Best format to rip DVDs to.

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demingo

Trump is My President!
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I recently jumped on the 2x 1.5TB deal from Dell. They are going into my mediacenter / server. I want to rip my entire DVD collection to them so I can store the disks somewhere safe. However, I have not really kept up on formats.

Whats the best format to rip standard DVDs to? Xvid? And why type of settings/encoder am I looking at. This is all over my head right now.
 
If you can afford the space, you can just copy the entire DVD image onto the hard drive, thus retaining DVD quality. It would take up around 4.6gb/disc if you do that, or you can use something similar to DVDShrink and reduce the size (thus the quality) a little bit.

If you wanted to rip the DVD and compress it to a smaller file, I recommend an encoder that compresses to h.264 format. It requires more processing power to decode, but the image quality looks better. I think CoreAVC might be one of the encoder and decoders.
 
Out of my 400 DVD's less than 20 aren't 7-7.5GB
If you consider you will have 3TB (*.931) = ~2800GB that could work out to 400 movies, if each movie averages 7GB
I suggest Video_TS with anyDVD, remove the previews and whatnot and your good to go
 
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I don't compress my rips but I do reauthor them to remove all extras, menus and unwanted audio streams. I currently use the video_ts structure, but I think I will be moving to .mpg since you have no loss of quality and many metadata services are more agreeable to the mpg format since you end up with just one large file instead of several files in a directory.
 
h264/x264.

preferably in a cool container format, like .mkv or .mp4.

I don't mean to hijack your thread, but I like putting content I create into x264. With VirtualDub. Is there a way to instead package the x264 and whatever audio codec into the avi container instead into a mkv container? Something like VirtualDub but allowing you to use the mkv container format? :confused:
 
Thanks for all the tips.

From everything I've read h.264 is the way to go. I do want to compress a bit as I want those drives to last for things other than just DVD rips.

What is a good program to do the conversion with. I've seen megui talked about a lot. Seems good but too many steps for me. I have somewhere in the range of 700 DVD (between movies and TV series) that I need to rip, so I'd like to make it as painless and "one-click" as possible.

Encoding time isn't too big a deal as I've got a spare quadcore box I can just have chug away on it. But I want the switch from disc to disc to be fast.

I tried AutoGK last night and it's fantastic, but I'd prefer h.264 over Xvid.
 
I used to use DVD Decryptor + AutoGK, but now I use MakeMKV to get full-qualtiy DVD and Blu Ray rips.

I don't bother transcoding anymore (hooray for 2TB drives), but you could use Handbrake to transcode/shrink the files. There may be better options now though, I dunno.
 
vischo said:
VIDEO_TS by using AnyDVD. About 500 movies in 3TB.
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I have more than 500 titles and I'd like to store other data on the drives too. Ideally I'm looking for high quality at around 1.5-2gb for a movie.

h264 looks like the best bet. Just trying to figure out a good program that can automate the process nicely.
 
Handbreak will be the best tool for you. I do the same but use xvid since it was easier at the time to stream to an xbox 360. If I could I would go back and change that.

Since you want to use x264 then use handbrake with the high profile film preset. That will give you an MKV file with x264 video and a direct copy of the 5.1 audio track. To make the process easier on you, use DVDfab to rip the movie only to an ISO file. Handbrake can thenopen the ISO directly as a video file and you can queue a whole bunch of movies to convert over night.

I don't know how powerful of a computer you have but be prepared to do this for a couple of weeks. It took me about 2 weeks straight of ripping and converting to finish about 250 movies on an e4300. Each encode took about and hour and once I went to a core2quad it took about 30 minutes for xvid and it can easily be double for x264.
 
PC is in sig. [email protected]

Hopefully it wont be too bad as long as handbrake makes use of all 4 cores.

Thanks for the advice though, I will definately look into handbrake tonight.

I expected it to take weeks.
 
I have been using the x264 route for a few months, and like the results over xvid quite a bit. but am giving the MPG method a try right now. The MKV's are 1.5-2.5GB usually, so why not just keep the original?

Does handbrake automatically put the subtitles for when people are speaking a diff language (if a person is briefly speaking a different language, and the subtitles are shown at the bottom.) I always check "forced subtitles only", but am not sure if that is necessary.
 
