Making my DVD collection digital

Making my DVD collection digital

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Discussion

Legend83

Original Poster:

9,947 posts

221 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
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Have been thinking I should utilise a bit of the technology I currently possess to make my DVD collection digital and free up some shelf space (plus make the lounge a little more aesthetically pleasing).

Looking for a low cost option and my current thinking is either:

1) Rip all my DVDs and store on HD attached to laptop. Stream wirelessly from laptop to PS3 using PS3 Media Server.

2) Rip all my DVDs and store on HD attached to laptop. Buy a Chromecast and use Plex app on my android phone / laptop to stream to TV.

3) As above but send videos to a cloud.

1 and 2 are not very neat as I would have to have to attach the external HDD to my laptop every time I wanted to connect, although not a big deal.

Questions:

a) Best software to rip DVDs?
b) What is the best balance of format / size etc to rip to?
c) How much is cloud storage and which is best?
d) Are there any neater solutions without having to fork out on a NAS?

Given I have 500gb on PS3, 1TB Seagate Drive and another 500gb on laptop I would hope that would be sufficient.

Cheers

L83

Rawwr

22,722 posts

233 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
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How many DVDs are you planning to rip?

z4RRSchris99

11,221 posts

178 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
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i would just download them, will take you ages ripping them all.

i have them on itunes and then play through apple tv on the main tvs or on airvideo on ipad/iphone etc.

Legend83

Original Poster:

9,947 posts

221 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
quotequote all
Rawwr said:
How many DVDs are you planning to rip?
About 120...

silverous

1,008 posts

133 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
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Be aware in my experience some DVDs won't rip properly due to copy protection - can't remember which I had problems with recently...I use handbrake on a Mac. I put the resulting files on a Netgear ReadYNAS networked NAS drive which means I can watch them on any smart tv in the house.

Edited by silverous on Thursday 8th January 14:29


Edited by silverous on Thursday 8th January 14:30

Legend83

Original Poster:

9,947 posts

221 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
quotequote all
Legend83 said:
About 120...
Although to be honest it will also involve a cull of ones that I am pretty sure I will never watch again, so slightly less than that number.

Don't mind if it takes a bit of time as I don't need it immediately - will start with those used most frequently.

Gingerbread Man

9,171 posts

212 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
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The hassle will be defeating the copy protection, but there is the software to do it. I ripped a bulk load myself for the same reason as you, then coupled with my new Media Centre, it's lovely.

I had two machines going, three DVD drives in total, which copied to the same place via a network. The disc was ejected upon finishing, and then I chucked a new one in.

A long task though. If the hard drives crashed, it would take me a while to muster up the effort again.


Best to copy to a networked hard drive. Buy a NAS.


RizzoTheRat

25,085 posts

191 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
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You can buy NAS with built in media servers. I've got a 2TB MyBookLive which has Twonky media server built in and means I can stream via the PS3 without needing my PC on. It does mean you have to rip stuff in a format that the PS3 can cope with though, and it can't manage some MKV formats, however firing up the PC and transcoding with PS3 Media server does the job.

Scantily

394 posts

170 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
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Downloading your films is going to be so much less hassle and significantly faster, provided you have a fast connection that is.

The easiest and most user friendly way of managing your content is going to be with a nas and then a box plugged into your tv running XBMC hooked up to your network.

Edited by Scantily on Thursday 8th January 18:31

Legend83

Original Poster:

9,947 posts

221 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
quotequote all
Scantily said:
Downloading your films is going to be so much less hassle and significantly faster, provided you have a fast connection that is.
And a large download allowance...

Just a bit frustrating to pay again for the same films I bought all those years ago.

SlidingSideways

1,345 posts

231 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
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Defeating the copy protection is a non-issue, both Handbrake and MakeMKV will do this easily in just a couple of clicks. Not just for DVD, but for BluRay as well.
How you rip will be determined by how much storage you have and what you want to use to play the resulting files.

If you have lots of storage, and your client can play MKV files, then use MakeMKV to rip. This is quick (pretty much just the time it takes to copy the data off the disk) and will give you an exact copy of the movie, no compression etc... These won't play on Apple devices though.

