Question About Hardward and Video Encoding

[bobross419]

Not sure if this is the right forum for this, but none of the others really applied either.

I'm going to be putting together a file server then an HTPC down the line. I"ll be storing my DVDs and such onto the file server so that I can watch them on my TV or a computer on my network.

I see the term video encoding thrown around a lot, but I don't really understand what all this entails or which computer will be doing the encoding, or if I'll even need to do this.

My main rig is fairly powerful with a Q9550 @ Stock with a 4870. The server will be running on a Socket A AMD (Not sure what chip it has as I'm getting this from a friend) and I'd like my HTPC to be low-power/noise.

I understand that encoding can take quite a bit of horsepower to be done in a reasonable amount of time. Can any video encoding that needs to be done take place on my main rig then transferred over to the file server then played on the HTPC? I'm planning on ripping out the menus of the DVDs so they can just be played, some of my DVDs are TV series and I'd like to rip out individual episodes on each disc as well. Would video encoding be needed for this?

I did a google search, but pretty much everything I found tells you how to encode, but doesn't really explain what it is or when to use it. Any help would be appreciated. Any links to good software for my purpose or tutorials would be good as well.

Thanks!

 

[ChaiBabbaChai]

Yes you would encode and be able to play the files on your HTPC. Or you could just rip the DVD to an .iso file and mount it to a virtual drive. That would allow to skip encoding process.

Un-encoded DVDs are just the:
(* represents the file name)
*.VOB
*.IFO
*.BUP files.

Encoded would be (one file for the entire DVD):
*.avi (XviD)
*.mpg
*.wmv (WMP)
*.mkv (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matroska)

 

[yh125d]

Just normal DVDs or some HD content as well?

 

[bobross419]

What is a good program to use so that I can rip out individual episodes of a series' DVD?

Thanks chai.

@yh125d
For now it will just be regular DVDs w/ no HD content. We've got a 32" in TV that is not setup for 720/1080 so regular DVDs will be it for the time being.

 

[wetech]

What is a good program to use so that I can rip out individual episodes of a series' DVD?

Thanks chai.

@yh125d
For now it will just be regular DVDs w/ no HD content. We've got a 32" in TV that is not setup for 720/1080 so regular DVDs will be it for the time being.

dvd decryptor. select the individual episode, then rip it to a .ts file in its own directory. no need to rip to a .iso file. any dvd program will play a .ts.

btw, you're not really talking about encoding (or transcoding). encoding takes a lot of horsepower to do quickly. ripping a dvd like I described above takes almost none and about 10 minutes.

 

[bobross419]

dvd decryptor. select the individual episode, then rip it to a .ts file in its own directory. no need to rip to a .iso file. any dvd program will play a .ts.

btw, you're not really talking about encoding (or transcoding). encoding takes a lot of horsepower to do quickly. ripping a dvd like I described above takes almost none and about 10 minutes.

Sweet! That is exactly the info I was looking for I couldn't figure out wtf encoding actually was I just assumed I had to do it.

 

[wetech]

Sweet! That is exactly the info I was looking for I couldn't figure out wtf encoding actually was I just assumed I had to do it.

encoding would be taking a dvd, which is mpg2 to something like x264. the result will be a file which is a lot smaller (say 1/4 the size), with very little quality loss. If you have a ton of stuff to burn, it can save a lot of space. but with hard drives being so cheap, you'll have to decide if it's worth the time needed to do it.

 

[bobross419]

encoding would be taking a dvd, which is mpg2 to something like x264. the result will be a file which is a lot smaller (say 1/4 the size), with very little quality loss. If you have a ton of stuff to burn, it can save a lot of space. but with hard drives being so cheap, you'll have to decide if it's worth the time needed to do it.

Awwwh crud... I'm cheaper than hard drives so I would probably go with the encoding to give myself more disk space.

So the first step would be to rip the episodes like you said in your first post with something like DVD Decrypter. Then if I want to compress them I'd use another program to actually do the encryption. Either way I'd be able to store and play the episodes its just a matter of file size. I think I've got the basics of it which was the big stumbling block for me

 

[bobross419]

Woohoo!

