How To Rip A DVD To Your Hard Drive

Now that hard drive disk space is cheap (I mean really cheap) ripping a DVD to your computer hard drive for backup purposes or to create a streaming movie library is well within your reach. In this post I'll show you which program I use to backup a DVD to my hard drive and how you can use the resulting video file.

A side note on legality: In this day and age of digital copyright, it is difficult to say whether it is legal or not to make a backup copy of a commercial Hollywood DVD on your computer. If you try and distribute or share your backup copy then you are definitely breaking the law. If you keep the physical DVD and only use the backup copy on your computer for personal uses then you are probably okay. Either way, proceed at your own risk.

There are numerous programs available (free and not free) that will take a DVD and make a digital copy of it (the ripping part) to your hard drive. All of these programs basically do the same thing. They take the video and audio files from the DVD disc and copy them to your hard drive. Most commercial DVD's use the VOB format to store the audio and video. VOB files are basically just MPEG2 streams that have multiplexed audio and video. All this means is that when you rip a DVD to your hard drive you will end up with a folder titled VIDEO_TS that will contain multiple VOB files that contain the video and audio from the DVD. (It also includes the menu and other things as well) You can use the same programs on your computer (Windows Media Player, DVD software such as WinDVD, etc) to watch the movie. You can also use DVD burning software to create a duplicate backup disc.

The program I still like to use to rip a DVD to the hard drive is DVD Shrink. The latest version is 3.2.  This program isn't currently being developed but it can easily be found on the web doing a Google search. As I said earlier, there are a lot of programs out there that you can use. The end result will be the VOB files for a DVD movie that can be burned to a DVD if you break or lose the original and you can also use these files to playback the movie directly on your PC or media extenders.

Once you install DVD Shrink and start it up, you get to the main screen.

First go to the preferences tab and make sure the Target DVD option is set to the DVD-9 8.5GB file size. This tells the program that you are allowing this much space on your hard drive for your ripped DVD. (It is also used if you want to burn the ripped video files to a DVD)

Next put in the DVD you want to rip and you'll get a pop up screen asking you to select the DVD drive you want to use.

Once you select the DVD drive then DVD Shrink will analyze the DVD. You will see the DVD in the preview window. This usually takes about 2 minutes to complete.

Now you are back to the main program screen. You can see that all of the audio, video, and extras on the DVD takes up a total of 7.169GB of disk space. Here you have two options: you can do a complete one for one backup which would use 7.169GB of disk space on your hard drive, or you can omit certain items like subtitles to reduce the file size. (You can also compress the video so it is encoded at a lower bit rate, giving you a smaller file size but lower quality video.)

Since we want to get rid of some of the extra things we don't need (like subtitles in French) we will click on the ReAuthor button. Then click on the DVD Browser button. Here you can choose what portions of the movie like the menu, the main movie video file, and the extras to include. Just double click on each video section you want and it will be added on the left hand side.

In my case, I just want the movie without any extras or menus.

Now we will click on the Compression settings tab. Here we will unselect some of the subtitles in different languages that I don't need.  We'll also set the video compression settings to None since we want an exact copy of the original movie without any loss of quality.

Now you can see that just the movie with one audio track and one English subtitle will take up about 6Gb of hard drive space.

Select the Backup! button and a new dialog screen comes up with some different options.  Under the Target Device tab, make sure that the Hard Disk Folder option is selected. Next, choose the folder where you want the DVD ripped to on your hard drive. By default, the Create VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS subfolders is checked; leave this checked so these folders are created. (It allows the computer to play your video files) You can leave all of the other tab options set to their defaults.

Once you select OK, the program will start to rip the DVD to your hard drive. You will see the progress screen as your DVD is being ripped. A standard movie will take about 30 minutes on a decent computer.

When the program is done ripping the DVD, a pop up screen will appear.

Now you have a ripped copy of your DVD on your computer hard drive. I will have some follow on posts on some things you can do with VOB files like setting up DVD movie streaming in your house.

Review of Marvel Ultimate Alliance for Xbox360

I just finished playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance on the Xbox 360 and it was one of the best games I have played in a long time. So here is my 'official' review.

The background story for the game is that Dr Doom has assembled some of the most notorious villains in the world in a plot to take over the world.  Nicky Fury of SHIELD calls upon the superhero's of the world to stop Dr Doom. This is where you come in. You get to assemble your own four person team to battle Doom and the bad guys. The story takes off from here taking you through many different worlds leading up to a final battle with Doom. The game does a great job of interweaving many subplots (often revolving around different marvel characters) into the main story line.

Characters. Since this is a Marvel game, you can only play Marvel superhero's like Captain America, Fantastic Four, Blade, Spiderman, etc. It' actually a pretty good cast of characters. You can also download extra characters through Xbox Live like the Incredible Hulk. You start with a certain number of characters you can play and along the way you can unlock different characters.

Teams. You select four different characters and that forms your team. You can change your characters along the way at different points if you want to. But the game allows for your team to have a reputation and you can build points and special abilities along the way if you stay with the same characters. If you choose a pre determined team like the Fantastic Four then there are even some special moves you can do.

My Team. For my team, I chose Human Torch, Iron Man, Wolverine, and Colossus. The beginning levels are a good time to use different characters and get a feel for what you like. But you should choose wisely. For example, the Torch and Iron Man can both fly which is a very useful ability. Colossus is very strong and can lift things that other characters can't. My favorite character was the Torch because he could launch projectiles such as fire balls and also had some special skills to clear an area easily.

Game Play. The basic game play is you have a light attack, heavy attack, and then special skills. Your basic attacks are the A and B button and the Y button is for jumping. The X button is used to throw your opponent. Your special skills like a pulse ray or super smash are accessed by the right trigger and any of the four main buttons. You have access to up to four special moves at any one time. The caveat is that you have a power meter that you need to replenish in order to use your moves. You can switch between characters using the left pad at anytime which is a great feature. The rest of the characters follow you along and you have a few basic commands to make them attack, defend, or just left the computer control them.

Overall the game is a lot of fun to play. It doesn't feel like a button mashing game because of the special moves you have and the ability to switch characters instantly. I also really enjoyed the storyline as well. I think it helps to know who the superhero's are and their background stories but I don't think you would play this game if you didn't know your superhero's.

I loved this game and I don't think it got the respect that it deserved in terms of other games out at the same time. You get to play as some of the greatest superhero's with a great story line and there are a ton of bad guys and bosses to battle. Definitely check this game out - you won't be disappointed.

Check Out My Media Center Hacks in Oreilly's Big Book of Windows Hacks

I finally got my copy of OReilly's Big Book of Windows Hacks and I'm pretty excited because I contributed some of the Media Center hacks included in the book. This is a great book that has a ton of useful hacks for both Windows XP and Vista covering everything from email to Media Center. Here are the hacks I contributed:

Hack #139: Remove Commercials from Recorded TV Shows

Hack #140: Make Your Own TV Mashup

Hack #141: Burn Recorded TV Shows Directly from Windows Media Center to DVD

Hack #142: Rip DVDs into Media Center

Some pretty good hacks, if I may say so myself; of course, I might be biased because I wrote them. It's a good book to pick up and I don't get any commissions so this is an unbiased review.