Took about an hour and a half with handbrake.. But it came out very well. 2.2gb down from 6.7gb (did T2 ultimate edition).

Quality is excellent. The process will take a long time but the space saved is massive. Time to get encoding I guess.
 
I use to use megui but it was a lot of steps. Now I use automkv. I choose AC3/original audio track with a bitrate of 384 and on the advanced tab I specify the bitrate at 3300. That way I get to retain the 5.1 surround sound and the default "Remove Grain" filter clears up the grain so it actually looks better then the original DVD. Those settings produce mkv files of around 2.5GB's. Once you get it set up and save your settings you basically basically drop the DVD in you drive select the output folder and name and click go.
 
Ripping right to the video_ts folder is obviously easiest, quickest, most effective. With how cheap hard drive space is right now, it makes the most sense.

The 2nd best option is already mentioned, putting it in a MKV container and compressing the video using the x264 encoder to bring the file size down to around 2 or 3 gigabytes, being transparent to the source.

Myself, I prefer the video_ts folder rip method, just because it saves time and I really don't care about hard drive space.
 
w1retap said:
Myself, I prefer the video_ts folder rip method, just because it saves time and I really don't care about hard drive space.
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Same here. I used DVDFab to rip just the movie. The size was between 3-4GB and ripping takes between 7-9 minutes. So I was ripping about 7-8 movies per hour.
 
w1retap said:
Myself, I prefer the video_ts folder rip method, just because it saves time and I really don't care about hard drive space.
Click to expand...

Another +1 for the above... QFT :)

The size will bog you down initially, but with hard drive space getting so cheap nowadays, in a couple of years you'll kick yourself in the butt for not keeping the full movie when you have 5TB drives in your machine :eek:
 
I posted earlier about vob2mpg and wanted to say that i didnt know there was a new version and the new version sucks! If anyone is going to use it, use vob2mpg v2.5
 
if you're going to transcore, use handbrake.

why? It's one of the only (the only?) that supports variable frame rate encoding.

what does this mean?

most encoders basically encode video at a fixed rate. However, DVD video isn't fixed rate (while the audio is).

What this means, its very very easy for video and audio to get out of sync if the encoder doesn't match the video's frame rate. An easy way to see this is on any DVD that has a "play all" pgc that just ties together smaller pgcs. If you try to encode the "play all", with most encoders, you will have out of sync audio that will get more and more out of sync as it moves from pgc to pgc. With handbrake, it works perfectly.

current released version of handbrake doesn't support soft subtitles (only a single burned in version), but the development version supports them (both vobsub/bmp and closed caption text I believe).
 
spotter said:
if you're going to transcore, use handbrake.

why? It's one of the only (the only?) that supports variable frame rate encoding.

what does this mean?

most encoders basically encode video at a fixed rate. However, DVD video isn't fixed rate (while the audio is).

What this means, its very very easy for video and audio to get out of sync if the encoder doesn't match the video's frame rate. An easy way to see this is on any DVD that has a "play all" pgc that just ties together smaller pgcs. If you try to encode the "play all", with most encoders, you will have out of sync audio that will get more and more out of sync as it moves from pgc to pgc. With handbrake, it works perfectly.

current released version of handbrake doesn't support soft subtitles (only a single burned in version), but the development version supports them (both vobsub/bmp and closed caption text I believe).
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I believe that. Theatrical movies have always been 24 fps. This is why 60hz displays will need to use a 2:3 pull down. 2 frames, then 3 frames so that the frames match 60hz. Now TVs use 120Hz and 240hz since 24 fps divide evenly. This produces a smoother image since the display is always displaying the same exact amount of frames per second.

Also, video typically gets out of sync due to performance issues. If the video gets stuck for a split second but the audio doesn't, then it becomes out of sync. But even windows media player has an option to drop frames to keep video and audio synchronized.

I am not saying you are wrong, but from what I know about movies, this logic doesn't seem to make sense to me.
 
VOB seems to be the best option, you can reburn then quickly w/o transcoding....

also most DVD library software will read VOB, 7MC DVD browser and more.

the only bad thing about it is the space. back when i had 1tb I was transcoding into 700mb avi to conserve space, but now that I am buying a projector that is 720 and I know i am going to be dissapointed in the quality.

