DVD to VCD with DVD2AVI and TMPGEnc

Ok, most common questions what we receive are related to so-called "DVD ripping", which basically means taking a legal backup of your own DVD movie using your computer's DVD-ROM drive. There are various tools and even more methods for creating a "perfect" DVD backup. I'm not going to go into very specific details, normally meant only for ripping experts, but I instead try to go through the backup process step by step with pictures. This guide creates VideoCD compliant video files out of your existing DVDs and those files, once burned to a CD, can be played with normal stand-alone DVD player, just like DVD discs.

Also, if you're more interested of other video formats than VideoCD, you can find our DVD to SVCD guide from here.

Requirements

First of all, you definately need a DVD-ROM drive -- regular CD-ROM drive doesn't do the trick, sorry guys. Secondly, you need helluva lot of free HDD space, appx. 5 to 10 GBs. This is needed only for a short period of time, the actual VCD you're going to get out of this process, is 800MB - 1.3GB. And finally, you need bunch of useful tools that you can download from here:

DVD2AVI (note: you should try this new version first, but some users have had problems with it, so if you have problems opening the .d2v project with TMPGEnc, try version 1.76 from here)
TMPGEnc

...and finally, if you want also to burn the VCDs to CDs, you need to have CD-R drive and some recording software that supports VideoCDs, like Ahead's NERO or Easy CD Creator Platinum.

To process CSS encrypted DVDs you will also need a DVD ripping software.