Convert DVD to MP4

[BeornBear]

I have many DVD movies which I would like to convert to MP4. My laptop does not have a DVD drive. I have used VLC. However, it does not convert well to MP4. There is a significant time lag between image and sound. Does anyone have any recommendations?!

[Electronics Wizardy]

handbrake

[mariushm]

In the past i used DVDFab ... it can remove protections from DVDs and optionally export everything as a single VOB file which can then be imported in programs like Handbrake or MeGUI to convert to MP4. 

 

DVDFab is shareware but if you know where to look you can find older copies (you don't need the latest version for DVDs, which is ancient tech already)

 

Maybe try MakeMKV as well... that one should be free.

[BeornBear]

I have not had success with Handbrake. It will not convert orginal DVDs to Mpeg4. I will look at other options

[Bombastinator]

13 minutes ago, BeornBear said:

I have not had success with Handbrake. It will not convert orginal DVDs to Mpeg4. I will look at other options

I had issues with handbrake too some time ago.  I was repetively assured that this is how it is done though.  I followed this thread because I was also interested in finding the answer.  @mariushm may have given the answer in that there may be an intermediate step he describes.  I plan on trying it and seeing if it’s possible.

[harryk]

3 hours ago, BeornBear said:

My laptop does not have a DVD drive.

Then how are you ripping the DVD?

 

1 hour ago, BeornBear said:

I have not had success with Handbrake. It will not convert orginal DVDs to Mpeg4. I will look at other options

Handbrake was literally made to rip DVDs and still is the best option IMO. What problems are you having?

[LAwLz]

5 hours ago, BeornBear said:

I have not had success with Handbrake. It will not convert orginal DVDs to Mpeg4. I will look at other options

Handvrake is your best option.

If it hasn't worked for you in the past then you have probably not used it correctly. Video encoding in general is not something you can just use default settings for (probably why you've had issues with VLC too). You need to tweak the settings a bit.

Tell is what the issue with Handbrake was so we can fix that instead of recommending you a bunch of other programs that will probably end up also causing you issues.

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Programs, Apps and Websites

***

 

Using makeMKV and Handbrake as combo has worked for me.

[mariushm]

The way I do it is more complicated, but it gives more flexibility.

 

Use DVDFab to extract episodes or just the main movie + audio track  + maybe commentary track  +  subtitle tracks I care about (english, english commentary, spanish, french maybe) as a single VOB file (or consecutive VOB files)

 

Use DGIndex (it's supplied with MeGUI) to demux the video tracks and audio tracks and create an AVISynth script.

DGIndex is a mpeg2 decoder and parser, it basically parses the VOB and creates an index file which can be loaded by MeGUI or separately by AVISynth.

 

I then edit the AVISynth script to add deinterlacing (if needed) and crop junk that's on the edges of the frame if needed.

 

From that point I can use either MeGUI or the command line x264 encoder to convert the raw video generated by AVISynth into h264 stream.

When done, I can use MKVToolnix to mux the h264 stream with the audio tracks (that I can recompress to AAC or Opus if I don't want to leave them AC3 as original) and the subtitle tracks into a MKV.

Or I can use MP4 Box or the MP4 muxer inside MeGUI to mux the stuff to MP4 container (in which case, converting audio to AAC is recommended)

 

There's also some tools I have which do OCR on the subtitles from DVD and convert them to SRT. It takes just a minute or so to enter some letters the tool isn't sure it OCRed them correctly and then it flies and converts the subtitles in minutes.

 

It sounds really complicated but it's literally 5-10 minute prepare time.

 

I did my copy of MASH 4077 like that, 11 seasons,... used DVDFab to extract each episode as a single VOB file containing the video, english audio track without laughing, english audio track with laughing, commentary track where available, english and french subtitles.

Once I had all 11 seasons into a folder, I wrote a small script in PHP (could be done in anything really) to make a batch file which basically created the AVISynth scripts, launched the DGindex tool with command line parameters to parse the VOB file and make the index file, launch x264 with all the parameters to convert the avisynth script to h264 track, use eac3to to convert the ac3 tracks to opus, then use command line mkvtoolnix to mux h264 with opus tracks to get mkv file.

about 2 days later after launching the bat file, i got a folder with a hundred or so mkv episodes.