I recently got quite tired of the manual overhead I had to go through to rip a DVD to my WHS. I looked around but was not able to find a free application that automatically rips DVDs once put them into a DVD drive connected via USB to the WHS. With a little experimenting I was able to find the following solution and it is working without issues for a couple months now – maybe it is also helpful for others:

1. Find an external USB - DVD player (I built one myself from old parts I had lying around but I saw some new ones from Amazon for <USD20)

2.Connect the USB player to your WHS box and find out what drive letter it get’s mapped to (usually E)

3. Install DVDFAB DVD Copy onto your WHS (the free version is sufficient). Rip one DVD manually to make sure there are no initial pop-ups which might interfere with the below script and that ripping works fine.

4. Create a batch file with the following content and save it to C:\Batches on your WHS with the name autorip.bat (you will have to create that folder). If your DVD drive get’s mapped with a different drive letter then E (See step two) you will have to replace E in the batch file with the according drive letter


For the /DEST parameter of the DVDFab command you will have to put some directory where you want the copied videos to be saved to. Make sure not to use a drive letter here but the share.

5. Use the scheduler on the WHS to start the above script when the WHS starts and to permanently run it in background. Start->Control Panel -> Scheduled Tasks -> Add Scheduled Task. I set mine up as shown in the attached screenshots. You will have to set the password for the user you choose to run the script under

That’s it – Once you restart your WHS it will run the script permanent in background. If you want to rip a DVD you just switch on the DVD drive connected your WHS (I switch mine off if I don’t rip for a while to save power) and just put in the DVD to rip. Once the ripping is done (~20min for me) the drive will open/eject the DVD. The script writes a log file to c:\batches\log.txt so you know what’s going on

Note: I improved the script later on to also rip Audio CDs using a software called ExpressRip. The following script is the updated version:

How well does this work with Evncrypted DVD's?

That is why you need DVDFab, it removes the encryption from DVDs

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

It is possible to use anydvd hd in place of the dvdfab code section?

_________________
MOBO-AsRock Z77M
CPU-Intel i5 3570
RAM-G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB
PCI-Intel Pro NIC
CASE-AZZA Helios 910
PSU-Corsair 750W
OS-UnRaid Final V5.0
Storage: 15 TB and growing!

You should be able to adopt the script to run with most programs that provide command line access to it's functions. Did a quick search in the AnyDVD forum but it sound like unfortunately AnyDVD does not support command line operation.

Is there a free "lite" version of DVDFab? http://www.dvdfab.com/download.htm only seems to offer trialware with option to buy. But your write-up emphasizes the free version. It's often hard to find the free lite versions, so I wasn't sure.

Thanks.

Adam

Right here:

http://www.dvdfab.com/hd-decrypter.htm

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Thank you for your post. I have a DVD drive in my system am running WHS V1, I have tried your script and am having issues with it. First off , it will not autorun once the system has rebooted -- did I miss something in the your instructions? When Express RIP finshes it does not shutdown as your script says it should? I am running Express RIp version 1.81, Are you able to reach the musicbrainz server? I have it set for this but mine comes up saying "The operation Failed when trying to access the online album database. Check you are connected to the internet" -- I am so what is wrong here?

Thanks
JW

Regarding the problem with the autorun:
- Every time the batch file is started it should create an entry like "Starting rip task at ..." in the file log.txt. Check if this entry is created. If not then there is something wrong with your scheduler task. If believe you can start it manually to troubleshoot. Maybe the password is incorrect? If you see the above entry in the log file there must be a problem with your script which causes it to terminate. Run the script manually form a cmd prompt to troubleshoot.

Regarding the issue with ExpressRip:
- I use version 1.81 and are able to access both Musicbrainz and FreeDB services. Via the following string [%a]\[%b]\{%a %n2 %t} under the "File Format For Extraced Files" file option in ExpressRip you can even use the results of the lookup when saving the files.

thanks : ) I will look into that, I have noticed that it will automaticaly rip one cd after I boot the system up but if I leave it for a while and come back it will not rip a new cd in the system. But I am also having other issues with this WHS. On a different topic track -- have you had issues with Window Media center connector for WHS not connecting to the WHS and hanging after entering in the password?

I have got the cd ripping part to work but have notced something in Windows Media center and waht to know of you have seen this and how you fixed it. I can rip several cd's and when I got to WMC i can see them w Meat data, under the Music category and they show correctly. These cd's are stored on my WHS v1. When I shutdown my Win7 computer (for the night) and start it up the next day all the music I just ripped suddenly show under "unknown Artisit" -- have you seen this and if so how did you fix it? How do you access your music?


thanks
James Walker

So the DVD is ripped with this script. Don't you need Imgburn or Handbrake to put this in a format (ISO, MKV, etc.) that most media players will recognize?

I tried the script on one of our network client PCs as a test. I simply ran "autorip" from a CMD prompt. Once the drive ejected, the DVDFAB program did not exit. The only change to the script that I made was to remove the carriage return after "\DEST" and dropped the "Full_DVD" out of the target path. What gives?