BEST DVD RIPPING & COPYING SOFTWARE? and few other questions

[dave24]

Hi guys

Now that i have sussed out which are the best blank dvd disks around for my new sony 510a writer, I have a few further questions to expand my knowledge into the dvd world!

- firstly which software is the most easiest and quickest for ripping dvd movies and which software would you recommend for copying. (i currently use nero and find it pretty good) but i am not sure which is the best software around for ripping.

secondly - i have a few dvd's with video songs and the dvd's are over 4.7 in size. I want to reduce the size to 4.7 so i can ripp it just in one blank dvd. Whats the best way to do that? obvoiusly i would have to deselect some of the songs in order reduce.

finally are there any members who own a Sony dvp ns305 series dvd player like myself, and which blank dvds would they recommend to be played on this player -whichout any problems? and yes it is multiregionable.

thanks in advance

Dave

[ddlooping]

Hello dave24

This is the answer I gave to a similar question in another forum:

Hello ****.

First let me say there is no simple answers to your questions.

As far as the softwares you should use, I'd say it depends a lot on what you want to accomplish with them.

If you want to backup DVDs, do you want a copy identical to the original?
Are you willing to accept some loss of quality (keep in mind that depending on the equipment you use to view your DVDs you might not even see it)?
Also, what you might perceive as an acceptable loss in quality now might become unacceptable if and when you upgrade your viewing equipment.

Some would recommend simple so called "One-button" solutions, which usually use a compression method, where the user doesn't have much to do and the process of backing up is fairly easy and quick. Ex: DVD Shrink (free), DVD2One, Pinnacle Instant Copy (with supposedly better quality, but lengthier process and some unexpected results).
Others would rather use a more involved solution like using several programs to re-encode the DVD at a lower bitrate. ie. DVD Decrypter, DVD2AVI, CCE, ifoEdit.....
This is supposed to give much better results, but at the expense of time (several hours), and it can be quite hard for newbies too.
The third group contains people that will use any of the above mentionned softwares depending on the circumstances.
Can the DVD be backed up without compression/re-encoding? (DVD5s)?
Would removing extras and/or audio/subtitles tracks enable the DVD to be backed up without compression/re-encoding?
Is the compression required high? >10%, >20%...?
etc etc....

What I'd suggest is for you to try as many method of backing up as you can and judge on the results. There are plenty of guides available to help you.

Now to the subject of media. I'm affraid I don't have a str8 answer on this one either.

How many backups do you intend to do on average?
How much money are you willing to spend on media?
Would you be willing for the burn to take 50 minutes or more, if it meant less chances of making coasters?
etc etc ...
I would again suggest you try different brands, at different burning speeds and see what work best for you.

As an end-note: just browse as many message boards as you can, read as many posts as you can. Quite a lot of reviews / personal views about softwares and media have been posted.

I thought it was close enough to maybe be of use to you.
One question for you though: do you want the easiest and quickest software, or the best one?

[ninehead]

My question is: how to combine two small movies into one disc?

I ripped one 5GB movie into my hard disk, then I used ifoedit to split the movie into two discs. However, the second disc only have about 500MB data. Can I use some software to add another movie (less then 4GB) to my second disc? How can I do that? (I don't want to lose my subtitle so I don't want to use DVD authorizing software)

[ddlooping]

ninehead, unless you've already done so, I'd suggest you start a new thread for your question.
You'll have more chance to get an answer as this one is hardly related to your query.
Personally I'm not knowledgeable enough to help you, sorry.

[Wizard_23]

Well Dave, as others have said, there a few different ways of backing up a dvd-9 to a dvd-5. I use about three or so ways to accomplish this task. When there were no tools such as these, I was using ifoedit to backup dual layer dvd's to two discs. It kind of got annoying after a while of doing that. So many of my early backups are on two discs. So what you can do is, you can use dvd2one which is not freeware. I'm not sure if you're concerned about that. After doing maybe about 10 or so movies with dvd2one, I've found that the quality is quite good. I recently tried dvdshrink for the first time last night and I had a minor problem with a menu pointer for some reason. In light of that small problem, I also thought that the quality was good as well. If you're not in a hurry to backup discs, you can use instant copy, but first you have to rip the vobs, bups, ifos, etc to your hard drive. If you want me to explain further, you can always e mail me and I can give you some specifics.