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Nothing gets on my nerves more than unskippable DVD chapters.

I don't us it personally, but doesn't DVDShrink take care of that by letting you re author the disk leaving out the parts you don't want? Plus you then use the copy and keep your shiny factory DVD in a safe place where the kids can't trash it...

http://www.dvdshrink.org/why_en.php

*continues to use DVD Shrink for free anyway since it has no DRM*

• EditPlus Programming editor
• IrfanView Image viewer with effects and image manipulation capabilities
• Putty so I can SSH to my Gentoo from winblows
• Ability Spreadsheet as opposed to the spreadsheets in microsoft office, open office, and gnumeric
• Proxomitron Web-filtering proxy
• Flashpaste Copy/Paste on steroids
• WinRAR as opposed to winzip
• uTorrent as opposed to azureus and other java based boulder-weight crap
• mIRC IRC client
• DVD Shrink Rip/decode/encode DVDs, etc.
• Tail for Win32 Wish tail under linux was this good
• RealAlternative as opposed to realplayer
• Virtual Dimension Virtual desktops, as opposed to microsoft's power toys

I always use DVD shrink.

You can strip everything but the movie and then reencode only the movie to fit on a 4.7GB DVD. Or split the movie into 2 DVDs if you like. Or reencode everything down to a 4.7GB with different levels of compression (shrink the hell out of commercials, and leave more space for the main feature).

Software itself is freeware, but since it is kind of illegal in US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_shrink) official site (http://www.dvdshrink.org/what.html) instructs you to google it.

Can anybody point me at a utility (Linux or Windows, I have both) that does this without me having to baby step it through 5 different utilities and a hundred command line options?

1. Use DVD Decrypter (last available version was 3.5.4.0 - MAFIAA tried to kill them but you can still Google it, the name of the file is SetupDVDDecrypter_3.5.4.0.exe and the size is 879 KB) to rip the VOB files, stripping macrovision, region coding, and encryption (of course). There are other more advanced options too but ripping the VOB files to a directory on your HDD will be enough for the next step.

2. Use DVD Shrink to cut out all of the stuff you don't want to burn onto your copy disc (i.e. other languages, commentary tracks, advertisements, FBI warning, etc). Burn your copy (sans junk, no macrovision or encryption and region free) and save an image of the project or burn yourself a second backup so that you can dupe the DVD again, without having to go through step 1 and most of 2 again using the original store bought DVD, when your kids destroy the copy DVD for the Nth time and you have to burn them another one.

There are manuals with the software or you can check out Doom9 for detailed FAQs, How-To, and Walkthroughs. Good luck.

dvdshrink

I've tried many different methods by DVDShrink is by far the easiest. Usually only takes about an hour and I rarely have compatibility problems. http://www.dvdshrink.org/ [Disclaimer: I do not work for DVDShrink or condone copying of copyrighted material]

That's what DVD Shrink is for.....:)

http://www.dvdshrink.org/

I run a church media ministry out of my home, and we use DVD Shrink. The software is freeware, and it is excellent. It lets you select what scenes/chapters/frames you want to copy, and creates a new DVD-compatible clip on your hard drive. What is nice about VOB files (the DVD files) is that they are MPEG-compliant, so you can just rename the VOB extension to MPG and off you go.

If you need to shrink the file to lower res than DVD, I recommend TMPGenc, which works very well. You can also import your VOB/MPG into Adobe Premiere Pro and export it to a new format, while editing clips together with fades, titles, etc.

What is your budget? Do you prefer F/OSS? Windows? Mac? Linux?

Just use DVDShrink :-)

http://www.dvdshrink.org/what.html

DVDShrink

Just copy them one after the other after the other and slide 'em into a disk wallet and when you get the urge just watch one.

I of course would never violate copyright law in such a flagrant fashion. Just saying...

You don't.

K3b

Burn At Once

Ardour

Out of luck there.

audacity

Audacity is written with wxWidgets and runs on Linux, *BSD, Mac, and Windows.

TerminatorX

Out of luck.

K9copy

DVDFab Decryptor + DVD Shrink . This solution works under Wine, too, and unlike my many experiences with K9copy, does more than segfault.

Avidemux

VirtualDub. It's GPL'd and works quite well under Wine. Unlike my experiences with Avidemux, the audio and video actually sync (wtf is it with that? transcode and DVDRip do it to, forcing me to use windows apps under wine).

Diva

Is that 3ivx? Just use XVID (gpl'd for Linux and Windows). It's activley maintained and very high quality.

Don't forget, the DVD series of the show is already out now, in the UK (Region 2, PAL). Comes in a monstrously big TARDIS-shaped box that opens diagonally, kind of awkward, but clever. If it takes up too much space on your shelf, you can store the discs in those black plastic DVD cases that AOL spam-mailed out a while ago :)

Use your favorite multiregion DVD player to view it, or rip it first. No need to wait until later in the year.

