jn
You don't say wheter you want to have an exact copy of the DVD with all of the extras (like director's comments, other languages, etc ) in your backup copy or if you just want the movie. Also you don't say if you want to compress the backup copy to save space. A full, uncompressed, commercial DVD backup will be up to 9 GB. The main movie will be about half of this, so if you back up just the movie you will be around 4 -6 GB per movie. If disc space is an issue (for most of us it is), you will probably want to compress the backup file to save disc space. For compression there are many options.
Here's a start that will give you the flexibility to do whatever you want.
Rip the DVD with DVD Decrypter. On the Settings/File Mode tab set the file selection to main move and the splitting option to none. This will create a single, large (4 -6 GB) vob file, called something like VTS_03_1.VOB in the VIDEO_TS folder. This file will contain just the main movie. If you run this through Video redo quickstream fix and name the routput file
moviename.mpg, it will show up and play in BTV or Link just like a BTV recording. Set up a DVD folder in web admin and store all of your DVD backups there. Then you can access them at anytime from the BTV interface.
If disc space is an issue (if it isn't now, eventually it will be), you will want to compress the files to save space. There are many threads on this forum on how to do this. If you want to keep the AC3 surround sound, my personal favorite is to use avi.net and compress the file to a divx or xvid avi file at about 20 - 25% of the original size. Encoding time will be about 1.5 hrs per hr of video length.
If you want much faster encoding, and you are happy to use MP3 stereo sound, instead of AC3 surround sound (it is a backup after all), you can use the Avivoxcode.exe discussed
here to encode the quickstram fixed mpg file to 2000 - 3500 kbps mpeg4 (divx). You will have to experiment to find what bit rate suits you best. The resulting files will be 25 -50% (10 - 25 MB/min) of the original size, depending on the bit rate you choose, and will play perfectly in BTV or VLC. Or you can reencode to lower bitrate mpeg2 and keep the AC# sound at about half the file size.
YMMV, but for me a 2 hr DVD decrypts in about 25 min and the avivo encode takes about 30 min.
BB