I have never backed up a DVD to my PC as many A/V enthusiasts have so I'm not that familiar with the software and methodologies that exist. Since I'm trying to use the PS3 as the hub of my HT, I would like to rip all my DVD's to the hard-drive. I've heard that you can extract just the movie into one file that is no larger than a gig. Has anyone done this?

My end goal is to have access to all my movies in the XMB environment similar to how the mp3 files are listed. Maybe it's a "pie in the sky" project, but something I would like to have.

I have never backed up a DVD to my PC as many A/V enthusiasts have so I'm not that familiar with the software and methodologies that exist. Since I'm trying to use the PS3 as the hub of my HT, I would like to rip all my DVD's to the hard-drive. I've heard that you can extract just the movie into one file that is no larger than a gig. Has anyone done this?

My end goal is to have access to all my movies in the XMB environment similar to how the mp3 files are listed. Maybe it's a "pie in the sky" project, but something I would like to have.

Are these your homemade dvd's or movie studio dvd's?

I use Roxio Easy DVD Copy 2 - works pretty well for me. But I'm pretty sure Nero will also let you convert DVD to MPEG or some such format.

I use Roxio Easy DVD Copy 2 - works pretty well for me. But I'm pretty sure Nero will also let you convert DVD to MPEG or some such format.

So how large is a typical DVD with a Roxio convert?

You should go check out doom9.net and their forum, a lot of good information there on backing up your dvd's.

http://www.mp4converter.net/dvd-to-ps3-converter-win.html

I use that. It works quite well.

With Roxio you can choose to some degree how compressed you want your files to be, so that it can fit on a CD, DVD, etc.

Though I tried the mp4 DVD to PS3 converter posted above and it works quite well for me.

Thanks for the great feedback. Yes, these are movie-studio DVD's that I wish to backup.

Is it a process using Roxio? Ideally I would like to tell the software to extract "movie only" and then tell it to convert it to mp4 all in one. I guess I will just play around with the tools and see what best suits me.

Has anyone put movie files on there PS3? How is quality and playback/

Lets assume you aren't talking about Piracy here :)

You can rip your DVD's to a hard drive in its native format, or as a single ISO file. That (or those) files will all be between 4 and 8 gigs in size.

If you want to get them to under a gig in size, you'll need to convert them to some other format....I'm assuming one that the PS3 can actually play.

Just understand that by compressing DVD's down, you're going to lose visual quality. Example...you can take a DVD movie whos file is 4 gigabytes in size down to about 720k to fit on a single CD, and on a laptop or analog screen, it'll look as good as a DVD. But as your screen gets bigger, the picture will degrade accordingly.

So it depends on how big your screen is as to how feasable it will be....if you're watching on a 32" set or something, DIVX or MP4 should look pretty good......if you're on a bigger display, DVD is going to start looking very soft or exhibit lots of macroblocking.

So choose wisely...

I have a 50" Panny 720p plasma. From the looks of things, I will lose a lot of detail by compressing it, looks like my lazy ass will just have to manually change DVD's.

What about using an external usb hard drive that has loads of movies saved on it from my own personally owned collection (and definately not pirated from Netflix - no, that would be morally wrong, especially as they are robbing studios of money by renting movies out to millions of people who don't have to pay for them. No, Definately not Netflix movies.)? Any chance that the PS3 plays or will play such movies?

Mattardo, sure why not, as long as its converted to a mpeg2 file, it will play fine. I have a drive loaded with stuff i recorded off tv, works slick. High def, sd it all plays. DVD shouldn't be too much of a difference, its just not a transport stream. Look into a vob to mpeg conversion on doom9 or elsewhere. i'll try ripping some of my movies tonight and give you guys a little heads up on how it works. But I can attest to the high def TS work flawlessly on the PS3! This lil' fella will make a great media juke box.

It's unfortunate that it needs converting though. I have saved my movies in file mode using DVD Decrypter. I wonder if that constitutes as mpeg2?

i am wondering that too, from what i remember from my dvd days, it wans't that painfull to "convert" to mpeg from vob. we aren't really converting anything, so we won't ever loose quality, its already mpeg just in a different container. If you got the drive handy try just a rename of a small vob to mpeg and see if it goes, would save a bunch of hasle. i'll do some more expiramenting tonight.

