Help Wanted - Converting DVD to AVI

[5FDP]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys and gals!

I ended up going with Handbreak. Worked a treat however does not support AVI (MP4 and MKV only). No big deal because I was really after a conversion tool that would combine all the VOB files of a DVD.

Are you interested in converting protected DVDs? Because I've wanted to leigitimately back mine up or format shift but most tools, including a few mentioned above, will not do that.

I use DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink to backup my protected DVD's. Highly recommended and they're both free. Support for them finished about 5 years ago but they still work with most newer DVD's. There is a new type of protection though that will trick DVD Decrypter into thinking the main VOB file is massive (80GB or so) and will automatically state you don't have enough HD space to save it. To my knowledge, there is no way around this yet.

[Paulbot]

I'll give those a try when I get home.

[kurdt_the_goat]

Why are you averse to 'illegitimately' backing them up?
I was looking at my dvd's the other day, many of which are TV shows, 6 discs a season kind of thing - would take absolutely forever if i wanted to convert them all.

[bowspearer]

Are you interested in converting protected DVDs? Because I've wanted to leigitimately back mine up or format shift but most tools, including a few mentioned above, will not do that.

That's not true at all. With the right ripping tool, like Smartripper or DVD Decrypter, Avidemux works fine. For the benefit of any movie execs who might be reading this, I have only ever used it to back up my own stuff and even then for my own private viewing.

[blackie]

handbrake ftw

[jaydisc]

Handbrake can work with VLC if installed to convert protected DVDs. Also, mp4 and m4v are the future as most new and current mobile device (iPhone, PSP, and more) have hardware decoders for those formats.

[Hursticon]

Is .m4v the same as .mkv?
.mkv is awesome for HD stuff, especially with it's flexibility with video and audio streams as well as it's subtitle streams!

[SkyWarp91]

Is .m4v the same as .mkv?
.mkv is awesome for HD stuff, especially with it's flexibility with video and audio streams as well as it's subtitle streams!

no, i think m4v is more suited for apple? i dunno, don't own any apple devices.

Yeah I've actually started experimenting with this too as my old man wants to backup his precious asian karaoke DVDs Btw, what programs would you folks recommend for actually editing mkv files?

[tron07]

just convert the karaoke to digital... and load it in a media player

[jaydisc]

.m4v is MPEG4 Video. Apple was the first to use it, but it is by no means proprietary. You can happily just change it to .mp4 if it isn't being recognized by an application that should be able to recognize MPEG4.

.mkv is a common BluRay or HD video container format.

They are not interchangeable.