Not at all gaming related..... DVD to AVI

[Kevin Mullins]

Anyone have suggestions on software to rip a DVD and convert it to a decent but smaller .avi format ?

I've tried a few programs for the encoding portion of the process, but they all turn out like crap...... after 4 hours of waiting to see the crappy results over and over again. 
Just looking for some personal recommendations versus trying umpteen more different "how-to's" found online that end up with poor results.

I want to be able to rip some of our DVD's to our PC media library and also to be able to load these smaller versions for when we get ready to travel on portable devices. (got a trip to Holland coming up and it's gonna be a long boring one there and back, especially with a three year old to occupy)

[ptinolv]

VLC is very good to convert DVD. You cannot convert into .avi i think (divx or xvid), but in other format like mp4 you can.

[HaRuMaN]

DVDFab Platinum will do this for you.  You can even specify other formats to convert to, like PSP, Ipod, etc...

[Raitsa]

iSkysoft DVD Ripper http://www.iskysoft.com/dvd-ripper-windows.html

[Mario]

VLC is very good to convert DVD. You cannot convert into .avi i think (divx or xvid), but in other format like mp4 you can.

Just FYI: the AVI format is a container format (see here for more info). It contains data that has been encoded using any one of a number of encoding algorithms (MP4, DVIX, etc.). This is why people can encounter AVIs that won't play until they install/upgrade a codec. Once the DVD is encoded to DIVX, MP4, etc., I believe there are tools to insert it into an AVI container, giving it the .avi extension.

Mario

[Kevin Mullins]

Thanks fellas....
DVDFab was recommended a couple times on our local forum, so I'll give that one a shot and then possibly try the others as well.

I definitely want to make sure the .avi's have the proper codec encoding to be flexible amongst devices without having to "update" everything I may put them on. (netbook, media center PC, iPod Nanao, etc.)

[daywane]

ImTOO DVD Ripper Platinum is not that bad eather
I do like DVD Fab but files are smaller with ImTOO DVD Ripper

[Kevin Mullins]

DVDFab definitely does a good job with the few movies I've tried it on so far.

I'll give ImTOO DVD Ripper a try as well just for quality/size comparison. 

[EwJ]

(rip with favorite ripper, dvddecryptor, fab, etc), then
AutoGK for conversion.
ctrl-F9 options (compatibility - enable standalone support)

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Handbrake (http://handbrake.fr/) is a great little app for ripping DVDs to h264/MP4, which I've found more useful than an AVI in who knows what codec.
Also if you've got a more modern video card, you might look at the MediaCoder suite: http://www.mediacoderhq.com/ It has the option to leverage CUDA on nVidia cards to accelerate the encoding proccess. I've done 720p video at faster than real-time on my GTX260.

[jamesjones626]

Handbrake (http://handbrake.fr/) is a great little app for ripping DVDs to h264/MP4, which I've found more useful than an AVI in who knows what codec.
Also if you've got a more modern video card, you might look at the MediaCoder suite: http://www.mediacoderhq.com/ It has the option to leverage CUDA on nVidia cards to accelerate the encoding proccess. I've done 720p video at faster than real-time on my GTX260.

Handbrake is awesome, i make sure to have that, DVDFAB, and Convertxtodvd always on hand

[Kevin Mullins]

DVDFab definitely did the trick for me so far. Got a little netbook loaded up with kids movies and whatnot now.
I even used DVDFab's "File to Mobile" option to put a bunch of mp4 movies on our little 8GB iPod for our little girl to watch on the trip. That way she can carry it when we can't really get out the netbook.

I may have to check out Handbrake and such when we get back from this trip, I have a large library of DVD's I want to get put on a media server setup soon. (Once I have the drive space configured)

Thanks for all the input indeed.