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301 DVDs I want to get on a drive

Cienja

Cienja

Senior member
My wife buys DVDs - constantly. We have way too many taking up way too much space, so I want to rip them and have them on a drive or two so we watch the digital backups instead of the physical DVDs.

We are keeping all of the physical DVDs, just in storage instead of in the way 🙂

I'm looking for advice on 1. how to rip the DVDs (most efficient and effective way) with the DRM and without, and 2. best way to store/watch them - I'm thinking WDTV or something similar.

Any input is appreciated.

Thanks!
 
i generally use handbrake to rip my dvds and depending on the settings they generally come out to 1.2-1.4 gb each, but thats just the movie. if you were to just copy the movies to keep the menus/extra features they'd come out (presumably) to 4.7 gb each but i normally use my wife's mac and mactheripper for my needs, never got around to getting a program for windows/linux.

301 disks at 1.4gb each is 421.4 gb
301 disks at 4.7gb each is 1.4 tb

you already have the disks but at ~20 minutes per disk it would take forever to re-rip them so i'd suggest a raid 1 or 5 of 2tb drives. (based on the size/cost ratio).
 
hd is cheap. A few weeks a go ncix had a 2TB ext hdd for 90 bux.
important part is how much work do you want to do to play it.
media player such as wdtv live plus is easy to use, but obviously there is some capital involved. You could just play from a laptop that you already own for example.

I would not spend too much time transcoding, just rip the movie out into like mkv or something.
 
The easiest way i have found is to just use makemkv. Load the vd and fire up makemkv. Let it do its thing, select your video and audio tracks and click makemkv. You'll then have a mkv with untouched video and audio (ie same exact bitrate and format from the dvd. No transcoding at all. You are left solely with the movie only, no extras or anything.Depending on the disc it took anywhere from 5-10 minutes per a disc. Definitely something to do a few disc a day type thing or itll drive you nuts.

Most of my dvd's which i did this with turned out to be ~3-4gb but for safety sake estimate 5gb per a dvd. 5x300=1500gb. A 2tb drive would work fine and is only ~80 bucks (internal, external may be slightly more). Leaves you room for another ~60 dvds too.

If you are wanting the entire disc then theres tons of programs to just rip the disc to HDD but expect anywhere from 5-10gb per a movie.
 
IMHO it's not worth doing more than ripping them with DVD Decrypter (or another ripper of choice) and storing 1:1 copies.

HDD space is cheap nowadays, and I, personally, enjoy the extras like commentaries and "making of" documentaries... Besides which, the shrinking process will be time-consuming, and offers no quality guarantees - some films can be reduced to 1.5 GB, but others cannot be done so effectively.

Like others have said, if a 2 TB HDD can be had for $90, why bother with makemkv, Handbrake and so on?
 
not worth the time.

301 dvd rips x 10-15 minutes per rip
50-75 hours
thats raw
now if you have to fiddle with encoding, choosing the right track, not forgetting deinterlacing an dother weirdness with certain discs or burnt in subs etc....add a whole bunch more hours to the list.

for sd movies.....just rent bluray😛
 
I use DVDfab to rip to my DVDs to vob files then I use Handbrake to convert the vob files to H.264 files in the MP4 container. I then but these files on an external HDD and then either just plug the HDD into my 360 or I plug the HDD into my laptop and stream them to my 360 that way and of course I then play the movies on my tv with the 360. You can use just dvdfab if you want but when you rip with dvdfab you decide either what filesize or bitrate you rip to so if you dont know what you are doing you can end up making rips much bigger than is necessary. With handbrake you can just set the quality and the bitrate/filesize is just a product of the quality you choose.

On the plus side though, you can rip to just about any format there is with dvdfab so if you know what you are doing then its a great program. Its really not complicated at all but its just frustrating trying to guess how high you should set the bitrate or filesize to get a good quality rip.

I used two pcs when I did mine so it wasnt that bad. One is a Q6600 and the other is an I5 laptop so the rips went pretty quickly. Ripping 300 dvds with one pc is going to suck honestly and it will take some time but once you get it done you will definitely be glad you did it. Having your entire DVD collection on a hard drive is awesome.

If you want to rip to MKV, all you have to do is rip the DVD to vob with dvdfab, drag the vob to Handbrake and push start. If you have any questions about profile settings just ask. For example here is my basic handbrake profile:
MP4 container
H.264 codec
Under picture and video filter I leave all options default
Under video my Constant Quality RF is 19
My audio is AAC Dolby Pro Logic II with a 192 bitrate

All this is dictated simply by what the 360 supports and for h.264 it only supports the MP4 container and AAC two channel audio. If you use something less restrictive then you can set your profile up however you want. Inevitably you are going to have questions so again, just ask.
 
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0roo0roo said:
not worth the time.

301 dvd rips x 10-15 minutes per rip
50-75 hours
thats raw
now if you have to fiddle with encoding, choosing the right track, not forgetting deinterlacing an dother weirdness with certain discs or burnt in subs etc....add a whole bunch more hours to the list.

for sd movies.....just rent bluray😛
Click to expand...

