Ripping TV Shows

I use DVD shrink and DVD redo. DVD shrink is free and redo is 50 I believe. The quick version of how to complete this is as follows
1. Put DVD in drive
2. Open shrink
3. Click re-author disk
4. Choose the episodes (usually 3 to 5 per disc)
5. Click compression settings
6. Uncheck all unwanted audio streams
7. Hit backup

Once all 3 or 4 or 5 episodes are done go into the folder these got put into and delete all files that arnt the episodes. Then rename the episodes tv show season episode. (Smallville S01.E.01) compete the above steps for the whole season.

8. Open redo
9. Click tools/batch manager
10. Add all titles from season (this has to be done one by one)
11. Click finish and save.

Wait 25 minutes to an hour and your done. You now can go delete the .Vob files
From shrink and your left with a full season of dvr-ms files that will happily stream to an extender (in my case xbox360) with ffw and rewind capability)

(Whole process is very easy and I actually learned from a post on mynetworkproject.wordpress.com by my favorite evil genius andres chevarria)

Why not just rip the entire disc untouched and use a logical naming structure, either as iso or folder archive. Its fast and no re-encoding is involved. If your player supports menus and iso's you have everything you need.
I personally rip to folder and use the following naming structure:
Series Title.Season#.Disc#.PAL/NTSC.DVD9/5

Because if you rip the entire disc you get unwanted (at least by me) extras that take up valuable space. Plus the .iso files won't stream to xbox360. And I use mediabrowser as my front end in media center and naming the files the way I do let's media browser automatically pull the meta data. So you get episode names,
Summarys photos cast and crew. Ect.

Super_DAD's way is obviously for a Windows Media Center user that is using an Xbox 360 as an extender. Qz3fwd's method works on most media streamers, but not on a Xbox 360. I would assume to OP was thinking of a streamer, since this is the proper forum, but I will try both methods.

If you want to do it that way, you can eliminate steps 8-10 very easily. Before you click the go button in Shrink, go into the preferences menu/"output files" tab and uncheck the box that says to split the titles into 1GB .VOB files. After the Shrink extraction, each title will appear as a single .VOB file. You can just rename it to episode_title.vob and you are done. Any media player worth it's salt will play a .VOB file.

I re-encode to dvr-ms which takes about 30 seconds per episode.
I do make sure to uncheck the split into 1gb chunks. But if your using xbox 360 as a media center extender it will not
Stream .vob.

That being said I do think xbox360 is worth it's salt.
This is just how I do it. I'm sure there are other methods. But to use the tv shows the way i do, all steps are necessary.

I don't have a Xbox 360, but since you already used the single .vob output did you try to just rename that to .mpg?

Really? I've been using Shrink for about 4 years now, and it's so reliable that I've never seen a need to change (even though I know it's pretty old-school). I can count on one hand the number of discs I've had trouble with.

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To rip to ISO in DVDFab, just select the Target file icon with the little blue circle at the upper right hand corner of the window (next to the folder icon). Then name the file and select where you want to save the ISO.

I usually rip each episode to its own ISO file so I don't have to go through the menu selections to watch the episode.

Here is a writeup on various different methods for ripping your tv shows that I put together:

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010...-mkv-episodes/

I like to put my tv shows into individual mkvs. The easiest way is using MakeMKV but there are a variety of methods depending on what your goal is

Re-Auth. Right now, I rip individual episodes and let the EXCELLENT XBMC do its thing.

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Bottom line: there are as many different ways to rip and formats to use as there are people with personal preferences. What works for you will depend on the software you choose for your toolkit and what formats your player will best handle. So the only answer for you is the one you come up with yourself. Just try to keep it as simple and as standard as possible.

I followed your advice and am in the process of ripping my Looney Tunes DVDs to individual MKVs. I (and my kids) love it. Having each cartoon as a separate file is, by far, the easiest way to deal with them, and I would certainly do the same with a TV series. As an unanticipated bonus, it makes it very easy to retain the alternate audio tracks (commentary and music-only tracks which Warner Bros. provides for some of the cartoons).

You appear to be only talking about playing DVD's on the FAT+ and from your later post you have gained familiarity with DVD Shrink. Again, the "best" container is whatever works for you and your equipment, but given that caveat and my experience with owning the FAT+ I can make some observations/suggestions.

MKV files are a needless complication when it comes to DVD rips for the FAT+. The FAT+ works very well with the file types and containers generated by the simplest primary rip of the DVD (the .VOB and .IFO files). All the video/audio/subtitle information is contained in the .VOB file set. In the simplest example, you set the preference in Shrink to not split the .VOB file into 1GB segments. You then use reauthor mode to extract-to-folder the main title or the individual episodes of a TV disk (you can do all of them at once, you know) as single .VOB file(s). Afterwards just rename the .VOB files to title_name.vob, put them on your media storage unit and you are ready to play them on the FAT+.

What is not contained in the .VOB file is the chapter marks for skipping through the title by chapters. The FAT+ has a default 20 min skip function, but if that is not suitable and you want to skip by chapters, you have to include the .IFO file information. To do that you need to extract the titles to an .ISO file. Using DVD Shrink in reauthor mode, you extract one title at at time to a title_name.ISO file and you are done. Transfer the .ISO to your media storage and play it directly on the FAT+. The .ISO will contain the .VOB set and the .IFO file with the chapter point information. Since the FAT+ has full DVD menu support, it will read the .IFO file so when you press the -->| button on the remote it will skip to the next chapter.

In the simplest case, that is all you need to know about ripping and playing DVD's on the FAT+. The primary file types will give you all the capabilities you asked for. I have 3 tools that I use for DVD rips that I have used for many years and never needed any others.
DVD Decrypter (free): I think the best and and fastest DVD ripper that still rips about 80-90% of all new DVD's.
DVD Fab Decrypter (free or pay): an excellent ripper that is updated regularly so it does the 10-20% that DVD Decrypter doesn't.
DVD Shrink (free): extracting, trimming, shrinking tool to pull out the desired titles.

Of course, you can always make it more complicated if so desired.

I'm not sure why you say that MKV is a "complication". MakeMKV can extract every individual episode as a single file, with chapter markers and alternate audio tracks, in a single operation, as opposed to doing it one-at-a-time, as you suggest:


That's not to knock your method, but it's certainly not *less* complicated than using MakeMKV to extract a whole DVD into individual episodes.

You have to take my statement in full context: "when it comes to DVD rips for the FAT+". In my limited experience with MKV, I find the FAT+ is much happier with the native files off the disk. It plays MKV but I've had troubles with it not displaying subtitles and the screen blanking out during FF/RW operations. No such problems when playing a .VOB file or a DVD.ISO -- playback and trickplay functions are perfect.

Hence repackaging the streams as an MKV as opposed to leaving them as .VOB or .ISO is a needless complication for use on the FAT+.