What's the best (free) software to convert a DVD into a set of mpeg files?
I’m planning nothing illegal here. Recently my parents had our old super 8 films from the 60s and early 70s converted to DVDs. They are not copy protected. I’d like to archive them long term on external hard drives as a set of mpeg files. What’s the best way to do this?
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There are several, but the one I like best is Freemake
www.freemake.com
Download the Video Converter. Very easy. Freeware.
Why AVI, @city_data_forum ? I don’t trust Microsoft. Mpeg is an open standard supported by ISO.
avi only because it seems most video “out there” is avi. There must be a reason. Otherwise, I don’t know why. Most video converters seem to default or prefer some sort of avi.
How well do mpeg or avi capture the information in a dvd?
I’ve been converting old video8 home video to digital format. It’s a project that has been going on for years. I was using a dvr/dvd r/w machine to do it until that machine broke. It did a good job, except it stopped being able to write dvds and so some of the dvds are unreadable. I then found another machine which was somewhat experimental. It put the data into mp4 format, I think, which saved a lot of space, but it had horrible problems synching the sound and video.
I recently bought a video capture device which comes with some software that will save in mpeg, but the quality is somewhat grainy and the size of the files is about 4 gb per hour, as compared to mp4 which seems to be about one-eight that size.
I’m doing my capturing because the video camera is old and I want to copy my movies before it breaks. It’s a sony, though, so it seems to be going strong.
But I’d love to capture with the quality the dvd did originally, if possible.
Avi is a container that can contain tons of different formats. Here is a example of a avi containing MPEG4 video and a mp3 soundtrack. AVI isn’t a codec.
You could try this one.
It lets you select between mp4, avi, or mkv.
Lifehacker posted this list of their “five best” DVD ripping tools a while back (2010). 3 of the 5 are free, and it shouldn’t be too out of date yet!
Personally I use WinX DVD Ripper but that’s just because I got a deal on the Premium version… I think it’s about $35 for a licence now.
Thanks, everyone. I’ll give your suggestions a try.
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