DVD to HDD copying

[craigix]

I have a huge DVD collection and I'm very tired of having to go and search out my DVDs when I want to watch something (especially when it's an ep of a TV show and there are dozens of disks).


Does anyone know if there is something like the Brennan but for DVDs? I'm not finding much online.


I'd love to just feed all these in to a device which holds them on a HDD which I can easily call up and watch.


Or maybe I could build such a thing from PC parts and use some open source software?


I've a vague memory of posting this a couple of years ago, but honestly can't remember if I just thought about it, anyhow in that time my collection has grown to levels where it's getting ridiculous to have them all on DVD.


What are the cool kids doing to solve this issue these days?

 

[SNESFAN]

What are the cool kids doing to solve this issue these days?

netflix streaming, use the dvd collection for skeet shooting


but seriously... Handbrake does mp4 as well as backups and use K9Copy for all your pesky copy protected stuff

 

[Stradian]

If you want to build a dvr box, get a video input card and a sound card that has line in support. Throw some sort of Linux distro and Mythtv on to the box. Then you should be good to go.


For Ripping all the dvds in the world, VLC does a nice job install anti-CSS.


Enjoy.

 

[craigix]

Do any of these programs 'just work' where you could build a little PC in a box and when it's turned on it just boots to a menu 'copy this DVD to hdd' and 'choose a film from hdd to play'.


That would be my dream machine.

 

[Stradian]

I can not really say for today, As this has been 5 years since I did this, but yes it was almost plug and play. There were Linux drivers available for the video input card. I can really say that the support for a newer, high incard can make it or break it. Hauppauge Colossus looks like a nice card, but it has no Linux support.


This looks like a nice website for finding the video capture. http://www.videohelp.com/capturecards


EDITpps forgot the link


EDIT2: This is also a helpful resource http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Video_capture_card

 

[craigix]

There is surely a market for this sort of machine, Brennan can't make their CD copying machine fast enough and get away with just having the little 'don't copy things you don't have permission to copy' text on the box.

 

[WizardStan]

There are a number of decss programs that "just work" for a lot of old DVDs: you put in the DVD, it detects the main movie, you hit OK through a few defaults (or tweak if you're feeling like a power user) and out pops an mpeg4 encoded AVI. I can't think of what I used to use, it has literally been years.


The last DVD I tried to rip was some movie for my niece. Being 4, she is not very... friendly... with DVDs, so my sister asked me to rip some of her DVDs so the originals can be kept safe. As it turns out, a lot of companies have started doing non-standard things with their DVDs, things that should, technically, make the DVD unplayable except that DVD players are also (frequently) lax in their own adherence to the standard. Computer DVD players, however, are much more stringent on the specifications and as such fall prey to these hacks put on newer DVDs. There is one program that I'm aware of that can handle these newer DVDs: Fox DVD Ripper. Unfortunately it isn't free.


If you put the DVD into your PC and it comes up as a disk with more than 10GB on it, the DVD contains these non-standard hacks and ripping it is not going to be easy without whatever magic Fox does. If the size of the DVD is less than 10GB, then odds are it's a straight DVD and you can just use one of the free all-in-one DVD rippers (none of which I can think of at the moment, but I'll try to find one soon)

 

[WizardStan]

There is surely a market for this sort of machine, Brennan can't make their CD copying machine fast enough and get away with just having the little 'don't copy things you don't have permission to copy' text on the box.

The problem with that is such a device would absolutely violate the DMCA: it could not even be sold within the US at all, and I suspect much of Europe would be wary as well. Fox DVD gets away with it because they have no idea where you are, they just assume you're from China or something and that you know and respect how the laws apply (or don't apply) to you; easy to do with software, not so easy when you have a physical machine and a shipping address.

 

[Stradian]

I just went over your original post Craig, You do not need an input card or a dedicated sound card if you want to do this. Oops. Ignore my ramblings.

 

[Stradian]

However related, you can use a video input card and a sound card to take the unscrambled signal off of a dvd player.

 

[craigix]

There is surely a market for this sort of machine, Brennan can't make their CD copying machine fast enough and get away with just having the little 'don't copy things you don't have permission to copy' text on the box.

The problem with that is such a device would absolutely violate the DMCA: it could not even be sold within the US at all, and I suspect much of Europe would be wary as well. Fox DVD gets away with it because they have no idea where you are, they just assume you're from China or something and that you know and respect how the laws apply (or don't apply) to you; easy to do with software, not so easy when you have a physical machine and a shipping address.

My vision was that the device would come with software only for non-protected discs, but would allow you to install your own updates.


Brennan ship with software on their devices which does just copy the disc, they are a top selling UK product.


There was a little attempt to shut them down but it didn't work, they are not a cheap product either but rather a top end product sold


through respectable sources:


http://www.brennan.co.uk/


I wonder how copying CDs differs from copying DVDs in law, it's a similar thing, a library of your music, a library of your DVDs, it's all just format shifting.

 

[WizardStan]

I wonder how copying CDs differs from copying DVDs in law, it's a similar thing, a library of your music, a library of your DVDs, it's all just format shifting.

CDs have no encryption, it is "trivial" to rip the data off of one and pump it (almost) directly into a DAC to get audio. DVDs are encoded and encrypted: in order to watch a DVD first it needs to be decrypted (breaking decryption violates the DMCA which only marginally applies outside of the US but I suspect other countries may have something similar) as well as decoding the video which uses a patented algorithm.


edit: while the decryption can be worked around as you say, you would still have to pay a license fee per unit to decode even unencrypted DVDs. That's why linux distros don't come with MP2 and MP3 playback out of the box: the onus is on the user to install these questionably patent breaking codecs.

