General Tips: Ripping DVDs
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[edit] General Info
It's worthwhile to note that per the DMCA, ripping "protected" or encrypted DVDs is illegal in the US. Even if that ripping is just for backup purposes and the copying itself is legal within copyright fair use guidelines, the act of breaking that encryption is still illegal. On the other hand, it seems that recording those DVDs (using the Neuros OSD, 442, or MPEG-4 Recorder) is not illegal because it doesn't "break" encryption, per se. Of course trading, etc. those recorded files is illegal in either case, the distinction is in actual "copying" itself. Doom9.org is a great resource for both legal and technical information.
[edit] List of unencrypted DVDs
Many of us consider it offensive that a user would be legally prevented from making a backup copy of their own purchased media. I thought it might be a good idea that we publish a list of DVDs that are not encrypted, so that we could have that information when considering the purchase of DVDs.
I got the idea recently when I was at a Starbucks and saw a new Dave Matthews CD with a "protected CD" label on it and I thought to myself: That CD is simply less valuable because you can't legally rip it(whether for backup or playing on a Neuros or iPod of whatever). Conversely, since most DVDs are typically protected, those that are not stand out because they are more valuable. Considering the millions of Skipdoctors that Digital Innovations has sold, there's no doubt that there's a legitimate need to make backup copies of discs, not to mention ripping them for playback on the 442, PC, etc.
I found the list below
http://www.videolan.org/removed/freedvd.html and thought we could start to add to it.
Ken Burn's America: Huey Long 1985
Ken Burn's Civil War Series 1990
Mark Cuban's Magnolia Films makes it a point of not encrypting its DVDs. This includes
- Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
- Bubble
Napoleon, PBS 2000
American Experience: The Wright Stuff
Guns, Germs and Steel: National Geographic
Revolution O.S. - a film about the history behind Linux and Free/Open Source Software
[edit] Windows
AutoGK Seems to work fine, XviD codec and default settings seem to work fine, but make sure you use mp3 audio for best results.
Handbrake is a simple to use application that rips a DVD and converts it to MPEG4 to be played immediately on the OSD. Make sure you change the video codec from h.264 to MPEG-4 and you're good to go.
[edit] Mac
This could be applied anywhere but for mac dvd ripping see http://www.ripdifferent.com/
MacTheRipper comes recommended as working pretty well and easy to use. This only decrypts the DVD however, preserving the menu structure and so on. You may wish to further compress the video to play optimally on the OSD.
Handbrake is a simple to use application that rips a DVD and converts it to MPEG4 to be played immediately on the OSD. Make sure you change the video codec from h.264 to MPEG-4 and you're good to go.
RipIt is an extremely simple application that rips a DVD to your hard disk in it's entirety.
[edit] Linux
A good GTK2 program that is written in Perl is AcidRip.
Another GTK+ program that is also written in Perl is dvd::rip.
DeVeDe is a capable, easy to use DVD ripper able to output in a variety of formats
