Quote:
Originally Posted by masraum
What's the secret to ripping your own DVDs and having the copy come out looking good?
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Not using joke software...
Frankly, if you want the very best quality, don't transcode into a different format at all.
Any conversion process (like from MPEG2 - native format for DVD video - to H.264) essentially takes a compressed, lossy, format, expands it and then re-compresses it again using another, lossy format.
Rip it to a bit-for-bit copy of the ISO image the DVD was mastered from and then use media center software that can either deal with playing the .ISO file or the DVD image from the folder it's stored in.
XBMC works perfectly for this.
Or use MakeMKV; this makes a bit-for-bit copy and creates a single video container with all the subtitle/audio tracks etc. contained in it.
If you're concerned about file size (heck, I can't see why with the cost per TB now, but some are), there *are* about a bazillion transcoding programs that actually work. You may need to twiddle with encoding methods/options to get the best results, or use multi-pass encoding. Life's generally too short...
I know that mplayer/mencoder, ffmpeg and handbrake/MacTheRipper are popular Linux/Mac ones, respectively. These can do bit-for-bit (including to raw YUV video and PCM audio if desired) or, perhaps more usefully, transcode into whatever flavour of container (wmv, avi, mp4, flv, mkv etc.) you want.