ripping video?

[optiplex2]

i have a dazzle and use it to record my game footage to my pc. The problem is it records directly to DVD format (vob files). I can't seem to get it to record into a avi or different format, ill have to purchase software for that and i dont wanna spend money or download it.

I have lots of footage but very little hard drive space so what im planning on doing is ripping these DVDs into avi/mpg/wmv files. How do I rip them so the size is smaller but maintains the great quality.

I have seen people do this with movies, I downloaded rocky 4 dvd rip, its only 700mb file and the quality is amazing. I have the DVD and watched both of them and I couldn't tell the difference in quality. Even though I know the dvd rip is lossy.

What software do I use to achieve this, what settings do I have to set and which format do I have to rip it to get results (avi/mpg/wmv/divx??). The file size should be smaller but maintain the same quality. A 700mb file could maintain the same quality for a 120 minute movie, my files are only 25 minutes but are over 6gb. Once again I dont care if its lossy, as long as it has the great quality and file size is small.

[peaktime]

use handbrake to re-encode your DVDs to mpeg4. it's free. to get the file size down to 700 MB and still maintain good quality you will probably have to reduce the frame size and use 128 kbps AAC audio.

[peaktime]

for even better quality re-encodes do it like this though:

Originally Posted by peaktime

imo, use handbrake to convert to x264 @ about 1800 kbps in an .mkv container using the same frame size and frame rate as the dvd. For ac3 (dolby digital), use the ac3 pass through. If dolby digital, vorbis, or aac is the audio you want, you could also use the .mp4 container. For lpcm use vorbis @ 320 kbps and if you want lossless audio, demux the dvd (with project X) to wav and then convert to flac, then add this flac to mkvmerge gui and get rid of the lossy audio. For mpeg1 layer 2 use vorbis at 320 and if you don't want double-lossy audio, demux to mp2, then add the mp2 to mkvmerge gui and get rid of the vorbis track. For DTS use vorbis at 320 with dolby pro logic II mixdown, and if you don't want double-lossy audio, demux to .dts, then add the .dts track to mkvmerge gui and get rid of the vorbis track.

this way you're still using the 720 x 480 @ 29.97 fps resolution, and can use the original quality audio, while still reducing the file size a lot. For 2 hours, depending on the audio, it would be about 1.5 GB.