Ripping footage with DVDFab 9 - Compression Issues

[kapparomeo]

Following the advice of the guides here on the org, I've always used DVDFab for ripping my DVD footage. By and large it's done all I've asked of it, but recently I have noticed an issue and I'd like to know if anyone else has experienced it and what workarounds are available.

I am making backups of my DVDs using the Copy Disc - Full Disc option (my trial period expired a long time ago so I can't use the Clone/Burn tool). I have selected "DVD9" compression to ensure that the disc is ripped fully and without compression. Despite this though, I've noticed that there's a distinct loss of quality in the ripped version.

These screenshots aren't from anime, but they perhaps most clearly illustrate my point:

Screenshot from movie viewed from the disc

Screenshot from the version on the hard drive - .VOB file

I'm puzzled as to why this is happening, as again I chose "DVD9" to ensure that the disc was ripped fully. All other options are defaults. Does anyone else recognise what is happening here?

[BasharOfTheAges]

Looks like a colorspace conversion... You also, most likely have a different codec decoding the ripped file to dump the image than you did to take the initial screenshot with.

There are encoding shortcuts used to make DVDs that players (and software based players) know how to filter on playback so the video on your screen looks nicer than it actually is encoded on the disc. That's why the guides have a filtering section on them that talk about ways to clean up footage.

[kapparomeo]

So you'd say that it's a codec issue rather than a loss of data in the file, then? That's reassuring, I was concerned that I had a HDD full of duff movies now.

Thanks for the tip. Are there any particular .VOB codecs that you'd recommend?

[BasharOfTheAges]

Didn't say it was a bad codec at all, just that it could be displayed somewhat differently in the two cases. You need to use what you got out of dvdfab as your ground truth and work from there to get it looking how you want it to.