What Is the Best Format to Rip DVD for Storing DVD Movies

Q: 'Recently, I found that there are too many DVDs piled up in my home, so in order to reduce the space occupied by these DVDs and to allow the DVD movie to play on more devices, I decided to convert these DVDs to digital video. But what is the best format to rip DVD? Which DVD Ripper should I use?'

A: In fact, many people have similar needs. Though DVDs seem to be out of date today, people still buy DVDs. But these DVDs will gradually consume a large space in our houses and sometimes, we would also find it inconvenient to play DVDs on other portable devices. In such cases, our best solution is to rip these DVDs. Yet, the thing is, to which format should we rip our DVDs or what is the best format for DVD ripping.

You see, different formats (and codecs) are designed for different purposes. And the best DVD format depends on what you are going to rip DVDs for. So instead of saying what is the best format for DVD ripping, the more accurate way to say is what is the best format to rip DVD for archiving home movies, for good quality, for small size, for the best viewing experience, etc. Given this, here we offer a detailed guide on video formats for different aims.

If you want to store every data of your DVD including the DVD structure and DVD menu, you want to save it as an ISO file, which contains the exact DVD data with no data loss. Creating ISO from your old DVDs also makes it easy for burning on new DVDs.

To obtain the highest quality, one should avoid video transcoding. And that means you should not change the DVD parameters like the encoder when ripping DVDs. Since the DVD main content is stored in MPEG-2 VOB files, the MPEG-2 MPG is hence the best format to which you should rip your DVDs for high quality.

H265 MP4 is the best movie format for DVD with small size. Generally speaking, an original 9 GB DVD movie can be reduced to 1 GB when it was converted to H265 MP4. And what’s even good about this format is that it gives you also high quality while taking only little space.

H264 is cross-platform supported and usually stored in container formats like MP4, MKV, and MOV. If you want to watch your DVD movies on more devices like computers, tablets, and mobiles, you should rip your DVDs to H264 encoded MP4, MKV, or MOV (for Apple users).