I have the good action and special effects movies in bluray but all my non-special effects movies are in 700-800mb avi files.


If i had to do it again i would rip everything in the VOB....
 
From another thread with same topic.

criccio said:
This is asked weekly.

Easiest method with 100% transparency to source:

1. Rip with DVDfab HD Dycrypter
2. Encode with Handbrake (High Profile - Film preset)

The "High Profile - Film" preset uses x264 to encode to an H264 file, grabs the DD audio and puts them both in a (roughly 1.4GB) MKV file.

Perfect.

If people tell you to use XviD/DivX and .AVI containers, tell them its 2009 and to move on. There are better things out there.
Click to expand...
 
I use DVDFab to rip DVDs and Handbrake to encode to H.264/X.264.

I use the 2 pass method at about 1500 bitrate and on the second pass my PC encodes at about 45fps - 50fps based on the settings I use. I stick with AC3 audio. My PC is an Intel Q9450 OC'ed at 2.8GHz (hey, it's summer).

I also use Handbrake to encode some videos to XviD so that I can watch it on my Cowon S9. Unfortunately it does not support X.264.
 
I've had success using RipBot264.

I typically use the [high 4.0 console] video preset, and either the [x.x Copy Stream] or the [Aften 5.1] audio presets. Since I'm streaming to my PS3, I choose the AVCHD container.

Both Blue Rays and DVDs come out looking fantastic. Some DVDs are troublesome and require some fiddling, but this is the closest thing to one-click archiving I've found.
 
I have personally encoded All of mine into MKV Using Staxrip using pretty generous settings to maintain Quality generally it knocks 25-40% off file Sizes and allows me the option of a little cropping to get the aspect ratio i want.

this technique is great for TV episodes as they generally get knocked down ~ 60% from their original size
 
I used handbrake to convert a buncha dvds to h.264 mkvs and I am VERY happy with the results. Takes a while but I usually just que up 4-5 movies before I goto bed and they are done the next morning. Quality comes out great.

takes about 50% off the filesize with no noticable loss in quality.
 
I've also been using MakeMKV. My understanding is that it essentially just rips the DVD to a .mkv while keeping the video and audio streams essentially intact, along with subtitles. The net result essentially an ISO, but in a format/container that I can play on any device that handles MKV, and going from the DVD video_ts/audio_ts folder structure to a single file.

I'm definitely open to better options as I'm just getting into this.
 
sphinx99 said:
Question - does handbrake bring subtitles over as well?

Edit - just saw an earlier post about support not quite there in the released version but perhaps soon.
Click to expand...

Forget it, do what I said (and many others) above his. There's little reason to do what Cricco does with regular DVDs (Blu Rays are different).
 
I've been ripping to .iso for awhile now and it's been great. I've got all the images stored on my server and I can stream them over gig-e lan with no problems. HDD space is so cheap now it doesn't make sense to reencode and compress to save a few hundred MB's.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
If you've got the space you might as well use MakeMKV or the video_ts folder rip method. Full quality and no time/processing power needed beyond actually ripping the disks.
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Or hold 5 times as many rips in the space that you have with zero loss in quality... I don't know about you but it only takes an hour for me to re-encode a DVD. And I can queue up as many as I want to encode while I'm away.

There isn't any reason anymore not to re-encode. The argument about having alot of space now is useless. No matter how much space you have, you can always hole even more if the files are smaller. That is a fact.

Not to mention with proper use of x264 you can make perfect, transparent re-encodes.
 
criccio said:
Or hold 5 times as many rips in the space that you have with zero loss in quality... I don't know about you but it only takes an hour for me to re-encode a DVD. And I can queue up as many as I want to encode while I'm away.
Click to expand...

With hard drive space as cheap as it is it seems kind of pointless. I can always go back and re-encode if necessary to save space. For now being able to rip a disk in a few minutes outweighs saving space.
 
I just rip the whole DVD to a Video_TS folder. I just feed my WHS more drives when I need too, but won't have to for a while as it has 5 TB of free space right now.

HD's are cheap and big now, so I see no reason to re-encode anything.
 
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