If you've got Apple stuff you'd like to be able to play the videos on, or limited storage and would like to compress the files down a bit, then use Handbrake to create an MP4 version. This is significantly slower as the file is essentially read a frame at a time, compressed and written to the output file. For BR rips this can take many hours for each film.
The upside is that the output file is much smaller (<5Gb compared to an uncompressed ~20Gb BR rip) and can be played by pretty much anything.

If you're going to use Handbrake, you can feed it MKV files rather than doing it a disk at a time. So you can rip a load of disks using MakeMKV and then add them to Handbrakes queue and just let it chug away transcoding them.

Not heard of anywhere you can upload the resulting videos to the cloud and play them easily, so would be interested to hear if such a service exists.

Red Firecracker

5,276 posts

226 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
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Did it over last Christmas, using MakeMKV onto my NAS. All the DVDs & Blu-Rays are now in the loft.

It takes a while, actually, no it takes an age, but it was worth it to me.

WannaNiceCar

118 posts

232 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
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Just to give you an idea on how much space may be required, I've just selected a random selection of 120 DVD rips (straight MKV rips that haven't been resized using programs like Handbrake etc.) and they take up 555GB and none of those are Blu-Ray's. Rips have been made using MakeMKV and just ripping the main movie with no special features etc.

Standard DVD rips will be anywhere between 2Gb and 7Gb, Blu Ray's between 11Gb to 41Gb. These sizes can be reduced by resizing the video using Handbrake or similar, but this will add a LOT of time to the task of ripping disks as well as hog your machines resources while it is running.

Depending on how many DVD's/Blu-Rays you have, you may well be struggling for space. As already suggested, if you are serious about this, invest in a NAS - see other threads for suggestions on recommended NAS units.

Ripping with MakeMKV doesn't take too long (I would guess at about 10mins per DVD, 15-20 for a Blu-Ray - Considering how many I have ripped, I have never noticed just how long it takes, I just start it off and forget about it!)

Just one other thing to consider... If you do go ahead and set up a nice media centre (personally I would recommend Plex) you will find that you can buy DVD's that are for a different region to your player as the ripping process is not affected by the DVD region, nor is playback of the file! - For me this meant that I could finally get hold of one of my favourite movies that was only ever released as region 1 (USA) and watch it whenever I want, even though my reader is locked to Region 2.

marctwo

3,666 posts

259 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
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I did the same. All my DVDs and Blu-rays are in the loft now. I ripped them myself as I am particular about the format I rip them in. I use a combination of makemkv and handbrake and everything is in high profile mp4 with both aac and passthrough audio. For Blu-rays I keep an uncompressed mkv version as well. Works great with Plex.

marctwo

3,666 posts

259 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
quotequote all
WannaNiceCar said:
Depending on how many DVD's/Blu-Rays you have, you may well be struggling for space. As already suggested, if you are serious about this, invest in a NAS - see other threads for suggestions on recommended NAS units.
Or an HP Microserver...

I now have 4 x 4TB drives in mine. As soon as you start storing 1:1 Blu-ray rips you're going to need a lot of storage!

SlidingSideways

1,345 posts

231 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
quotequote all
marctwo said:
For Blu-rays I keep an uncompressed mkv version as well
You can remux BR MKV files directly to MP4 with no loss of quality using an app called Subler. No waiting for Handbrake and no loss of quality.
Its mac only though at the moment.

Another thing to consider is that shifting full sized BR rips around will require a decent network. Probably not advisable over wireless, so your client device will most likely need to be wired.

Magic919

14,126 posts

200 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
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Air Video HD is a handy server I you' have Apple devices. It runs in Windows or Mac and will transcode files such as MKV as it streams. Can also be accessed via Internet.

furtive

4,498 posts

278 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
quotequote all
I've ripped all my DVDs using either DVD Shrink or DVD Decrypter and store them on a small cheap server, then stream them to my TV's using Apple TV's

I've also ripped all my Blu-Rays using MakeMKV and do the same

Scantily

394 posts

170 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
quotequote all
Legend83 said:
And a large download allowance...

Just a bit frustrating to pay again for the same films I bought all those years ago.
I wasn't suggesting that you pay for them again...

The Turbonator

2,792 posts

150 months

Thursday 8th January 2015
quotequote all
Scantily said:
Legend83 said:
And a large download allowance...

Just a bit frustrating to pay again for the same films I bought all those years ago.
I wasn't suggesting that you pay for them again...
Since he already owns a hardcopy of the film, wouldn't torrenting be legal in a case like this?