5punk

Hello monkeys. I want to back up some of my legally owned DVDs to AVI format for reasons nothing to do with any recent projects here in 5punk. What is the best way to do this, preferably free or sweepable?

i use gordian knot. its pretty powerful and flexable, but not the easiest to use i expect.

www.doom9.org for all your queries really

I like divx converter, it needs feeding unencrypted (as in pre dvd shrunk or ripped) but it works well and divx 6 is far better than xvid currently.

Not quite what you asked, but been meaning to post this:

For making personal backup, purely for scientific research, which I then destroy and purchase a second copy of the original, I use:

DVD Decrypter to rip the DVD to hard disk and remove the cumbersome country-specific information. It's fast, simple and the source DVD can safely return to its original location as soon as it's done.

DVD2One to squish the file to a DVD-R size and select which audio formats to use. It's also quick and simple, but sometimes produces files which are just too big, and can overcompress if used on very large rips.

Then start a DVD in Nero, plop the files in the VIDEO_TS folder and burn.

DVDShrink actually performs both of these functions, but I really only use it when I want custom compression, as it's more time-consuming and manual. You can select different compression levels for various parts (ie: more in extras and titles) - the aim being to keep the main feature as lossless as possible. Also you can re-author to create a disk containing only the main feature.

I know it's more common to see DivX AVIs on the floor, but I have found variable quality in these and I try to produce decent quality stuff, also it takes a long time to convert formats.

Ulead Video Studio accepts DVD files as input and will encode with whatever codecs you have installed if you don't want to burn a DVD, yet still save on disk space.