DVD's are quite expensive, and they are actually quite fragile. Computer Hard Drives are relatively cheap and very durable.

Wouldn't it be fantastic if you could rip your DVD's and store them as Files on your Computers Hard Drive.

Well actually you can, but let's take a moment to think about why on earth you would want to:

• You don't have to fiddle about with DVD's when putting them into the player.
• You can access the DVD's all from one place.
• You can search your DVD collection using your Computer.
• It would make a wonderful Home Entertainment system.
• Networked PC's could access all the DVD's.

There are several different ways you can rip DVD to your Computers Hard Drive, the easiest is just to rip the VOB Files from the DVD. You can do this with a number of different Tools.

One example is Smartripper, you may already have this Tool installed on your Computer, if you don't then it may be quite difficult to obtain. Try a Google search for links, but a lot of people have removed it.

To rip the VOB files and play them on your Computer:

1. Put the DVD that you want to rip into your computers DVD drive.
2. Open Smartripper.
3. Smartripper automatically Scans the DVD and Displays the results.
4. Choose the Files option at the left hand side of the screen.
5. At the bottom check the all files checkbox.
6. In the target area click Select Folder and select a folder to store your DVD in.
7. Wait until a message is displayed indicating the RIP is complete.
8. Open up your favourite DVD Software.
9. Click open Media.
10. Navigate to the VOB files that have been created by Smartripper.
11. Watch your Movie direct from your Hard Drive.
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This method works perfectly, however the problem is that the VOB Files are huge for most Movies this will result in 5 GB size Files So if you installed a 200 GB Hard Drive dedicated to just Movies (you had another with your operating system on) then you could store around 40 Movies, which doesn't actually sound that bad. But do you have a dedicated Hard Drive just for movies ?

An alternative would be to rip the DVD's to another Format. MPEG or AVI are very popular Formats. The free way to do this is to use DVD2AVI, this Software will convert already ripped VOB Files into MPEG or AVI Files that you can store on your Hard Drive or convert to VCD. another Tool called TMPGEnc can be used to convert the output to a Format that can be written to a VCD.

DiVX is quite a popular Format for Electronic Videos DivX offers very good Quality Video but cannot be read by the majority of DVD players. This won't be a problem if you intend to store and play them from your Computer, but if you want to make Video CD's then I suggest you use DVD2AVI and just stick with a normal AVI File.

If your AVI File is too big to fit onto one CD then you will need to split it, you can split it using one more Tool.

1. Download a Tool called Virtual dub from the Internet.
2. Choose File -> Open Video File.
3. Locate AVI File that you want to split and click open.
4. Click Video, and then select Direct Stream Copy.
5. Hold down the shift key and drag the timeline marker to where you want to make the split.
6. Press End on your keyboard.
7. Save the first part by going File Save as AVI.
8. Press Home on your keyboard.
9. Move the timeline marker right to the end of the Track.
10. Press End on your keyboard.
11. Click File Save as AVI again, and save the second part of your Video.

Note: you will only have to split Files if you intend to make them into VCD's, if you don't want to then just save them onto your Computers Hard Drive. You can use your favourite Media Player to play back the Files that are stored on your Computers Hard Drive.