Dear TK, thank you for your reply. I feel somewhat confused with your question addressed to me: "why don't you try a secured DVD and post a comment about your results. "
I asked my question about a specific type of DVD ripping, hoping that some other forum members might have already used this software and would share his/her experience with such use of today’s GAOTD.

I asked the question in order to keep my WIN machine clean from trash, remnants and modifications made by a software piece the features whereof may occur useless for me. For this purpose I avoid installing and then removing software that does not fit my desired use of it. And I recommend this policy to everybody. This is why I am sorry I will not follow your suggestion to install, try, uninstall, if software occurs unsuitable, and share my experience with others.

I have always thought that questions about software features are asked and answered here by forum members in order make it easier for others to decide whether (or not) a given piece of software is suitable for use desired by other member(s).

TK, Thank you for your reply and for your time . I used a non-standard wording quite intentionally as I thought that in the context of multimedia DVDs we’re talking about, readers might guess what I had in mind without my being absolutely explicit for reasons originating from global "privacy protection" measures. :) I see I was wrong and I do appologize you and the other forum members for asking such an unfortunate" question.
Kind regards - Marek

In response to [ Marek ] wanting other people here on GOTD to do the work of providing insurance that the software will do exactly what Marek expects in a way satisfactory to Marek with no risk of Marek having an unsatisfying experience in an effort to avoid Marek having to uninstall it and keep hunting for something better for Merek ...

... do you see where I'm going?

Just download each GOTD daily offering and explore it and report back, folks, that's the way we play it.

No one's computers are the same,
no one's expectations are the same,
no one's experience is the same.

Some folks love stuff that I hate,
and visa versa, go figure.

And even if someone else said "yes, it works for me", it might not work for you, Merek, on your computer with your disk, and even if it does, you just might not like the program regardless, it's your whim.

So, just download each GOTD daily offering and explore it and report back, folks, that's the way we play it.

And tell us all about it.

- - - - -

PS - I use DigiArty WinX DVD Ripper, and since it works, I'm hard pressed to interrupt my hard wrought DVD copying routine to try PCWinSoft to see if it's neater, cleaner, faster, something better in some way, so I look forward to other folk's reviews, and that might motivate me ... or not ... I already gave up on Leawo, finding v7 unmanageably messy, and it became a juggle to get old v5 happy with newer DVDs.
.

Sailingharry, No. This certainly has more options on export but it doesn't do what you want.

Sailingharry, What you want is an .iso file that can be created by many different software programs. Play it back with vlc media player and you have all the things you asked for.

" I'd like to find a program that allows me to take a DVD and turn it into a playable file on a PC -- complete with chapters, menu, subtitles, etc."

Chapters, menus, & subs aren't in the actual DVD video itself, though CC may be. Subtitles are graphic-based streams or tracks, that along with audio streams/tracks are combined with video in the DVD's VOB files. Menus are separate titles, like the video movie. The scripts that make menus work and contain the chapters are in VTS files. The best way to put video DVDs on a hard drive [or USB stick etc.] is as a DVD file set or folder, which contains all the files that are on the DVD, and that way you get everything. You can also use ISO files, as comrad suggested, which are simply DVD disc images -- everything on disc as it appears on disc -- but they're less convenient, e.g. fewer players will work with them. Either way you have to have a copy of everything for menus to work, so you can't easily get rid of things like trailers and unwanted audio tracks to reduce the on-disk footprint. DVDFab however will let you copy the entire disc and alter the scripting so the DVD copy goes right to the main menu, skipping trailers etc.

That said, the most common alternative is to OCR the subs to an .srt file, using something like Subtitle Edit -- when named the same as the video file, Very many software players will display them when you turn subs on in the player.

Sailingharry,

If you are looking to convert a DVD (or BluRay) into a single video file, while preserving all audio tracks, chapters, and subtitles, you are looking for software called MakeMKV. It does everything you want, except for menus. If you are stuck on having a menu system to retain things like the outtakes and whatnot, your choices are limited. To get MakeMKV, just add "www." to the front and ".com" to the end of the name of the software and you are good to go.

mike, I edit subtitles with "notepad" , which is more than enough to edit SRT which is nothing but a TXT file.

mike,
There is also the program Handbrake that does chapters and subtitles.

Sailingharry, Looking for the same type of program as you are.

There are programs that mount an ISO as a virtual drive, then whatever is on/in that ISO can be "played/opened" what relevant software - if the ISO contains menus and movies and selectable audio and subtitles, then DVD player software will see the ISO virtual drive as a movie DVD.

Search things like [ mount iso as virtual drive windows 10 ], plus [ make an ISO of a DVD ].
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Sailingharry, Such software you may need has been regularly offerred by GAOTD. Just stay tuned and you’ll get what you need. Or you may search the net using software/developer names such as "WinX DVD". a bunch of DVD ripping software by "Elby", or AVS.

Sid, the entire bellow part of the interface are the video output settings starting with the output format list right on the main user interface. Note that you have a wide range of parameters to generate your output.

Alessandro Ferri, I've read the top of this page AND went to PC WinSoft's web site. It does not show or state the formats available. And now I'm getting down voted for asking a legitimate question BEFORE downloading it? Go figure. Anyway, I'd still appreciate the information if anyone in the community has or has used this program.

Sid,

At the bottom of the program, under Output Format, a drop-down menu shows:
Video:
AVI
MPG
MP4
WMV
MKV
MOV
FLV
OGG

Audio:
MP3
M4A
CAF
AIFF
FLAC
WAV
AAC

Hope this helps. Best of luck to you.

Gary, Thank you for that info. Companies seem to miss the boat sometimes when it comes to advertising their software. That's a fairly impressive list of formats. It has some that Handbrake is missing. I only wish I had gotten it while the giveaway was still in process. Maybe next go-around ;)

"I got an error: "This media cannot be ripped"..."

*Just a guess*, & FWIW, the DVD recorders often used to convert analog video to DVD usually produce a slightly different DVD structure -- if that's the case with your home made DVDs, that could be what triggered the warning.