I BitTorrented the shows as they came out, but bought the DVD because I wanted to support the show (and get the episodes in better quality). Still find it ironic that they say it's "coming soon" to the USA, but is already sitting here on my table....

You're exactly right (as explained in this nearby subthread you may not have seen)... just copying the files on a DVD does not result in the necessary keys coming along for the ride. Use DVDShrink to (a) decrypt and (b) shrink the files on a standard DVD, and burn the resulting files to a DVD-R. If you're not running Windows, there are alterative programs for linux that do the same kind of thing.

Well, they think they do. When I rent a movie from Blockbuster, rip it to my PC with DVDShrink and then I have a copy I can watch whenever I want (even though 99% of the time I only watch it once). What's the difference between that and letting me download the binary version for $2.99? If it saves me the trip to the store and back, I'll use the online service.

Sam

Yeah, it's really too bad that a general purpose PC can only be used as a DVR. Imagine if you could use it to play all different kinds of video files (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) that some people get from teh Interwebs (http://thepirate-useyourimagination-.org/brwsearc h.php?b=1&d=200). When I think of all that CPU sitting there unused, I just wish there was a way I could use it to deinterlace and scale the video better than the projector (http://deinterlace.sourceforge.net/about.htm). It's a real shame that there's no way to filter and soften artifacts, make gamma correction or do other post-processing (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow). I mean wow, what if you had something that could do that to even make DVDs look cleaner and more accurate (http://www.theatertek.com/forums/showthread.php?s =6486412abf926166ef4d7dc0be10c450&t=4392). If you could do that, you may even put some of them on your hard drive if that wasn't impossible (http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/ dvd_rippers/dvd_decrypter.cfm). Even if there were a way to keep movies on a hard drive, you still wouldn't have a way to remove the ads, trailers, french soundtracks and other crap (http://www.dvdshrink.org/why.html). Gosh, I keep thinking too that with a projector in the home theater room and everything, it's too bad there's no way to play video games on it (http://www.mame.net/).

Young kid's DVDs take a lot of abuse, even if they're careful and especially if you have a DVD player in your vehicle. Backing them up with DVDShrink, http://www.dvdshrink.org/what.html, saves a lot of tearful nights when Dora or Peep is too scratched to play.

And if you've got young kids who like science, check out Peep and the Big Wide World, http://www.peepandthebigwideworld.com/.

Peep is great for Pre-K through early grade school, is NSF sponsered, and has enough dry humor to keep grown up geeks happy.

Of course, if a video iPod had enough capacity and TV output maybe I could use that for scratchless video storage.

Over the last couple of years I've been slowly migrating away from Windows. The only thing that keeps me dual-booting is DVD Shrink. I finally got that working in Wine (thanks to this guide on the Gentoo Forums...

Windows XP is the last version of Windows that I will ever use.

--Ajay

"most annoying DVD feature of all time" prize goes to (taaa-daah!) unskippable trailers/clips/FBI warnings/whatever.

I use these features because I don't want my kids to be forced to watch comercials ever time they watch a video I've purchased.

I think it would be easier to rip it yourself. Saves the time of hunting for it and then waiting for a 400mb file to download. That and if you have the resources you can put it back to DVD-R with something like DVD Shrink and then play it on a regular DVD player.

I'm sort of doing what you're talking about with the exception of not using MythTV for playback yet since I've not found a DVI flatpanel that I like and can afford yet. *shrug*

I've got DVD Shrink installed on all my Windows machines so that when I get a new batch of discs in, I can rip them in parallel. I also strip off CSS and Macrovision at that time so that the resulting set of files on the media server is unencumbered. For playback, I use Media Player Classic (again in Windows) to display the shows although I've verified that vlc and mplayer will also play them. I used to be able to use Apple's DVD player software on a mini, but after upgrading to Tiger and getting the latest version of the DVD player software, it won't let me play off the fileserver anymore (damn the MPAA).

Be ready to shell out some serious bucks for storage space as not doing transcoding/trimming puts some serious hurt on a pile of drives. I've ripped just shy of 300 discs (297 to be exact) and have eaten 1.6 TB out of my 1.8 TB array.

My dream is to be able to just pop the disc into a machine and have it rip the contents, decrypt and drop Macrovision and then spit the disc back out but I've not figured out a nice way to do that yet. I also want to add more storage but I've maxed out the current case and cases with lots of drive bays are quite spendy.

I do the exact thing with an X-Box running XBMC (via a softmod.) I use DVD Shrink to get only the movie and the AC3/DTS sound in English (although my kids loved it when I ripped "The Prisoner of Azkaban" in Spanish.) Much cheaper to set up than a MythTV box and easier too -- just a SAMBA share off of my already existing server. There are also scripts to use XBMC as a MythTV front end, but I've never tried them so I can't comment about them...

