Ripping DVDs to ISO - Is MakeMKV the best option?

[mattias83]

I keep putting off ripping my collection of DVDs because I'm never sure which is the best option. Does MakeMKV do a proper job of ripping to ISO?

Other options I have handy are DVDDecrypter and Xreveal (Free version). DVDDecrypter is ancient so I wonder how reliable it would prove to be with my collection. I own mostly old DVDs but I"m unsure which protections still might throw off that old software. Is Xreveal reliable? Frustratingly, the latest update of Xreveal seems to have moved some decryption standards recently from free to paid only (like ARccOS). I'm unsure if this would affect my collection as it's mostly older TV shows and random features.

Any issues with corrupted files or improper rips from any of these?

One thing that disappoints me is none of the newer ripping apps provides an option for including an mds file to retain layer breaks. Why is this just ignored these days? DVDDecrypter does this correctly, but neither MakeMKV nor XReveal does this. So you lose the layer break info for dual-layered DVDs, which will affect where the layer break is placed if burning to a new DVD. I guess that's a reason to use DVDDecrypter, but it would be nice if I could trust MakeMKV to do a reliable job.

Any advise on which to use for backups? Has anybody run into issues using MakeMKV for DVD ISOs, and then using those ISOs later for burning or ripping? Any metadata issues?

[tomty89]

To be frank, IMHO if you are really paranoid about stuff, at the end of the day the only "solution" is to cross-check as much as you can. There's the tool `cmp` in addition to the various hashes in the Linux / unix-like world. Pretty sure you can find something similar for Windows (probably in a more Windows-style too, if you prefer). (Also `cmp` is at least also available in msys2, which could be slow though.)

In addition to comparing bytes of (decrypted) ISOs, you can also have them mounted and cross-check only the files (which are IMHO the only things that really matter -- I don't really care about things like "layer break", even if that could really matter to some players). (In Linux you can do it with something like rsync -rvc -- if you consider the hash it uses "safe" enough.)

Certainly it would mean double / triple or more the time you need, but that's the price for being paranoid, no?

(Btw I don't mean to offend you by using the word paranoid. Perhaps there's a better word but my English is not good. What I mean is just like "realizing programs could be imperfect / go wrong".)

I'm somewhat also a paranoia myself, so when I realized that I can actually backup encrypted ISO from my DVDs, I did so, even though I don't think libdvdcss (and dvdbackup the frontend), my go-to for decryption, has ever "gone wrong". (Probably the approach / library works only for DVDs with only "simple" encryption / copy protection, but that's what I have.)

[Ezatoka]

So you lose the layer break info for dual-layered DVDs, which will affect where the layer break is placed if burning to a new DVD

Honest question: Why should anyone do this these days? Place the MKV file on a USB drive and kinda any modern media device will be able to play it.