[SOLVED] DVD's To Laptop HDD

Hi,My son is of on a vacation soon and he will be taking his laptop with him and a bundle of his dvd collection.His pal told not to take any dvd's with as they colud get nicked or lost even,So hie suggestion was to copy one or two on to his hdd Must say they are shop bought dvd's but they will ony be for his personal use only.
Now to the question how does he copy a shop bought dvd to his hdd to be able to watch while on holiday??.
Any help here please,Its got to be something easy as we are not very techy men.
Many thanks.

Well there is some question as to the legality of Ripping commercial DVDs, even your own DVDs ripped for your personal use.

I've never ripped a DVD to an AVI (or mp4) file but that would be the best option, a "DVD Ripper" that outputs to an AVI file format. A common one I've heard of is WinX DVD Ripper Platinum for $36US but I've never personally tried it. Since it can be purchased online I'm sure you can get it on your side of the pond too, maybe with paypal? but you would need to make sure it handles PAL & your encryption methods if they are any different then ours.

You might wait for some other ideas, maybe somebody knows of a freeware version that works for commercial DVDs.

AnyDVD/AnyDVD HD is a good program. Here's the link http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html It also has a trial of either 15 or 30 days, so he can see if he like's it before purchase.

What is the output formats available from AnyDVD? I believe it's main purpose is to copy DVDs. There are many products that can extract DVD files and output the original decrypted 8GB Dual Layer or even shrink them to a 4GB version (capable of burning to a standard DVD) but they leave it in a DVD file structure.

If you wish to keep the files on a harddrive for viewing then 8 or even 4GB are highly wasteful. If you can convert the result to an AVI it can usually be stored in 1 to 1.5GB.

All AnyDVD does is copy the whole dvd onto your hard drive. As far as format's it uses, I haven't got a clue. Now I do know if you wan't to change the dvd's format, that you need to use something like Handbrake. For instance, I purchased AnyDVD HD to get my movie dvd's on my pc. Then when I got my Xbox 360, I had to install Handbrake to change from avi to mp4, so I could stream the dvd to my Xbox 360 for watching on my hdtv.

DVD files are VOB. I think for trendy's goal WinX DVD Ripper would be more appropriate as it can create the much smaller AVI files. Also VOBs need a folder to store them because one movie is usually at least 5 files with non-descriptive names.

I can carry 6 to 11 AVI movies all without any folders and each just a single file with the movie title as the name on one 8GB USB stick whereas it is possible to get 1 or 2 VOB formatted movies stored in a couple folders on that same thumb drive.

Also AnyDVD is also a paid product; I thought maybe someone knew of a open source or freeware program.

There are actually free programs available to do what AnyDVD does (for example DVDRip with Decryptor). And there is at least one free program I saw to RIP to AVI the VOB files once they have been decrypted. But you usually give up a some convenience like a nice user interface or if doing it with multiple products the extra steps add time to the whole process, and makes it more complicated for the casual user, takes more harddrive space temporarily, etc.

WinX DVD Ripper allows for output to either AVI or MP4 but for PCs the AVI is much more common.

Unless they've changed something, AnyDVD doesn't copy anything, it just breaks the copy protection on a commercial DVD so that a ripper and/or encoder program can rip data from the disc.

I've used AnyDVD and Divx Author (or Tmpgenc 4) for the last ten years quite happily.

AnyDVD now will do a full DVD copy, as an ISO image. If you right-click on the fox tray icon you will see that option displayed. SlySoft recommends that you use CloneDVD with it, but AnyDVD will copy DVDs.

All DVDs are VOB and IFO file format. They're all setup with two folders residing on the DVD; one labled "AUDIO_TS" and the other "VIDEO_TS". It's the video part that contains all the information as the audio folder resides as a blank folder. But, some software WILL require the audio folder in order to do a proper copy.

For trendy's purpose a DVD ripper program is his best bet as it will shrink the DVD down to a more manageable size. AVI would probably be best.

DVD Fab is an excellent program.

Thanks all for replies,All sorted now sorry for delay in replying.