I just remembered something, though. The PS3 only supports FAT-32 drives which have some kind of 2 Gig file limit. That pretty much screws me outta my NFTS hard drive, which is that way because it supports larg file sizes (dvds). Damn. Why did I just remember that? Now I'm sad again.

no its still ok, fat 32 supports 4gb, and vobs are already split on a dvd, its actually works out better :)

check out my post on MeGui conversion, and search the web fo dvd ripping with MeGui.

You'll be able to rip dvd quality video to AVC easily, and it'll be way under 4 gigs if you do it correctly.

Good call Mattardo, I forgot about using an external hard-drive. I just checked out doom9, it will take me a while to digest all the information, hopefully I will find what I'm looking for there.

Thanks for all the help.

Well that was easy... so kids without further delay heres my lil guide.

first off the ps3 will play vobs renamed as .mpg no problem, unfortunately it doesn't know what to do with multiple audio tracks, this gives you an error. The solution is simple.

dvd decrypter has an ifo mode which allows you to select which tracks to rip. Bringing up the "input" menu be sure to select the titles you want to rip, usually the longest track is the portion you want, but feel free to try other parts of the dvd as well. So once you find the vobs you want to rip switch the tabs to the "stream processing". Check the enable stream processing box and select one video mode and one audio mode. I had trouble with the dts track, but the 5.1 played fine on my test dvd. Make sure you select direct stream copy as well.

once the files are on your portable hd rename them all from .vob to .mpg and you are in buisness. A bit for bit rip in less then 10 minutes. The kicker is that the video plays back in full 1080p mode (or whatever your have you xbm set at), so i guess it's the relatively poor man's upconverting dvd player :)

Also note the portable HD must be fat 32, if you are having trouble converting your hd in windows XP (will only let you format up to 32ish Gb) use "fat32format". It's on the internet, use it and you can format a huge drive.


<EDIT> i might have spoke a little too soon, having some trouble getting playback on the other parts of the movie, but someone who knows how to rip a dvd properly should be able to figure this all out... the key is vobs play fine, just not a muxed stream.

Ok, I'll just convert this hard drive of mine to Fat32. It has about 50 movies on. LEt's see. Yes, warning this, blah that, will overwrite all info blah, are you sure blah, yes yes! Ok. Whoops. Oh crap! There's the kicker. I'll lose all my stuff if I convert. At least... I think I will. Does this method of laboriously renaming things keep the menu selections, etc.?

50 movies? yikes I hope i haven't wasted anyones time here, I am still learning how to get this to rip properly.

right now i have trouble getting the second parts of the stream to play correctly, the first part will play great but it gives an error on the second part... I am thinking we just might need a better program then dvd decrypter. I am still confident that this shouldn't be too much of a hassle once i get the kinks worked out..

and no menus... :( but you could keep the special features as seperate items i think...


<edit> i give up, i can't for the life of me figure out how to get anything but the first file to play, i have tried muxing, demuxing, using other programs, the ps3 will only play the first file and thinks every other file that is split is broken... its annoying because the first file plays so well...

Thanks for trying. I had high hopes for this PS3 thing, being a replacement for my HTPC. So far, it can't adequately replace my PS2!

Dude what are you talking about? What fanboy crack are you smoking?

Well if you could extract the "movie-only" to just one file then the PS3 would play it just fine correct? You may lose a little resolution here and there, but the convenience of storing movies on the PS3 would be prettty sweet.

The Xbox 360 was looking pretty sweet as a Media Extender for a while there. Then they decided that playing movies over the network was bad. So it's crippled, unless things have changed since it's initial release. The PS3 was my next choice, and when I learned Linux was capable I hoped someone would code Theaterk or another software player. Apparently, the LInux is only capable of small programs. Not too sure on that. I understand I can probably play movies by transcoding them to strange formats, etc. I just don't want to. How many times do I have to rip a movie to view on different things, until it becomes more of a chore and less of a convenience? And when they are transcoded they lose certain features, like menus, languages. Sigh. Sony, you promised that this would be my media center. Deliver!

