Want to convert DVD collection to digital media for HTPC. Best/fastest programs?

compudocs

[H]ard|Gawd
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I have a friend I built an HTPC for and the time has come where she wants to start ripping her entire DVD collection of almost 700 DVD's to her HTPC now that she has enough 2tb HD's. She wants to rip them all to true 720p content at a size of 2 - 4gb/ea but heres the kicker. She wants to know if there is an app that for her Series DVD's like House and Dexter if there is a program that will be able to sepperate the episodes on the DVD into individual files.

Her system has a Q6600 @ 3ghz and 4gb ram under W7 32-bit in case that makes a difference in what program would do the best or have the best speed for her.
 
also if you prefer not to transcode at all, you can just use MakeMKV and turn them all into .mkv files. Which is very very fast.
 
also if you prefer not to transcode at all, you can just use MakeMKV and turn them all into .mkv files. Which is very very fast.

Considering the amount of DVD's she has fast would be nice considering she only has 3 days a week off work ( she's a nurse who works double shifts the other 4 days ) and probably doesn't want to spend a lot of time waiting to change out DVD's. She also has seen the difference between those 480p and 720p videos on her TV and stated that she's okay buying more HD's if need be in order to get the highest quality possible.
 
Big project! I started a similar project last year with close to 300 DVD's. About 100 rips into it I decided to scrap DVD's and replace them with Blueray. I've replaced and half the collection so far and no regrets. Glad I did it.

Very time consuming process... multiple burners will help, although I just use one and try to rip at least 1 movie every night. I also keep a complete untouched copy then use it to rip whatever I need, be it PS3 streaming, ipod, etc... Makes it easier to do batch processing down the road as I need different formats of the original.

I also try not to do any transcoding and just rip main movie + 1 audio (untouched to preserve quality) to a TS format, which I use for streaming to my PS3.
 
Try DVD Shrink. You can specify a target size and can reauthor the DVD to pull out the main movie into an ISO file or other format. Reauthoring a film with zero compression only takes about 5-10 minutes. Reencoding one using Handbrake will take longer and you have 700 to do.

You can also pull out invdividual episodes/titles for the TV series. Bit of a faff as some TV shows do not put the titles in order so I would advise playing each episode first to match the title durations to the ones found by DVD Shrink.
 
I guess the only worry I personally have is if I'm going to be able to show her how to do this. I have her setup with logmein so if anything I can have her drop a dvd in her HTPC and text me and I can start the conversions remotely but I would so much rather be able to show her how to do this on her own, otherwise it could take a few months to get her collection converted.

This weekend I will go over to her place and try some of these methods and find out what one works best and go from there.
 
Well, I tested MakeMKV on a few movies I had and it is quite fast though I must say the files are larger than what I expected so I will try the DVD Shrink method to ISO then convert with MakeMKV but I expect this will be a lot more hassle than it is worth but we shall see.

I will try the other programs later.
 
Why would you want to encode a 480P DVD into 720P? Its not going to look better.
 
Well, I tested MakeMKV on a few movies I had and it is quite fast though I must say the files are larger than what I expected so I will try the DVD Shrink method to ISO then convert with MakeMKV but I expect this will be a lot more hassle than it is worth but we shall see.

I will try the other programs later.

Do you need them to be MKV's? XBMC for example can play ISO's. I would have thought other media center software can do the same.
 
Do you need them to be MKV's? XBMC for example can play ISO's. I would have thought other media center software can do the same.

She's used to WMP :-/ I have the K-Lite Codec pack installed on her HTPC and Laptop and it will play almost anything but ISO's thru WMP and seeing as she's comfortable and familiar with WMP I figure no reason to change that if it's not required.
 
Whatever you do if you care about quality don't use DVDshrink.

MakeMKV coupled with multiple DVD units as suggested by Chrisroman will be the fastest cleanest method. If that prog gives you any problems there's always DVDdecrypter.

The typical uncompressed DVD is between 4-8GB+\-. Handbrake CRF18 x264 normal profile will be the best bet for speed, great quality, and file sizes between 2-3GB per movie.

There are faster methods such as XVID and FFMPEG, but I don't recommend them since the quality to size ratio is very poor compared to H.264.

In this scenario if I were you I would buy as many DVD roms that the mobo and case will hold and use MakeMKV to rip them all. You will get all of them in lossless format onto your hard drives in the quickest amount of time. Then if you want to compress them later on, download the newest nightly build of handbrake and download the handbrake batch encoder. Then put all the movies in 1 main folder, setup a handbrake profile which we can help you with, load the folder into the program and just let the thing run for x given amount of days. If I remember correctly a Q6600 on normal profile should dish out 1 DVD per 15+\- minutes.

Or if you could always have someone do it for ya.
 
She's out of Sata ports on her DFI LP Jr P45-T2RS and her DVD burner is on IDE. There is 6tb in Raid-1 ( 3x 2tb Raid-1 's ) using Samsung Spinpoint F4's. I could drop another IDE burner in her system but then that will be all the case can handle unless she gets a buncha USB burners or drives but @ $20 each shipped for a USB DVD rom that might not be a bad idea if she's willing to shave a couple weeks/months off the project for the price.

My question is, wil USB DVD-Rom's be a god idea for this?

Also, I tried the DVDshrink to iso then used makeMKV to convert them and it is too much of a pita to go thru all of that then have to delete the iso. I will try the MakeMKV followed by Handbrake method today.


Does anyone know of a way to configure makeMKV to just start converting a DVD each time one is inserted? This would be the best if I could have it auto rip for her then eject when done so she knows when the next movie can be inserted.

So far I only got thru about 5 movies yesterday while trying to figure this out and that is when I realized no matter how we do this it's going to be probably 2 - 6 months to get this all finished and she'll prob need 2 or 4 more HD's by the time this is done which means I'll have to find her another case, PSU and SATA Raid controller card :(

It's what she wants though and I kinda can't blame her as #1. the DVD's take up 3 book cases and a small book shelf #2. See #1.

She is going to bury the DVD's in totes in her basement when this is all said and done and that will free up a nice ammount of room in her livingroom so the sooner this project is finished the better.
 
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What I did for my batch process was rip/re-author the DVDs with DVDShrink into ISO format with just movie, no extras and no encoding. You can still use your PC while DVDShrink ripping. It'll take about 20 minutes but it doesn't use up all of your CPU 100% like Handbrake.

Now you have a bunch of ISOs. Leave the PC on overnight and use Handbrake to convert all of the ISO's into whatever format. My PC does Handbrake MP4 encoding in about 15-20 minutes.
 
I'm not sure about MakeMKV but DVDdecrypter has that option.

USB DVD drives will work perfectly fine. To keep from taxing the HDD though I would only do 4-5 rips at a time per drive.

The time consuming part is getting them all on the HDD's. Once that is done you can just batch load Handbrake and let the thing run until it's done. Maybe 7-10 days on that CPU depending on settings and such. Much faster than 6 months. :)
 
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