Copy DVD without recompressing video

[Stefan]

Hi,
I use Handbrake on Mac OS X and I think it´s a powerful and simple tool for converting DVDs. Thanks to all people involved into this!
Unfortunately I have´t found an option (so it´s probably not possible in current versions) to copy a DVD without recompression. I don´t want to decrypt/copy all those VOB files, but just create a single MPEG-2 (or Matroska) file containing the selected chapters with the selected audio track(s).
Is that possible with handbrake? If not, is it planed to support it? Or this there an other free, easy to use application for Mac providing this?

Regards,
Stefan

[rhester]

Well...that's really what a VOB is, minus the chapters. HandBrake does not support this, and the VOB container doesn't support chapters, but there may be a tool out there that can wrap MPEG-2 and AC3 in Matroska (though I imagine the number of players that could grok that combination will be very, very limited).

Rodney

[Stefan]

Sorry, I guess I haven´t explained myself exactly: I can select a title and all or yust some chapters of a DVD with HandBrake and save this as a MP4 or Matroska with for example x264 encoded video and original audio or recompressed to AAC or Vorbis. That´s great.
All I want now is the option not to recompress the video, but keep the original MPEG-2 encoding (space does not matter - but quality and time). That´s it. Matroska was yust an idea since it is already implemented as output format in HandBrake (unlike MPEG-2) and supports MPEG-2 Video. Will that be possible? I don´t know tool as easy as HandBrake providing this.

Stefan

[rhester]

That is precisely the answer I gave. You cannot do this with HandBrake, and all the other caveats I mentioned still apply regardless of the tool you do choose (if any exist).

Rodney

[zen649]

I used to do this same process using MPEG Streamclip. It lets you load all the VOB files and combine them into a single MPEG file. No encoding. I did run into some issue with dropped frames and it seemed to be limited to a max of 4 GB. Anything larger would not play in QT/Front Row which is what I was using to play the files. I think the files would play fine using MPEG Streamclip and VLC.

Note: MPEG Steamclip requires the Apple MPEG-2 codec to work with the vob files. I am not sure where to get an MPEG-2 codec for the PC. The Apple MPEG-2 codec is about $20.

[ryan_hurst]

I would also like to see this, I currently do this utilizing VideoReDo and its Quick Stream Fix feature; its a demux/mux that drops out the DVD specific control frames and flags.

I use handbrake for everything else, it would be wonderfull if when you opened a DVD in handbrake you could select the output format as mpeg 2, if none of the options that require transcoding were selected it would just demux/mux into a mpeg 2.

I do this as a relible way to stream DVDs to my Media Center Extenders that does not require a long conversion process or any loss of quality, the only times I go to MP4 is when I am going on a PMP or the content has subtitles or forced subtitles, in these cases I do the transcode to keep those features.

[nightstrm]

From the top of the page:

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows

While I'm not a developer, I don't see this changing anytime soon.

[jbrjake]

HandBrake is a multimedia encoder. That's what it does. If all you care about is the container, use a muxer.

[maiki]

If you have any of the commercial products that deal with MPEG2 video, like Ulead Video Studio, Womble, TMPGENC, etc., I think most of those would do what you want, after you decrypt the video with something else.

Most of these have demos available

Just load the decrypted DVD folder into the program, and save to a single MPEG-2 file. Most of these have a feature called Smartrender (certainly Ulead has it, I think others), that if you set your output video setting to be the same as the input video, it will not rerender.


What is the purpose of doing this though? If you want to watch the DVD-video from your hard drive, and don't mind it taking up the same amount of space as the original DVD (although you could really get the same quality taking up much less space, compressing H 264), why not just watch from the DVD folder on the hard drive, which will be just like watching the original DVD,menus and everything? Why put it into a single MPEG-2 file of the same size as the folder?

[saverio]

With some rippers (at least MacTheRipper) you have the option to output a single VOB of the title. This contains all the audio and all the subtitles. Then you open your VOB in MkvToolnix or any other muxer and save in your new matroska container.

Beware that subtitles, afaik, are not supported this way, and also I had problems playing the resulting files on my PopcornHour.

Anyway this has really nothing to do with Handbrake, as you don't have to convert anything.

Moreover, as space is not a problem, why don't you stick with a disk image (iso/img)? they are very well supported both by VLC and by sigma players, and also in the new WD, and you just have to extract the main movie if you want.