Good luck!

Compress movies with http://www.dvdshrink.org/what.html

Allow me to introduce to you DVDShrink. We're going on almost 2 years of not a single advertisement being shown on our TV.

After being run through DVD Shrink, all such DVD "features" such as non-skippable ads disappear, along with a bunch of other configurable stuff.

It is often a very fun thing to remove EVERYTHING from the movie except for the movie itself.

I mean, imagine this: You insert a DVD into the player, and the movie begins playing. No menus, no boilerplate, no pushing Play, no nothing. And when the movie ends, the player goes back to idle and shuts off by itself after a few minutes.

And the best part: No hideously-loud 30-second repeating audio loop behind the menu to wake you up after a boring film.

Of course, you'll need a DVD burner. But those are cheap.

And you'll need some blank media. That's cheap too.

And I can hear you say: "But I want to do this with rented movies."

And to that, I can only retort that there must be some reason for Blockbuster to be hawking DVD+R blanks right beside the checkout counter, and that this is probably it.

You may not be able to skip them on the original disks, but you can rip that misfeature out if you get a DVD-Burner. There are also rumored to be players that do not implement the UOP restriction portion of the DVD format license, but since I picked up my DVD player (old RCA Div-X unit) 2nd hand for $15 and it works OK otherwise, and since I've got over twice as many DVD-* drives as computers, I'm sticking with "Fair Use" copying as my solution.

Having the FBI/Interpol/&c. legal warnings unskippable is fine in my book. But using user operation control to have the commercials unskippable isn't even vaguely acceptable. If I found more recent Disney releases watchable (enought that I encountered this regularly), then I'd probably be returning the originals as "Broken By Design" to cut out Disney's profit margin.

In the longer picture, I think that this is one more sign of the shortsighted exploitation attitiude that's been running the House of Mouse. Walt ran the shop with a long term outlook--his well preserved film library being the obvious example. He might well have enthusiastically praised having trailers on DVD's, with perhaps (as is not uncommon) every spare space on the disk used to add more in the "coming attractions" section to the DVD menu... but NOT a "watch this or else" section. I can almost hear Walt's ghost now: "There is a difference between subtle and stupid, and it is not subtle, stupid!"

It's very like the difference between targeted mass email that you can opt out of, and SPAM that you just can't avoid. It's generally bad for long term planning to annoy your customers, especially customers growing nostalgic for their own childhood just as they start getting sizeable disposable incomes, and start raising their own children... that is to say, the next generation of customers.

OK, I'll go find my happy pills now....

Only 1 comment and the server is ./'ed.

I how they have web pages with crap Bandwidth on the list.

But I see DVDx Copy, good can't see dvdshrink http://www.dvdshrink.org/what.html/ is not on the list.

I am happy to the next 10 ;)

The Top 5 DVDs in my collection are:

1. Ritek
2. Memorex
3. Imation
4. Taiyo Yuden
5. Verbatim

Of course, you'll need a good Sharpie or equivelent and a copy of DVD Shrink

BTW: Special 100 pack of DVD-R's at newegg... See, both funny and informative.

i'll just continue to rent them from blockbusters and use http://www.dvdshrink.org/ to rip, copy and burn them.

Your best solution is to rip the DVD with dvdshrink, which is not only the best DVD ripper but FREE.

It's very satisfying to pop in a DVD and have the movie start playing without any ads or previews (or menus if you like).

Additionally, ads are appearing in front of DVD movies

'Course, if it's a VHS tape, you can use a pair of scissors... Snip!

Depending on how much it pisses you off, you could do the same with a DVD, using dvdshrink.

I know that some people here don't like the fact of "I'm not going to pay $9/ticket to see a movie but I'll download it for free" issue but it does exist.

I'm one of those people.

Not all movies. We have a "rule of thumb" that unless it gets a 7.0 or higher on IMDB (my peers, so to speak) we just don't go or download it. That all said, we rent DVDs once in a while yet very few of those are worth the effort to copy with DVD Shrink to DVD-R. Most recent movies are so-so one time views, that is what I think they're trying to grasp onto.

Cheap DVD drives + http://www.dvdshrink.org/ = No copy protection.

1. Get a DVD burner.
2. Download DVD Shrink
3. Sign up for Blockbuster's Movie Pass (Unlimited Rentals, 2 out at a time).
4. Purchase blank DVD+R's and jewel cases.
5. Print covers from cdcovers.cc.
6. Go crazy.

