DVD Ripping & Conversion ?'s

[virgomac]

Ok, I've got a pretty big library, probably close to over 500 movies. Previously I backed up all my movies to another DVD for general family use (borrowing etc) so they don't get damaged.

Until recently I've used a PC for this. Most rips only had an error rate of less than 5% probably, and burns close to the same.

Recently I've been using my new macbook. Of 6 rips, 2 were perfect, 1 had rip errors and 3 burn errors. I know this is a small sampling, but I've never had this kind of error rate before.

Just curios what you thought. Is this just a streak of bad luck? Difference in quality of the macbook internal dvd vs my PC? Difference in ripping on the macbooks nvidia 9400 vs my PC's GTX260? Difference in ripping software MactheRipper vs DVDFab?

Thoughts, ideas? I'm asking because shortly the PC is being gifted to a family member and being replaced by a Imac, so curios how your experiences are.

 

[virgomac]

Well if anyone cares, I've narrowed things down somewhat. I've gone through the most recent rips viewing the video_ts folders through the mac dvd player.

On 1 of the recent disks there was an actual problem with the rip itself. I will be ripping that one again to see if it repeats the same errors.

On another 3, where the skips were in the final output DVD there were zero errors in the viewing of the actual video_ts playback. Which leaves me to think that it could either be a compression error with toast, or a burn error.

I've just updated my toast software, and am re-burning one of the rips now, will let you know if there it has any sort of error this time around. Even if it does, still leaves it being either a burn or a compression error for the original problems. Also this makes it equally hard to diagnose where the problem is, since the same software, Toast, is doing the compression and the burning.

I might be forum rambling, but who knows, maybe this will help someone else in the end.

Edit: On a side note, does anyone have a way of validating each burn without watching the entire movie again to check for visual or compression artifact errors? Each burn does indeed offer a validation at the end, but obviously that doesn't check source input to the output. I mean how could it with the compression involved.

 

[kolax]

I've had mixed success with Toast - I used to get frame stutters and audio sync problems. However, that was back in Toast 8, I've yet to see what Toast 9 offers and if it improves anything. Though that said, I've not burned a video DVD for over 6 months.

As for the ripping process - how are you doing this and what are you wanting to achieve? Are you wanting to compress the video into an MPEG4 file for use on your iPhone and playback on your Mac (and Apple TV if you invested in one further down the line)? Or are you simply just wanting to make an "image" of the DVD and reburn it as a backup?

HandBrake will do the trick for ripping and compressing to MPEG4.

 

[virgomac]

Didn't watch the whole "new" burn, but the skip was in the same spot.

This time I went back to view the raw video_ts folder with VLC instead of the mac DVD player and the skip was in the same spot as the burn. Also watched the burned DVD using both. Leopard DVD player showed no skip where watching the same dvd with VLC showed the skip. It seems VLC & my home DVD player is picking the skip up where the stock Leopard DVD player isn't. No idea why on that one.

 

[virgomac]

What I am doing is using mactheripper to rip the dvd and toast to then compress it on regular dvd-5. This way I can store the origionals, and let family and the kids watch and abuse the copies as much as they want.

I do use handbreak to store my favorites on my laptop for quick on the road viewing too.

What annoys me most out of all of this, is that in doing this for years on the PC with DVDfab (or something similar) I've had less than a 5% error rate on either the rip, burn or compression. In switching to a mac, that error rate has gone up dramatically.