Best format to rip DVDs to.

To each their own. Considering the PQ to size ratio of a DVD, I just can't justify not re-encoding it. My 720p BD rips are occasionally smaller (then a straight ripped DVD) and look 10000x better.

I have a relativly fast CPU and have figured out how to automate most of the process so its not a big deal. I just can't justify having a folder of relatively crappy looking (PQ wise) DVD's taking up so much space when it could be a fifth of the size with little to no effort.

I guess it helps that I have no use for subtitles or special features, let alone menu's...
 
valve1138 said:
Sure there are. Menus, special features, etc, etc. A lot of people want to watch a lot more on a DVD than just the movie/tv show itself.
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How often do you watch special features, once? I'd much rather save disk space. I have about 700 dvds. Thats 4.2tb or so. (average math of 6gb a dvd, some more some less). If I encode to h264 the file is about 1/3rd the size. Thats down to 1.4 tb. Which is about $240 worth of drivespace difference. Thats definately more than the cost of the electricity to encode the movies for a few nights. It also keeps my PC cleaner as I have more room for other files (I have 400gigs of family photos and rising fast).

Going from a 7gb file to 2gb is huge. The encode time is nothing, I can do 8-9 movies overnight as I sleep. Makes me feel like im puttin my quad to good use. I think there are plenty of reasons to encode. And as said, using handbrake I see no loss of quality even on my TV over a dvd. The handbrake reccomendation was awesome. Working great.

Ps. If you care to watch a special feature, just pop the DVD in.... (we arent talking about stealing movies you dont own here...)
 
hope I'm not threadjacking too much as this thread is very useful, as I plan to help my dad rip his dvd and then eventually mine, does windows 7mc play vobs in video_ts folder?
 
Subtitles are an important need for me, and I've found several tools I tried lacking in this regard.

Does the mkv format allow for a subtitle track (or better yet, multiple in different languages) that aren't "burned" into the video track?

I've heard it often said that the benefit of the mkv format is its flexibility to store complex information including menus navigation etc., yet I never see these features being taken advantage of.
 
The beauty of Matroska IS its ability to hold many different formats and more then one of each. Read the wiki on it.
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I have. It is hyped up in a huge way. Then I look at the encoders that package content to MKV, and they all seem to treat MKV no differently than any other container.
 
Regardless, its the container of the future. AVI is dead and MP4 has many, many restrictions over what it can hold. Especially when it comes to HD content. NO encoder who has any idea what he is doing would use anything other than Matroska.
 
criccio said:
Regardless, its the container of the future. AVI is dead and MP4 has many, many restrictions over what it can hold. Especially when it comes to HD content. NO encoder who has any idea what he is doing would use anything other than Matroska.
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AVI isn't dead yet. Adoption of MKV anywhere other than torrents is way too slow. I still use xvid since with Windows 7 I can now stream it to my 360 extender without transcoding.
 
Just tried MakeMKV and its made me an MKV believer. Quick, easy, good quality, and free!
 
KapsZ28 said:
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.
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the other methods works great when you are encoding a single PGC. However, try encoding multiple PGCs with any encoder besides handbrake, as you move from PGC to PGC your audio will get out of sync.

DVDs are not constant frame rate, and I believe there are "short" frames between the PGCs that expand to full size frames, making the audio be ahead of the video more and more as you move from PGC to PGC.

Basically all encoders that encode video and audio independently without any knowledge of each other are hacks that work great for single PGCs but fall on their face on multiple PGCs.

Try it yourself. Try to rip a Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD with it's "Play All" PGC (that is just a collection of the smaller) ones with your tool of choice then use handbrake, see which one has the audio in sync and which one does not.
 
Okay, tried this on Gladiator DVD Last Night. Seems like a good choice since there is plenty of "grain" in this movie as well as many different types of scenes.

1) With MakeMKV, 7.5GB with DTS sound
2) With Handbrake with the Movie Setting, 2.5GB with AC3 sound (does not do DTS)

So it is a 66% reduction. Haven't had a chance to compare yet since I can't get the MPEG2 MKV to play. GraphEdit says the chain is good, but it just won't start. Tried it in SageTV and MPC, still no joy. Any recommendaitons?
 
MPC-HC will play it. And I'm assuming you used the "High Profile - Film" preset in Handbrake? Only worthwhile setting. Then I usually bump up the bitrate to 2000kbps.
 
+1 for HandBrake on multiple cut or complex DVDs.
I had a tough time with the Band of Brothers disks since it is two episodes per disk and RipBot264 wasn't working correctly. HandBrake is nice since it shows you the multiple titles on the disk and allows you to encode each one independently. I use the PS3 preset, then select MKV container, with six-channel-discrete audio (max bps). Voila! Great looking video files - one per episode. This also worked great on the LOTR disks, which are complicated, too. Too bad it doesn't support DTS yet.
 
Update on Ripbot.
Atak has released a new version of RipBot264. It now handles subtitles for m2ts. I just used it to demux/encode Kill Bill 1 BD. The forced subtitles for all the Japanese dialogue are in the english subtitle stream (#11 I think?), and RipBot handled them flawlessly. Thought I'd let you guys know who've been struggling with forced subtitles.
 
For those that use MakeMKV, there is no compression option correct? All rips are uncompressed as far as video quality goes compared to the original? I just started using this program and while it seems straight forward, I don't want to miss anything as I start ripping my DVD collection. Thanks!
 
Rip to .ISO no compression. mount/play/done in media portal. Simple & very fast.
 
jazzman161 said:
For those that use MakeMKV, there is no compression option correct? All rips are uncompressed as far as video quality goes compared to the original? I just started using this program and while it seems straight forward, I don't want to miss anything as I start ripping my DVD collection. Thanks!
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Correct, there is no compression even available in MakeMKV. It just takes any .vob files larger than minimum specs you set in the options and wraps them in an ,mkv container. The only minor problem I have run into is that it usually only grabs the default audio stream that includes the subtitles. If you run that .mkv in MC with MediaBrowser, the subtitles play by default and there isn't an easy way to turn them off. I wound up disabling subtitles altogether in FFDshow audio to get around it. I believe Mike, the author of MakeMKV, said he would fix this in upcoming versions.
 
depends. if it is a quality movie and i want it fully intact i'll take the whole dvd/menus and all.

most of my kids movies i just put the main movie into an mkv. movies that i like to watch a lot i'll put them into mkv also. usually 1.5GB each depending on quality used.

for apps i use dvd-decrypt, handbrake and virtualdub.
 
DDR4040 said:
Correct, there is no compression even available in MakeMKV. It just takes any .vob files larger than minimum specs you set in the options and wraps them in an ,mkv container. The only minor problem I have run into is that it usually only grabs the default audio stream that includes the subtitles. If you run that .mkv in MC with MediaBrowser, the subtitles play by default and there isn't an easy way to turn them off. I wound up disabling subtitles altogether in FFDshow audio to get around it. I believe Mike, the author of MakeMKV, said he would fix this in upcoming versions.
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Do we know if they have fixed the forced subtitles issue yet. I think HandBrake can do them, but can it convert ISO's without encoding?
 
PCDesmond said:
Do we know if they have fixed the forced subtitles issue yet. I think HandBrake can do them, but can it convert ISO's without encoding?
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No idea, but the current beta version expires next week so that means we will be seeing a new version. The traffic on their forums pick up quite bit when the new versions are released, so if you ask your questions there, I'm sure you'll get an answer.
 
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