

It doesn’t matter if you are still buying the same brand. Brands change suppliers all the time, and most have moved on to 16x speed disks. Older 8x disks are getting harder to find. For better media, I suggest going to rima.com or supermediastore.com and buying 8x +R Taiyo Yuden. These will be higher quality and a much better match for your drive. I am assuming you are from the US. If not, let us know and other online sites will be suggested.

If you would rather buy locally, I would look for 8x Verbatim if you can still find them. And you should probably think about getting a newer drive. They are about $30 from Newegg these days. Pioneer 115 is a good IDE interface drive.

You can use a free burning program called ImgBurn and change booktype on +R disks. This will make the burned disk look like a commercially made dvd rom disk to your players, and increase compatibility. This only works for +R disks by the way. In ImgBurn look at Tools, Drive, Change Booktype. Then set it for your LG burner. ImgBurn is a very good burning program…I have gone to it entirely for all by dvd video burns. You might want to look through their forum for guides on using it. http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showforum=4

I haven’t used the WinDVD program, so I can’t advise you on it, but you don’t need it for backing up dvds. You can use RipIt4Me and compress with DVDShrink. There are guides to using Shrink here at cdfreaks, at mrbass.org and dvdshrink.info And if RipIt4Me fails, you can use DVDFab HD Decrypter. You can learn quite a lot about using these tools here at cdfreaks in the Copy DVD forum.

There are other tools available if you would like to learn about them too. DVDRebuilder is my main compression tool, and though slower than Shrink, the output can be much better.

[MysticEyes]

So, I tried to make an .mpg file from the vobs using vob2mpg. This worked OK. Then I opened this file in Intervideo WinDVD Creator, and burned a DVD. When played on either [B]the living room player or my computer, it played well [/B]

If it played well there is no reason to switch your discs to +R. As far as discs I would recommend the Taiyo Yuden TYG02s which are -R and very cheap when bought in bulk.

http://supermediastore.com/taiyo-yuden-silver-thermal-8x-dvd-r-media.html

The whole bitsetting thing is [B]not [/B]needed in your case. It’s not the discs it’s your method.

[Pdeanb]

Thank you gentlemen! I followed the procedure named “Guide: Simple DVD Backup using DVDfab HD Decrypter, DVD Shrink, and Imgburn”. The result was excellent. Since ripit4me is no longer supported, I’ll dump that. Also, I had to play around a little in DVD Shrink to get the ISO file generated, since it wasn’t too clear in the Guide as to how to do it. I’ve got a lot to learn!

May I ask another question. As far as I can tell, none of these programs permit editing of video files. By that I mean, removing commercials and adding titles, and tacking clips together. This was a nice feature of WinDVD Creator. Is there a freeware package that does this sort of thing?

Thanks again.

[beef_barley]

RipIt4Me might not be supported, but still works on most Dvds.

[_KIPPER]

[QUOTE=Pdeanb;2019611]Thank you gentlemen! I followed the procedure named “Guide: Simple DVD Backup using DVDfab HD Decrypter, DVD Shrink, and Imgburn”. The result was excellent. Since ripit4me is no longer supported, I’ll dump that. Also, I had to play around a little in DVD Shrink to get the ISO file generated, since it wasn’t too clear in the Guide as to how to do it. I’ve got a lot to learn!

May I ask another question. As far as I can tell, none of these programs permit editing of video files. By that I mean, removing commercials and adding titles, and tacking clips together. This was a nice feature of WinDVD Creator. Is there a freeware package that does this sort of thing?

Thanks again.[/QUOTE]

Freeware for removing commercials; you might try Comskip

I find VideoReDo to be a good program for removing commercials, not free however.

Another program I use is TMPGEnc DVD Author 3.

[MysticEyes]

[QUOTE=Pdeanb;2019611]Thank you gentlemen! I followed the procedure named “Guide: Simple DVD Backup using DVDfab HD Decrypter, DVD Shrink, and Imgburn”. The result was excellent. Since ripit4me is no longer supported, I’ll dump that. [B]Also, I had to play around a little in DVD Shrink to get the ISO file generated, [/B]since it wasn’t too clear in the Guide as to how to do it. I’ve got a lot to learn! [/QUOTE]
Do note with ImgBurn you don’t have to have an ISO. Using it in ‘Build’ mode you can burn DVD files/folders (VIDEO_TS).

Also in DVDShrink you should take advantage of the latest quality enhancements. Under ‘Quality Settings’, tick ‘Compress video with high quality adaptive error compensation’ there you may adjust quality enhancements. The default is ‘Sharp’. Depending on the source you may find the other settings can produce an even better end result.

[Kerry56]

There isn’t really a complete, free package for editing/cutting mpeg files. You can combine several programs like Comskip, Cuttermaran, the free version of TMPGenc and ProjectX. And there are free authoring tools like GUIforDVDAuthor or DVDStyler.

So, the free tools exist. They just aren’t coordinated under one gui.
You can learn a lot about these tools over at videohelp.com

I use VideoReDo Plus and DVDLab Pro for these tasks, but neither are free.