success gentlemen,

Ok check it out the play was to rewrite the headers on the vobs on the later files, heres the ticket, setup dvd decrypter to rip in IFO mode as discussed. be sure to go into the options and select a file size of 1 or 2 gigs to make it a little easier to split later. Now go and get "VOB2mpg" its a free small download and will let you rewrite to a compliant mpeg file. Now you can save a little time by just converting all the files IF they are all smaller then 4 gigs (the fat 32 limit) else you need to break things up. If that is the case you need to create 2 directories and split up the vobs into each half. Be sure to rename the higher number vobs in the second half so that vob2mpg recognize them. (ie vts_01_3 becomes vts_01_1 and so on)

you can save some time by using 2 gig file splits on dvd decryptor and just renaming the first file to .mpg, and using vob2mpg on the remainder.

the next problem that i believe sony will soon fix is that there is no playlist support to play all files in a row, so you need to manually select the second file once its done playing. I am almost certain we will see this in a future update as the psp does this already as part of the rss support...

as a side note vob2mpg uses ffmpeg to do the conversion, so there is probably a way to make a batch file or something to do all of this for us a little quicker, but i don't know how to code.

still the whole process is fairly quick, it took me ~7 minutes to rip the dvd, ~6 to output the mpg files and a few more to copy over to the HD, so its not too bad in the grand scheme of things.

DGIndex and Imago MPEG-Muxer will do a painless job of converting decrypted vobs into proper mpgs. Give that a try too.

Well I was able to decrypt a DVD to a single VOB and it played and looked fine on the PS3. But the sound will not pass the 5.1 sound to the PS3. I just get 2 channel. My computer will recognize and play the Dolby Digital sound. So the PS3 must be down grading the sound to 2 channel. Very frustrating. I will try DGIndex and Imago MPEG-Muxer next.

Doesn't the PS3 support Dolby Digital AC3 sound? It's a pretty easy process to get VOBs to play on the PS3 so I'm not sure what I'm missing. I strip all other audio tracks out of the VOB and leave only the Dolby Digital AC3 track. I don't mind leaving the movies in MPEG2 format. The files are huge but I can always buy another hard drive. MP4 would be nice but there are just too many hurdles to jump to get a decrypted VOB converted to MP4 format that plays AC3 multi channel sound. So far I really haven't seen a post where someone actually got AC3 MP4 to work.

AC3 can't exist in standard mp4s - AAC can and does work.

AC3 can't exist in standard mp4s - AAC can and does work.

OK thanks for clarifying that up. I was able to fix all my MPEG2 problems using the tools you mentioned. They worked great. I can fast forward and rewind without any problems. The sound is still down converted to 2 channel by the PS3 but now I understand that to be a weird limitation of the PS3. If I take the same MPG and create a DVD from it the AC3 passes just fine. Hopefully a firmware at some point will fix this.

Now that I have that all worked out I will try to convert it to MP4 with AAC audio... Looks like MEGui is the way to go with that. Wish me luck!

Thanks again for the help.

Here's what I'd like to do:

-Extract the iso off of all my DVD movies (4-8gb each)...
-Store them on an external hooked to the PS3
-Have the PS3 recognize each of those ISOs as a DVD under the video section and allow me to play it as a DVD w/ menus, chapters, features, etc.

How close are we to that? :)

(Oh, and I don't want to install a different OS)

I'm with you on this one. Right now, I'm forced to use a HTPC for this method. It works fairly well but I wish it was easier.

So I guess the PS3 won't recognize and/or play an iso files? I think that Freestyle's idea is the best, although consumes more HD space than I had in mind, but that's what external disks are for.

With Roxio you can choose to some degree how compressed you want your files to be, so that it can fit on a CD, DVD, etc.

Though I tried the mp4 DVD to PS3 converter posted above and it works quite well for me.
What settings did you use? I just started playing around with DVD to PS3 Converter and yes it worked, but I wasn't really happy with either the audio or the video quality, but then again I selected the 480p default settings.

It was a bit slower than I expected it to be, it took me all night to do a single DVD. The good news is I unhooked the My Book USB drive and plugged it into the PS3 and it recognized the video right away. The quality... like I said it wasn't what I expected and hope it was just the settings. It looked like an old VHS tape.

