www.makemkv.com

Is there a simple way to tell which of the DVD files are necessary (and sufficient) to copy to the hard drive?

I don't understand what "Chapters" are.

I don't need "previews", but don't know how to identify them without watching them on the hard drive.

One copied file contained comments from an actor and a director; that seemed interesting, but again, I see no way to know anything about the contents without viewing the file.

[If a file were labelled "interviews" or some such, that would avoid the need for me to preview - but that doesn't appear possible.]

I'd like to keep the copy time and the hard drive storage space at a minimum. But at this point it looks like I have to copy all the files, then preview each, and delete the ones I don't want.

For movies, it is different than TV series disks.

Movies will typically have a single large file on a DVD. Exceptions exist, but most are this way.

A TV series will generally have a group of same-size files, one for each episode. Exceptions exist, though.

If you have no interest in "extras", setting the minimum time to larger than, say, 15 minutes will tell MakeMKV to not select any extras automatically.