New to this

litirspam

I am copying all my DVDs to my hard drive with DVD decryptor. Can anyone tell me what is the best format to change them to?
I have heard of Div X etc. Also if I wanted to burn back to DVD because I damaged a disc etc.
Any help appreciated.

calex71

very big question. getting them to the hard drive is the easy part, alto of this depends on what u have in ur pc and how u want to watch the movies, i mean if u dont mind watching on ur pc ot tv via tv out. divx and xivd are a great way of keeping most of the quality as when u convert any dvd to another format you will always lose some quality, bear this in mind as if u ever want to go back to dvd with these you will lose yet more quality, its not majo loss if done right but its worth bearing in mind.

Vcd and svcd will play on alot of stand alone dvd players, and a good quality 3 - 4 pass svcd can be as good as divx and xvid, so this might get around the need to convert back to dvd if u lose the original as they will play on alot of dvd palyers,

the 1 major draw back with these options is u lose everything on the dvds bar the movie itself, all the extras, commentry etc would need to be done seperately if you wanted them,

the easiest and by far the quickest way is to copy to a blank dvd if you have a dvd burner with dvdshrink, the other way could take a full day per movie depending on ur pc this way you can also keep all the extras.

you should check out

www.videohelp.com

for alot of guides to all these and the tools you'll need to do them.

litirspam

thanks for that. Does dvdshrink do the whole job by itself. ie can it get around dvd protection?

calex71

yes it does, however your better off ripping to the hard drive 1st other wise the dvd will be encoded/shrunk as its ripped from the dvd which could take an hour or 2, and ive found its not always successful this way, plus why but extra stress on the drive?