IFO, ISO,etc..: Which format to choose?

[gembriaco]

Hi everyone

I'm trying to properly rip DVDs, some of them to be converted to a divX CD-rom with Gknot, some of them to be watched on my PC from my HD with Daemon tools, some of them to ultimately burn to a DVD when I have a burner.

Doom now recommends DVDDecrypter as probably the best ripper, so I followed the advice . But between the different modes offered by the current version of this software(file, IFO, ISO), I'm unsure which format to use. I've read the guides in both Doom and the official DVDDecrypter website, but I find this unclear for a newbie and in addition they are not up to date (latest version not documented, for instance).

So, admitting that someone wanting to rip a DVD probably has 3 kinds of reasons to do so:
- save it on his HD to watch it later on
- copy it onto a DVD (for instance when 2-layers blank DVDs become available, to overcome the space problem)
- reprocess it (to add subtitles, code it to a different format, or else)

What format should he use in each case? And, depending on his intentions, what should he care about while operating (eg including all sound streams in the file, versus separating them, etc...)?

Thanks for clarifying all this! It could be the prelude to a dummy's guide to ripping... :D

[N_F]

For copying the files to your harddrive for later compressing (DivX perhaps) IFO is the mode you should use. Regarding the other two reasons you mention I'm not certain, so I better leave it up to someone who knows.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

For backup up to the hdd for watching at a later date, you cant really beat ISO mode.

IFO mode is great if you just want to reencode to divx, vcd, svcd or reauthor onto a dvdr.

File mode is best used when the other programs you are using require unedited vob files and perform their own IFO parsing. These would include tools like FlaskMPEG and possibly (?) IFOEdit.

[gembriaco]

Thanks, that clarifies the problem.

One more question , though:
You say that IFO mode is great if you just want to reencode to divx, vcd, svcd or reauthor onto a dvdr. In that case, should we rather demux the streams, ie audio and subtitles, or leave them as a direct stream copy (don't know what raw is) ?

Many thanks!

And congratulations to you for DVDDecrypter, it's a terrific piece of software.

[N_F]

I guess you could use the demux options, but it's probably easier if you just leave it at default (direct stream copy), especially if you're new to DivX encoding at don't know exactly what to do with all the files.