So far I've increased my collection by 52 movies in the last month, at about 90 cents each (DVD+R + jewel case + prorated Movie Pass)

from: http://www.apple.com/imac/:

"Back up your iTunes collection or make a mix CD for that special someone. [emphasis added]"

Um, that would be a CD full of songs to which you own the copyright, right? Riiiiight...

Now, before we get into the "slashdotters don't have teh g1rlfriends LOL OMG BBQ" jokes, or the "my iMac is my special someone" crowd, I'd like to say that this just really, really makes me sick. You can't have it both ways. We are either allowed to share music, or we aren't. (I know Apple != RIAA etc., but they are a Large Corporate Entity, and presumably wouldn't encourage something that is 100% against the wishes of the **AA) So what's the deal? I can see it now: "All Combo-drive Macs come with Shrink! Share your DVDs with your friends!"

K3B, dvdbackup, and dvdshrink (ran under wine, 3.0b5) work awesome.

So if I use DVDShrink or a similar tool to easily and quickly duplicate or resample DVD's then Julia Roberts goes homeless and has to sell herself for scratch tickets?

I like those odds!

Use DVD Shrink. It does everything that DVD X-Copy does and is free (as in beer).

Actually, DVDShrink is not open source, it is a free binary. It also utilizes the burning libraries from Nero which are definitely not free (although it does use the ones included in trial versions of Nero).

DVDDecrypter or DVD Shrink. Rip and burn to ISO or another disc. I use DVD-shrink for dual layered discs and then burn the ISO with DVD Decrypter. If you have a single layer you can just use DVD Decrypter to burn the entire disc without edits.

See here for more information on DVD Shrink.

They are both free and work well.

I may be just stating the obvious but: This is awful because now the MPAA and RIAA are gonna sue as many of their perceived enemies as possible, hoping to shut them down too. On the bright side, maybe people will use the superior DVD Shrink instead.

The DVD burner will be your best investment. As you probably know, Disney movies have 30 minutes of commercials up front and either you can wait until the startup gets to the point where you can actually hit play or you have to hid forward for 5 minutes to skip the commercials.

I would highly suggest you go get a DVD burner really soon, the prices of even a Dual Layer Burner are below a 100 bucks. You can then rip out all those commercials and simply insert the DVD and Walk away and it will play automatically. Download DVD Decrypted and DVD Shrink. You will never touch the originals again. The convenience of a movie playing when you insert the disk is the greatest thing for kids (no waiting no fussing you'll agree).

I use linux for everything else. Despite linux's shortcomings in the UI department, I find that I have trouble living without a tabbed (gnome) terminal and true virtual desktops.

I tried Gordian Knot and could not seem to get there. If you are like me and not too bright and just want to rip your legally purchased DVDs, you might also check out DVX at:

http://www.planetdvb.net/dvx/

It is similar to GK, but I found it easier. I want minimum filesize, so I rip the DVD using DVD Shrink

http://www.dvdshrink.org/

and the use DVX on the resulting .vob file. I end up with a xvid/ogg/ogm file that is around 1GB per movie.

From what I have been reading, XBMC and and the pc version will play ogg vorbis audio files, but not video in ogm containers. Hopefully that is coming soon.

5) This still won't hold a standard Movie DVD.

DVD Shrink
- (sorry, windows only app.)

Here's my top 10 list.

1. Sleipnir - Greatest tab browser, made by a Japanese guy, there's an English translation, if you haven't tried it and been using other IE based tab browser, you should give it a try. It's IE engine only. (For those who'll have trouble navigating Japanese web page, here's the download link to English version)

2. PuTTY - Just like others

3. Exact Audio Copy - Very good audio ripper for CCCD.

4. Adobe Reader - Though getting like a bloated software with Printme ad, I encounter PDF just about everyday...

5. GIMP - I thank GIMP team for such a great freeware tool.

6. VideoLAN (VLC) - Great media player + rich network functions, can play DVD (with libdvdcss, check your own law) without any commercial licensed softwares.

7. EmEditor - This is the best text editor I've found to date (tried, textpad, editplus, ultraedit what have you...but I'm not a emacs/vim guy). For what's better, it's free for academic use! It's got regular expression search/find, keyboard mapping, document tabs and all the feature you'd expect on a good text editor. I used to use EditPlus(registered) before this, but I switched.

8. ffdshow - Codecs for DivX, Xvid. No more need for official ad-full DivX codec installation.

From here, I don't have them installed, but these are worth mentioning.

9. burnatonce - A great tool for writing CD/DVD media. It's actually a Windows frontend for cdrecord and ProDVD, small and efficient.

10. DVD Shrink - To extract DVD data and back it up, no writing function, but good for storing it on HDD.

I could go on...but I've reached ten =)

WOW! Just imagine how much completely legal, free or open source DVD ripping software you could store on one of those!

dvdrhelp.com also has info and good tutorials on these (and other) programs, although you probably won't need them.