After a little snafoo with a bad DVD Drive :'( I was able to get one of the episodes ripped using DVD Decrypt. It pulled it into a 1GB VOB file and I was able to view it on my PC using VLC player!

I then ran it through Handbrake (I didn't know I had to bring the non-VOB files over as well at first) with the Basic Preset settings into a H.264 MKV format which cut it down to 280MB or so.

I'll probably have to play with the settings some more to see what kind of a balance of Size:Quality I can get. I'd be happy with just cutting down the initial size by 50% as I've only got a 250GB hardrive (x2 for data backups) and just the 10 seasons of Friends alone has 238 episodes!!! I'll then move on to our Grey's Anatomy collection (which I don't know what size those episodes will be).

Thanks wetech and chai for pointing me in the right direction and gettings started... now that I've got the basics I'll be able to proceed a little more intelligently on my own

 

[Slugbait]

You'll find quite a few titles can't be ripped with DVD Decrypter alone. You'll need an "enhancement" program called RipIt4Me, which makes it possible for DVD Decrypter to rip the flick. Some of the Disney/Pixar films will need RipIt4Me.

Some movies can't be ripped at all with DVD Decrypter (even with RipIt4Me), and as more titles are released this will become more common since neither program is supported anymore. In this situation, I would recommend DVDFab6: advanced features are trialware, but the basic DVD ripping feature never expires.

 

[wetech]

for encoding, I use MeGUI. It's very flexible, almost too flexible for a beginner, but there are a lot of presets put out by the developers. Head over to the Doom9 forums and look for it. You'd want to set up its One Touch Encoder, with one of the standard definition (ie DVD) presets. You can specify a file size and it will adjust to reach it. Or you can specify a quality setting and it will adjust file size accordingly. I use the quality setting (about 20.5 to 21), and it will get your episodes of Friends down to 400-500MB each, with very little quality difference.

 

[elconejito]

i thought ripit4me was taken down? At least it was last time I checked. And ripit4me was just a front-end for fixvts and dvd decrypter (i think).

DVD decrypter, DVD fab both have free versions that will rip most anything. anydvd is a paid version. You'll fin that among your collection 90% of the dvds will rip just fine and then you'll come across one or two that won't rip. You'll have to google it and see because a lot of times it will work with one version but not another, or one brand but not another.

I use handbrake for encoding now. Most movies are about 1.5GB down from 4-6GB off of the DVD. Previsouly I used AutoGK which is great for xvid AVIs or divx but you get way better compression with H.264 (or x264) so I switched to AutoMKV which was great but it has just way too many switches that I had no idea what they did. So now I'm using handbrake which has some pretty easy profiles so you can click and go or you can tweak them as you like.

 

[bobross419]

Thanks for the information so far...

Since this is pretty much a software thread now and I still have more questions (lol self research didn't get me as far as I thought lol) I started a new/continuation thread in the Software for Windows forum:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=28894633#post28894633

Thanks for the help so far !

 

[Jesusthewererabbit]

I've been doing pretty much the same thing over the last few months, and I use DVDFab to rip and encode at the same time. Takes about 20 minutes for a 2 hour movie using single pass into AVI, and the files are about 1 GB. I'm not really picky about the quality though, as long as there isn't any huge grain problems, and I haven't had any problems on my 32" TV.

 

[Slugbait]

i thought ripit4me was taken down?

You are correct, that happened almost three years ago. DVD Decrypter was also taken down, a little over 4 years ago.

And ripit4me was just a front-end for fixvts and dvd decrypter (i think)

It can be used as a front-end, especially for 1-Click Mode. But one of the benefits is that RipIt4Me will create a PSL file for DVD Decrypter, which will enable ripping of otherwise unrippable discs. For example, DVD Decrypter alone will fail to rip Sony movies using ARccOS...the PSL generated by RipIt4Me makes a successful rip possible.

But like I said above, many newer titles cannot be ripped with DVD Decrypter, regardless if you use RipIt4Me, due to newer copy protection schemes.