You may have a large number of DVD discs and want to enjoy them on portable devices. It is also very likely that at some point you wanted to upload them to the Internet to share with more people, or even save your movies and TV shows on a hard drive to take with you wherever you go. There are actually a ton of great DVD converters available to help you in this process, but one of the best is VLC Media Player. We explain step by step how you can convert a DVD or a Blu-ray to an MP4 file without too much effort, both with the old VLC and with the newer version.
VLC 2.2.4 and lower
The first thing you have to do is open the DVD and go to Media to choose Convert / Save. Select the tab disk and adjusts the start position to the Title / Chapter correct. You will find them by first viewing on the Media / Open Disc disc . Click Convert / Save. Add the filename to start the conversion. Then mark File and enter a name that ends in .mpg. Click Start and be patient as the process may take a while.
Keep in mind to make sure that when you want to view the file with VLC , the Play / Save box is not checked in the Open dialog box , otherwise the two hours of decoding will be eliminated.
Old VLC
The first thing you have to do is open the VLC , next to the DVD , and go to the File section and select Open disc to display a dialog box. Next go to the Disc tab and select " DVD " under the Disc Type text field . Now, in the device name field, insert the letter of the DVD-ROM drive and "0" in the title field. Select OK to be sure that is what you want to convert. If you only have one optical drive, it will appear configured by default.
When you have chosen the DVD or Blu-ray you want to copy, choose the Open Disc option from the File menu . You should find the Advanced options field at the bottom of the dialog . Then select Play / Save.
Now, go to the settings section, which is next to the Play / Save button , and click on it. Uncheck the Play locally button if it is selected to prevent playback while converting. Check the File box and choose where you want to save it in the search field. When you name the file, be careful to add the extension .m4v at the end, this way it will be saved as an h.264 MPEG 10 video file. Finally, in Encapsulation method select MP4 . Below this should appear another box called Transcoding Options . Then select MP4Vfor video codec and MP4A for audio codec . Click OK , and again in the next box. VLC will start to convert the disk to the hard drive.