[mythtv-users] Does ripping DVDs preserve all the features

[Andrew Dodd]

Quoting "Mark B. Elrod" <elrod at shallowpool.com>:

> I would like them nicely organized in a UI like Myth. Ideally you could 
> see them in a view that listed the movies and maybe optionally played 
> their DVD menu's in a little window similiar to scene selection on a DVD 
> now :)
> 
> What is the format of the DVD menu stuff? You would think you could 
> leave all of that alone and the DVD player would handle it like it does 
> now but then re-encode the main video stream to mp4. If the player can 
> play mp4 and mp2 does it care? Is some of the DVD menu stuff is linked 
> to the main video file - such as scene selection? If you re-encode then 
> maybe the indexing does not work? I would think you would be able to 
> rewrite that info if you understood the format.
DVD streams are MPEG program streams with additional navigational data added. 
(The VOB format), which is mainly to allow easier seeking within the stream.

Also, subtitles are multiplexed into the program stream.

So if you wanted to reencode into MPEG-4, you'd need some sort of container
format that supported subtitles, etc.

It's theoretically possible, but not doable at the moment.

If you simply rip the DVD with a decrypter, it will be treated by player
software identically to the original DVD.

It's also possible to strip out unnecessary features and recompress the DVD at a
lower bitrate to save disk space.  You can also extract the main movie and turn
it into a standalone DVD without the menus or anything.  Under Windows,
DVDShrink is excellent for "movie-only" rips and recompression.

Removing some but not all features is rather time-consuming and labor-intensive,
and pretty much requires a tool called IFOEdit under Windows.