DVD to AVI software.

MAC_Addy

I'm looking at converting most of my movies over to .AVI's - this is definitely not for people to download, just my pure laziness. The reason being is that I just received my NAS and I'd like to move over a bunch of my movies to it.

Does anyone have any software that they can recommend for me? And the reason to AVI is that xbox will only play them.

Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

jibbajabba

Xilisoft - commercial but good and one click solution
Handbrake - free, good too
Pavtube - another good one

YFZblu

jibbajabba wrote: »

Xilisoft - commercial but good and one click solution
Handbrake - free, good too
Pavtube - another good one

Yep - Handbrake is my solution.

jenbot

I have never used Handbrake, so maybe it is better than my suggestion. I sometimes use SUPER for stuff like this-- its freeware. It doesn't remove the copyright restrictions. For that I use anyDVD

MAC_Addy

Most excellent - I just downloaded handbrake, going to give that a try.

I've used SUPER before and completely forgot about it.

DevilWAH

Doom9.net - The Definitive DVD Backup Resource

for all you DVD backing up needs its a really good site for knowledge around re encoding videos.

A really easy one is WinDVD if you can find a copy, been a while since I played with video editing though.

Qord

Another vote for handbrake here. I use it to exactly what you're trying to do: convert to avi to play on another device. Specifically a roku so I can stream it to my tv.

jibbajabba

The advantage is with Handbrake, you can get profiles all over the net. In early days for examples when I wanted to convert movies for the PS3 - rather than trying yourself you could just download the profile from someone who did the hard work for you (as in, finding the best settings).

DigitalZeroOne

Just adding to the handbrake suggestion, it will also do batch encoding. I will setup 4-5 movies, add them to the queue to encode, start the process, go to work, and I when I get home, they are all finished.

Everyone

I've been using DVDFab because it also does Blu-Ray, and I found it easier to use than Handbrake. We don't have a lot of Blu-Rays yet, and really not even that many DVDs, but the kids tend to get into them and scratch them up. A few of their movies have become unwatchable as a result. I've been ripping everything into .mkv format (.avi is an option) because it allows you to pull the subtitles into a separate file and turn them on/off while watching. My oldest son's mother is deaf, and whenever she visits and wants to watch something with him, we need to have subtitles on.

Blu-Ray's ripped to .mkv are about ~6-9GB depending on length of the movie. I always keep the source audio (DTS 5.1 or 7.1 depending on the movie). It takes about 30 minutes to rip a Blu-Ray.

I need to get a new hard drive, running out of room on the one I've been ripping all these discs to.

MAC_Addy

Excellent, thanks Everyone.

I'm not deaf, but I've always watched movies with subtitles on since I was a kid. It's just 2nd nature to just turn it on now. I don't know if Handbrake can actually do that or not.

I'll check out that program and see how good it is. Also, what size does it usually rip a normal movie at? I counted last night and we have 160 movies that I'll need to convert. So, I'm hoping it'll be under 1GB per movie.

Everyone

MAC_Addy wrote: »

Excellent, thanks Everyone.

I'm not deaf, but I've always watched movies with subtitles on since I was a kid. It's just 2nd nature to just turn it on now. I don't know if Handbrake can actually do that or not.

I'll check out that program and see how good it is. Also, what size does it usually rip a normal movie at? I counted last night and we have 160 movies that I'll need to convert. So, I'm hoping it'll be under 1GB per movie.

Depends on what settings you use. I guess I haven't done a DVD yet, only been doing the Blu-Rays. The 1st couple of Blu-Rays I did ended up being like 25GB, which is about the size of your average Blu-Ray movie with 0 compression. Too big to stream over wireless. I messed around with different settings and found that getting them in the 6 to 9 GB seemed to be the sweet spot. Good quality, but compressed small enough to stream without issue. Since DVD movies are usually dual layer discs (9GB), if you only rip the main title (not any of the extras), and use some compression... I don't see why they wouldn't easily be under 1 GB. If you had a 2 TB HD, you could rip all 160 of your DVD's to iso, which would preserve them completely, and still have plenty of room left over. I did that with the only DVD that I've ripped so far, because my WD Live Plus boxes will play ISO files. Pretty nice to have the menus and everything just like you were watching the actual DVD in the player.

MAC_Addy

Everyone wrote: »

If you had a 2 TB HD, you could rip all 160 of your DVD's to iso, which would preserve them completely, and still have plenty of room left over.

That's what I originally wanted to do, but that'll defeat the purpose of what I'm trying to do - have a centralized box for all my movies to be accessible from either the iMac, xbox, spare bedroom TV and bedroom TV. With ISO's I'd have to manually go in and mount the image. That'll work for the Mac/PC, but won't work for the xbox. We use the xbox quite a bit for watching movies and such. I suppose, once 2TB's come down I'll eventually do this, but as of right now all I have is 2x 500GB and 2x 250GB for my NAS.

usagent27

AnyDVD and CloneDVD. To me they seem to rip faster than handbrake. i did this same project with my movies. currently have 1131 movies and 74 tv shows. I use XBMC on a Zotac Nano...but could use Xbox if i needed to.

It's all stored on 3 2tb drives in a self contained box contected to my pc via Esata. then i just share the folders and i have a all my media on all my devices

Asif Dasl

I use Freemake - it has a very nice interface and it's multi-function - works with Audio etc.. If you have an iPad/iPhone then you will need to put them in to MP4's but like Everyone has said if you want the subtitles then make MKV's - dunno if you can convert MKV's to MP4's with Freemake - if you can, then I would do MKVs first..

tpatt100

I use Handbrake but I had to buy a copy protection program (forgot the name it has a Fox for an icon) because some of my son's DVDs have copy protection. It is all I use it for though is to rip Disney and junk to put on the PS3. For some reason Chuck & Friends and Thomas the Train is a high value target for pirating .....