As pointed out, it will be a lot of work without the right equipment. I luckily picked up 3 of the Sony 200 disc DVD changers/burners ($99 each on clearance direct from Sony). I wrote up some quick scripts with the control software that others had developed for it, and just loaded up my DVD's and let it go. Three days later they were done.
 
sdifox said:
I find those things annoying. Takes forever to find a movie without the convenience of the hdd based solution. I consider it worse than the dvd rack :biggrin:
Click to expand...

I use a combo of both. My favorite stuff gets ripped on my WHS and played back on HTPC's around the house.

The stuff I didn't want to get rid of but still wanted to have around are in two cases. Fit perfectly on my shelf and I don't find it difficult to find anything since I arranged them all by genre (my own genres really).

I do enjoy the ripped and playback setup I have now, but it was definitely a lot of work to setup and working right.

If all I was concerned with was getting space back from my DVD collection then I'd just stick with the leather cases.

If you don't mind dicking with it, then the HTPC method is certainly more fun/convenient.
 
I feel the same way as the OP. I thought I had a pretty large movie selection until I saw my wife's. I undertook a project a few months back to rip all the DVD's using DVD Decrypter to my computer. I got sick of it after a few weeks though and gave up, went out and bought a couple of CD binders to hold all of them and we boxed up all the cases. The problem I found ripping 1:1 with DVD Decrypter was that when I went to stream through PS3 Media Center, often times it wouldn't transcode fast enough to be able to fast forward/rewind.
 
I use AnyDVD to rip disks 1:1 to an unraid server that houses all of our DVDs, CDs, pictures, etc. A single 2TB disk would be able to store almost every DVD the OP now has without any compression. Not bad for $75 or so.

I stream video to the TV using SageTV and an HD200 extender (I tried the HTPC route but the extender just works better). If I wasn't into the SageTV system, would probably opt for something like the Western Digital box or the Patriot box (at $50 or so on sale, it seems like a great buy).

The ripping time for the DVDs is nothing. You just pop one in while checking email or playing a game and forget about it. At the rate at which our 4 and 6 year olds were destroying physical disks, this method has saved a ton of videos from untimely ends. And I really like the SageTV front end (at least through the extender - I hate using SageTV to view things on the PC).
 
The time to do it isn't a big deal for me as I work from home and on a different computer than the one doing the ripping. I hadn't thought of all the "extras", such as extra scenes, interviews, gag reels, etc. I was thinking to rip them to 1gb or so (.avi), but I know my wife will want the "extras" - damn it.

I appreciate all of your input. Let me know if you have further input please!

Thanks.
 
Cienja said:
The time to do it isn't a big deal for me as I work from home and on a different computer than the one doing the ripping. I hadn't thought of all the "extras", such as extra scenes, interviews, gag reels, etc. I was thinking to rip them to 1gb or so (.avi), but I know my wife will want the "extras" - damn it.

I appreciate all of your input. Let me know if you have further input please!

Thanks.
Click to expand...


I'd say:
1) make 1:1 .iso images with DVD Decrypter - all features are kept
2) store them on a 2 TB HDD
3) a WDTV or equivalent is $100 or thereabouts; for about twice that much you can build yourself (or buy!) a decent HTPC, which will be upgradeable, longer lasting, and never have problems with recognizing any files/storage
 
Looks like you have some pretty good information so far. Just wanted to add that I have about 150 DVD's in my HTPC movie library. I use to only rip them all with AnyDVD HD on a 1:1 basis and store them on my 2TB movie library hard drive. However, space was beginning to be a concern and I didn't really want to add another hard drive soon to the system so I decided to start using Handbrake to transcode them into .mkv files. This had been very pleasant so far. I have reduced the size that my movie library takes up to approx 75% from when they were only 1:1 rips. All this with no quality loss, full AC3 audio, English subtitles, etc... I am very happy with the process.

My movie library backs up to an external 2TB hard drive and this is another reason why I didn't want to add another drive to the system. Anytime I add one drive I actually have to add TWO drives as I have to have an external backup those movies. I am not about to rip and transcode them all again!

My situation may be unique though. I have a HTPC server (running SageTV) that I stream content to 4 TV's in my home via HD-300 extenders. So my server is always running and I can transcode 24x7x365. My Athlon x3 3.1GZ processor can transcode a 2 hour movie in approx 30 minutes time. I don't do Bluray's so I don't know how long it would take to transcode one of those bad boys. I would assume a loooong time.

Another plus with transcoding them to .mkv or .mp4 is that I can put them on my Android Phone and play them back with VitalPlayer. Nothings says "coolness" more than showing my friends and family the full length Avatar movie from my HTC EVO.
 
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Here's what I do, but more of a information point than a recommendation for you.

I have a WHS with a shitheap of storage (around 14TB after this weekend). I paid for the lifetime subscription to AnyDVD (and upped to the HD version lifetime sub this past winter). I also paid for some points and contributed info for more with MyMovies. The server sits in the basement and over the last year I have just taken a stack down every week and feed them to it. Sometimes a faster pace, sometimes slower. MyMovies handles the ripping and provides the metadata.

