DVD backup and transcoding

Backing up DVDs guards you against lost and damaged discs. This tutorial focuses on playing the backup from a computer (or a laptop of course; optionally connected to a TV). By using software to transcode the DVD, we can strip out any unnecessary audio, bonus footage, menus and adverts as well as shrink the file size considerably by very slightly reducing the audio and video quality making it much more practical to store hundreds of DVDs on a hard drive.

Requirements
Ripping with dvdbackup
DVD::Rip
HandBrake
Thoggen
Results
Best settings

Requirements

I have tested every [1] free video transcoder available. The requirements the transcoder must meet to suite my needs are as follows:

• read input from a DVD structured folder on a hard drive [2]
• audio and video synchronisation must be perfect

It does not need to rip the DVD, as I have found a very easy and reliable way to do this (see dvdbackup below).

After testing, I narrowed the software down to DVD::Rip, HandBrake and Thoggen. Other software either failed to meet the above requirements, or did not perform as well as my chosen three. I did not test their ripping capabilities, I was only using them to transcode a DVD.

[1] everything I managed to find within a number of months during 2010

[2] a lot of video transcoders read only one file; a DVD structure usually contains multiple files and titles. I plan to rip the DVD to a hard drive before transcoding, which is best practice

Ripping DVDs

Note that most transcoders recommend ripping the DVD to your hard drive first to ensure any copy protection has been removed, for better performance during transcoding and not to put stress on your DVD disc and optical drive.

For Linux users, I recommend a program dvdbackup dvdbackup.sourceforge.net which skips dummy sectors (copy protection). At the end of a rip, it sometimes says "Please send bug report - no VTS_TMAPT ??" but it doesn't cause a problem [3]. It may say it's skipping some blocks, which is fine as these are dummy blocks (copy protection); a file manager would throw an input/output error here and stop copying.

Using dvdbackup is as simple as running "dvdbackup -M". libdvdcss is required to rip some DVDs. Linux-based operating systems usually have the libdvdcss package in software repositories (debian-multimedia, Livna) otherwise visit the libdvdcss website videolan.org/developers/libdvdcss.html. In Ubuntu, run "sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh" to install it.

Make a note of how big the contents of the DVD are; sometimes a DVD may show up as being much larger than it actually is. Make sure you have enough space, rip it and feed it to the transcoder. Sometimes I have found the finished file does not include the end of the DVD; try DVDFab for Windows.

For Windows users, DVDFab rips DVDs to the hard drive for free (other tasks such as burning the rip to a blank DVD are not free). DVDFab is frequently updated and is more reliable than dvdbackup; dvdbackup has been unable to backup a few of my DVDs, but is the best thing for Linux-based operating systems. Note that DVDFab will automatically enter a trial period upon using the free element of the software; just ignore this, after 30 days the trail will expire and you will still have access to the free element.

Once the ripper has done its' work, you can feed the clean data to your video transcoder. You'll most likely be copying 4.7GB to 9.4GB so this could take some time depending on the speed of your computer; 25 to 30 minutes on a fairly good computer.

[3] See this post (not related to dvdbackup but is the same situation) which states "that's a spurious message being generated by one of the libraries we use. The condition it's complaining about isn't even an error. Just an optional field that is missing from the dvd ifo."

DVD::Rip

Out of the software I tried, DVD::Rip exit1.org/dvdrip is the most complicated, but it does not mean it's hard to use if you understand the process of ripping, transcoding and some of the settings. Its' complexity is a positive if you want to adjust some specific settings, but it may not be appealing to new users.

HandBrake

HandBrake is available for Linux, Mac OS and Windows. It is easy to use yet provides many configuration settings. It provides a number of preset configurations for different purposes; these presets mean you don't have to fiddle with the settings for different devices. Due to most Linux-distribution policies requiring that software must use their libraries, HandBrake is not often included in the main software repositories, but it is easy to obtain and install from the HandBrake website handbrake.fr.

When selecting the DVD source, make sure you tick the box "Open folder (DVD or batch)". See below for more tips.

Thoggen

Thoggen thoggen.net is very simple and easy to use. It has some features like cropping, quality and video size, but lacks features like hiding the preview window, different output formats (only Ogg) and remembering settings between DVDs.

Results

Below is an example 3 minute 16 second DVD clip. The screenshots demonstrate the output quality under my chosen settings (turn your brightness and contrast up and look closely to notice the difference). I used the default settings for each application but adjusted the quality [4] to try and match similar output file sizes. I kept the original DVD resolution.

Software	Screenshot [5]	transcoder	Container	Quality	File size (mb)	Time taken (m:ss)
Original DVD
DVD::Rip		Xvid	AVI	BPP 0.20	37.0	2:52
HandBrake		x264	MP4	RF 20	37.9	2:52
Thoggen		Theora	Ogg	33	38.9	5:15

After producing similar output files with DVD::Rip, HandBrake and Thoggen, HandBrake produced the best quality; therefore HandBrake is my recommended video transcoder. These three applications should cover most peoples' needs from easy-to-use to feature-filled; for me, HandBrake is the perfect middle.

Note that under these settings in HandBrake, a 90 minute film will be approximately 1.1GB and take approximately 86 minutes to transcode (not including ripping time). DVDs are usually between 4.7GB and 9.4GB, so this is a huge improvement. If you notice the video is a little blocky, turning your brightness and/or contrast down will help.

[4] DVD::Rip's default quality setting is to fit the DVD into two 700MB files, I changed this to its' "by quality" setting. I also changed it to do a 1-pass transcode; a 2-pass did not improve the quality noticeably and took approximately a third longer. Thoggen's default quality is "50" which produced a larger file size than the other transcoders so I reduced this to 33

[5] Cropped, not zoomed. Poor quality shows best in dark scenes. The screenshot is a person's upper-cheek and eye (closed, looking to our left)

Best settings

I find HandBrake's Normal preset produces a very good compromise between quality and size. You can be forever fussing over the settings; I recommend using the defaults, leaving the decision up to the HandBrake developers unless there is something specific you wish to adjust.