 

[Prometheus]

Basically, they can't or won't make such a thing because the companies we buy these products from assume that because we're paying them money and buying their product, we're pirates.

 

[jef]

Use the products by slysoft. Called CloneDVD and anyDVD to create safety copies. Use XBMC to play your videos. This program is free and works great!! My best solution!

 

[Miner49er]

I've been using handbrake on ubuntu for a while now - it produces very nice qualty rips and requires one or two clicks. It would be trivial to put together a PC that did Just This, I.E. boot up into a stripped down X and autostart handbrake. I have also used AcidRip (also on ubuntu).


The problem I'm having is that there is currently no way of ripping certain titles (Wall-E for instance) that uses another form of protection the name of which escapes me right now (the annoying thing is, I BOUGHT Wall-E with actual money as we love the Pixar films - I just wanted it on my server so I can access it from all rooms in the house - in the end I torrented it because I could not rip the damn DVD!)


And, yeah I recommend MythTV as the frontend. It can play DVD-ISO images, though I never bother with that and just rip to xvid or whatever. I like XBMC but the MythTV integration isn't quite there yet (but very good)

 

[Prometheus]

The problem I'm having is that there is currently no way of ripping certain titles (Wall-E for instance) that uses another form of protection the name of which escapes me right now (the annoying thing is, I BOUGHT Wall-E with actual money as we love the Pixar films - I just wanted it on my server so I can access it from all rooms in the house - in the end I torrented it because I could not rip the damn DVD!)

I *hate* when companies do this. It's usually Disney, but it was present on the DVD release of the CGI Astro Boy movie from a couple of years ago, as well.


I gather that in some cases, your disc drive can make a difference to it. I can't rip some DVDs on my Macintosh, but I can on my (sadly now dying) ThinkPad (which is my main box, and runs Xubuntu), and some discs can't be ripped as plain ISO images on either one whilst others can and others will on one but not the other, and so on. :rolleyes:


I like ripping my discs for format-shifting, myself, and to be honest, since so many companies that make products I want to buy don't allow for it, I buy far less DVDs now (usually just DVD releases of 80s TV shows, which due to their usually low budgets don't tend to have these issues), and just go without. Their loss, and I have more time to do other things.

 

[gunrock]

DVDFab (not free unfortunately) works well for me, but you have to pay for updates (which come along for defeating new copy protections).

 

[Asmo]

DVD Fab is free if you only want to use the Decrypter function, to rip DVDs to your HD - it pretty much takes over from the (still in use) DVD Decrypter for ripping purposes. Once you've got your disc ripped to VOBs you can pick and choose what format to convert them to, for XviD I use AutoGK. You may also need to reauthor the disc image with something simple like DVD Shrink, so you only keep the content you specifically want (it's not always conveniently isolated).


It could be problematic to create an automated ripping-archiving device not only because of the legal issues, but if you expect to be able to compress the disc content many discs have features that make it almost impossible for the software to determine what constitutes the 'feature' material from the 'extras', or separate episodic content. You still need some level of user interaction if you're to avoid 9Gb disc images every time!

 

[WizardStan]

The problem I'm having is that there is currently no way of ripping certain titles (Wall-E for instance) that uses another form of protection the name of which escapes me right now (the annoying thing is, I BOUGHT Wall-E with actual money as we love the Pixar films - I just wanted it on my server so I can access it from all rooms in the house - in the end I torrented it because I could not rip the damn DVD!)

I *hate* when companies do this. It's usually Disney, but it was present on the DVD release of the CGI Astro Boy movie from a couple of years ago, as well.

This is likely the non-standard "enhancements" to the disk I was talking about which make it look larger to a computer than it actually is. Really messes with the ripper as it tries to read tracks that don't actually exist.


And yeah, I'm sorry I gave some possibly bad advice earlier: it isn't Fox DVD Ripper that I've used, it's Slysoft which has a fox for a logo. Fox may also work, but I can't recommend it. Slysoft, on the other hand, can handle these weird DVDs. Unfortunately you have to pay for it.

 

[Prometheus]

The problem I'm having is that there is currently no way of ripping certain titles (Wall-E for instance) that uses another form of protection the name of which escapes me right now (the annoying thing is, I BOUGHT Wall-E with actual money as we love the Pixar films - I just wanted it on my server so I can access it from all rooms in the house - in the end I torrented it because I could not rip the damn DVD!)

I *hate* when companies do this. It's usually Disney, but it was present on the DVD release of the CGI Astro Boy movie from a couple of years ago, as well.

This is likely the non-standard "enhancements" to the disk I was talking about which make it look larger to a computer than it actually is. Really messes with the ripper as it tries to read tracks that don't actually exist.

The Disney ones probably are, but the Astro Boy one was the most bizarre thing I've ever seen...


It had many, many variations of the movie, all with different key scenes missing, and an incorrect approximate running time printed on the back of the case. Much time was wasted, I couldn't even make an ISO image because whatever I tried it came out broken and with a screwed-up picture (the size was correct, as was what it presented to the OS), and I eventually gave up. This was the DVD that convinced me to go without and just stop buying movies at all.