I have it set to rip to folder format, includes the menus and extras that way in 7MC. Also have WHS duplicating them 😛 As others have mentioned, storage is cheap. Massive amount of data storage in the primary downside. Folder format does give some flexibility later, can burn to disc or iso format if needed.
 
If you have a large collection the best way to do it is rip to .iso . Do not transcode because any format you choose is going to look worse than the original and the time it takes to compress isn't worth the size difference for DVD. Max bitrate for any DVD content is going to be 9.8Mbit , compared to bluray at 45Mbit Max it isn't worth transcoding.


The WDTV Live player can read .iso files directly and that preserves all the subtitles and menus. At $100 for the box it makes it easy to add one to each tv in the home and stream the content anywhere. The same boxes also do netflix so you get that too.

For software I like dvd fab. Insert DVD, select what you want to keep and it is done as fast as the drive can read the disc.


Forgot to add to also look around at the various dvd readers. Some have custom firmware that makes them rip DVD faster than normal. One of the things the MPAA has done is implement firmware that detects when someone is trying to rip content and causes the drives to read at slow speeds. The custom firmwares remove that . One of them I know that has that firmware but also patches to remove it is Samsung Sh-203 models.
 
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queequeg99 said:
I use AnyDVD to rip disks 1:1 to an unraid server that houses all of our DVDs, CDs, pictures, etc. A single 2TB disk would be able to store almost every DVD the OP now has without any compression. Not bad for $75 or so.

I stream video to the TV using SageTV and an HD200 extender (I tried the HTPC route but the extender just works better). If I wasn't into the SageTV system, would probably opt for something like the Western Digital box or the Patriot box (at $50 or so on sale, it seems like a great buy).

The ripping time for the DVDs is nothing. You just pop one in while checking email or playing a game and forget about it. At the rate at which our 4 and 6 year olds were destroying physical disks, this method has saved a ton of videos from untimely ends. And I really like the SageTV front end (at least through the extender - I hate using SageTV to view things on the PC).
Click to expand...
I would recommend compressing them. The difference in visual quality between a straight iso or vob rip and a good h.264 encode is not nearly considerable enough to justify the space that iso/vob files take up. Why keep a 3-6 gb vob file on your hdd when you can encode it into an x.264 file that is less than 2 gb and sometimes less than 1 gb while still maintaining just about the same level of visual quality? Thats hdd space just wasted and considering his wife has 300 dvds its not likely she is going to just stop buying them.
 
Modelworks said:
If you have a large collection the best way to do it is rip to .iso . Do not transcode because any format you choose is going to look worse than the original and the time it takes to compress isn't worth the size difference for DVD. Max bitrate for any DVD content is going to be 9.8Mbit , compared to bluray at 45Mbit Max it isn't worth transcoding.


The WDTV Live player can read .iso files directly and that preserves all the subtitles and menus. At $100 for the box it makes it easy to add one to each tv in the home and stream the content anywhere. The same boxes also do netflix so you get that too.

For software I like dvd fab. Insert DVD, select what you want to keep and it is done as fast as the drive can read the disc.
Click to expand...
His wife will barely notice a difference and if you have a good system then the time to compress is definitely worth saving a minimum of 2gb per dvd. Over 300 dvds thats a minimum of 600gb of hdd space.

And he can go at whatever pace he feels like. He can can do as many or few a week as he wants and if he chooses to do one a day over a year then thats fine. Its not like he has to all 300 in one weekend.
 
kingzfan2000 said:
I would recommend compressing them. The difference in visual quality between a straight iso or vob rip and a good h.264 encode is not nearly considerable enough to justify the space that iso/vob files take up. Why keep a 3-6 gb vob file on your hdd when you can encode it into an x.264 file that is less than 2 gb and sometimes less than 1 gb while still maintaining just about the same level of visual quality? Thats hdd space just wasted and considering his wife has 300 dvds its not likely she is going to just stop buying them.
Click to expand...

time is worth more than HDD space.
 
OP we need more details, do you want to compress or not? If I were you I'd buy two 2TB drives and rip to folder format no compression and take out the extras/alternate languages. Saves time and you'll save some HD space. If you have time later, transcode them to x264.
 
kingzfan2000 said:
I would recommend compressing them. The difference in visual quality between a straight iso or vob rip and a good h.264 encode is not nearly considerable enough to justify the space that iso/vob files take up. Why keep a 3-6 gb vob file on your hdd when you can encode it into an x.264 file that is less than 2 gb and sometimes less than 1 gb while still maintaining just about the same level of visual quality? Thats hdd space just wasted and considering his wife has 300 dvds its not likely she is going to just stop buying them.
Click to expand...

This.

I can tell zero difference in the quality between straight Video_TS rips and transcoded H.264/.mkv if they are done with the correct settings. Handbrake is suprisingly easy as hell to use. I went into it knowing nothing about about it and in a few days I converted my entire DVD library while learning and having some fun at the same time! Again, I reduced my library size by approx 75% by transcoding all of my movies.
 
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