Here is what I want to do- I own a lot of DVDs, especially series and movie sets. This is in no way pirating because like I said I already own the movies. This is more for the coolness factor and convience. I would like to create a folder on My Book for say Bond, and then in there have all the Bond movies plus my special features discs. Then of course I'd like other folders with other movie sets.

I will never do away with our DVDs because we watch them upstairs too, but it would be cool to consolidate some of the bigger sets down to on slick USB drive.

The bottom line is I don't want to do this if the quality is bad. I'll waste the time needed if I can get this to look just as good as the DVDs played through the PS3.

Does anyone have any tips of the DVD to PS3 Converter settings or any other programs that will do what I want with excellent playback quality?

If you want just the video itself not keeping the menus etc etc. Try handbrake. I used it to turn two dvd's into mp4 and then streamed it from my nas via dnla server. Looked good. No menus of course just the movie itself.

Will the Ps3 play MP4 / H.264 videos off a DVD-R?

1.) Does it have to be a VIDEO folder like the PSP?

2.) Is there a file size limit?

I don't own one, but my brother in law does and he would like to burn a DVD-R with 3 or 4 kids videos and keep the orginals in their case.

JNT, JNT

I've just found it's easier to get off my ass and swap discs than go through hours of conversion for each movie. Especially when you have several hundred discs.

I've just found it's easier to get off my ass and swap discs than go through hours of conversion for each movie. Especially when you have several hundred discs.


Im leaning that way myself..sure its cool to have them on their but just seems to much hassel ya know. I will find a way ot put all my music and pics on there though. that I want. Anyone know an easy way?

Thanks for the great feedback. Yes, these are movie-studio DVD's that I wish to backup./

Wrong answer. The method for ripping home movies and pirating movies is essentially the same. Try asking how to perform a legal action, as opposed to an illegal one.

Im leaning that way myself..sure its cool to have them on their but just seems to much hassel ya know. I will find a way ot put all my music and pics on there though. that I want. Anyone know an easy way?

Ripping CDs is a built-in feature, and you can pick your codec and compression ratio. I've found that's easier than copying digital music files from my computer because a lot of metadata is lost that way.

Old thread, I know...

What do you guys use to rip DVDs onto your PS3s these days? I looked around a bit and haven't had luck finding any freeware for this. Any suggestions?

Also, what file types & settings would you recommend to maximize quality while maintaining reasonable file size?

Thanks.

VOB2MPG is my preferred option, paired with the latest beta of DVDFab's Passkey. It allows you to keep the original MPEG2 stream with AC3 audio, wrapped inside an .mpg container. This keeps the exact original quality, averages 4-6GB per movie, and streams fantastically to the PS3 through PS3 Media Server with zero transcoding and perfect FF/RW support.

File size should not be a concern really. Given the choice between spending the time on transcoding, or simply getting a larger hdd/usb hdd/network storage, life is much easier with the "more storage" option. Plus, your movies get ripped a hell of a lot faster. Dropping a DVD to my preferred format takes like 8 minutes. Throw transcoding in there at any point to try to drop the film size to 2GB and you end up with an hour or more of processing to get anything that looks good.

no no no....

use DVD Shrink and make the file a SINGLE file under 4gb and you'll be fine. You'll get the whole movie as ONE VOB file and it will play just fine on your PS3 or external HDD

VOB2MPG didn't work on the first DVD I tried because it said it was copywrite protected. Is it really illegal to put DVDs you own on a hard drive for your own personal use?

DVD Shrink has terrible reviews on cnet, so I'm weary of trying that.

Any other ideas would be appreciated.

VOB2MPG didn't work on the first DVD I tried because it said it was copywrite protected. Is it really illegal to put DVDs you own on a hard drive for your own personal use?

DVD Shrink has terrible reviews on cnet, so I'm weary of trying that.

Any other ideas would be appreciated.

While most asked how or if illegal to play ripped DVD movies on PS3, the real issue is Sony. They don't want to you to have the freedom to simply rip DVD images and play on PS3 because there's no DRM control.

So, asking the question when will Sony let PS3 directly play ripped DVD, it's never unless there's some kind of DRM control.