Digitizing my DVD collection
Discussion
I am getting fed up with endless rows of DVDs everywhere, plus the kids get hold of them and they get scratched and I am thinking about digitizing the lot and then either ebaying or charity shopping them.
I have no intentions of distributing this, so I guess it is legal for my own use? No one would ever know anyway I guess.
Having a quick look it looks like a 1TB ext. hard drive and a media player will be the best way to go? Both my blu-ray player and TV accept usb drives, but the blue-ray (Sony) doesn't like many formats and I can't get stuff to play. The TV plays them fine but it disables the AV outputs so I can't get surround sound. A HDMI player seems like a good bet, seems I can also get ones with WiFi so I can watch stuff on other devices.
Does anyone have any good suggestions for which kit? Or any better ideas? Also what sort of software should I use for the ripping of the DVDs and are there any security restrictions to be aware of?
I have no intentions of distributing this, so I guess it is legal for my own use? No one would ever know anyway I guess.
Having a quick look it looks like a 1TB ext. hard drive and a media player will be the best way to go? Both my blu-ray player and TV accept usb drives, but the blue-ray (Sony) doesn't like many formats and I can't get stuff to play. The TV plays them fine but it disables the AV outputs so I can't get surround sound. A HDMI player seems like a good bet, seems I can also get ones with WiFi so I can watch stuff on other devices.
Does anyone have any good suggestions for which kit? Or any better ideas? Also what sort of software should I use for the ripping of the DVDs and are there any security restrictions to be aware of?
As I understand it, it is illegal to rip DVDs, even if you keep the originals! This is to do with it being illegal to defeat the DRM which you have to do in order to rip the disc. It is a case of the law being an ass, and you probably won’t get into trouble if they are your DVD’s and you keep them. (Mine reside in the loft. You can always bin the cases and inserts and just keep the discs on spindles.) Ebaying or otherwise getting rid of them is a step further up the ladder of illegality, if things can be illegal to differing amounts…
Software wise, you need to decide what format you are going to use, which in turn is influenced by your media player. I use makemkv, which turns the DVDs into, err, .mkv files. It is a while since I went through the process you are going through now of choosing software and hardware, but I seem to remember this being the generally recommended format at the time for what I needed (uncompressed main film, subtitles support, and automatic ‘non-ripping’ of titles less than a certain length (which ignores adverts, short films, etc.)) . Other common formats are .AVI, or you can rip the folder structure or .ISO image if you want to retain the menus, piracy warnings, adverts, etc.. I have ripped a few discs as .ISOs and used DVDShrink for this, which lets you compress menus, adverts and the film itself by different amounts. Handbrake also gets recommended a lot, but I could never figure it out.
Hardware wise, the WD Live comes highly recommended and will play pretty much any format you can throw at it and would probably be my choice if I were to need a new one. I use a now unsupported Netgear streamer: don’t get one of these.
Mike...
Software wise, you need to decide what format you are going to use, which in turn is influenced by your media player. I use makemkv, which turns the DVDs into, err, .mkv files. It is a while since I went through the process you are going through now of choosing software and hardware, but I seem to remember this being the generally recommended format at the time for what I needed (uncompressed main film, subtitles support, and automatic ‘non-ripping’ of titles less than a certain length (which ignores adverts, short films, etc.)) . Other common formats are .AVI, or you can rip the folder structure or .ISO image if you want to retain the menus, piracy warnings, adverts, etc.. I have ripped a few discs as .ISOs and used DVDShrink for this, which lets you compress menus, adverts and the film itself by different amounts. Handbrake also gets recommended a lot, but I could never figure it out.
Hardware wise, the WD Live comes highly recommended and will play pretty much any format you can throw at it and would probably be my choice if I were to need a new one. I use a now unsupported Netgear streamer: don’t get one of these.
Mike...
944fan said:
Also what sort of software should I use for the ripping of the DVDs and are there any security restrictions to be aware of?
take a look at http://vortexbox.org/content/134-About-VortexBoxIf you've got a lot of dvd/cds to copy, its a pretty good solution, minimum user interaction, you just bung the cd in, go and make a cup of tea or whatever.. when its done, it spits the cd out, and you insert the next one.
I digitised my entire 400 odd cd collection onto flac files using it, and all I had to do was swap the cds over.. very simple.
However, you need an old pc, or spare hd to use it..
I used an old hd, placed in my main pc, then just selected that hd at bootup when I wanted to rip a cd/dvd.. and used the 'normal' hd when I wanted my pc working as normal.
Edited by Nimbus on Monday 21st January 18:02
Just to ask how many times you actually watch these DVDs? I could imagine spending quite a bit of time to rip them to a hard drive (and trim off any extras, etc to save space), but if you hardly rewatch them does it really matter? If it's just a selection of kids DVDs that you want to rip before they become unplayable, then does it really matter if you don't get surround sound on these discs...I'm pretty sure most kids won't care so long as they can hear the sound, if you can just use your existing player via USB.
If the discs are that scratched you'll get very little for them if you sell, so you could just keep them in disc wallets. In fact you'll get very little for used DVDs anyway I reckon. I've got a couple of disc wallets that hold maybe 50 or 100 discs. I then binned the DVD cases so these 2-3 wallets take up very little space rather than having shelf upon shelf covered with DVDs. They rarely get watched at all now, but some of the kids ones are handy if we have young visitors otherwise I'd get rid of them altogether since I now rent on line from Blockbuster and as BluRays are no more expensive using the online rental, then not much need for DVDs at all myself (just to give some background to m point of view regarding DVDs).
If the discs are that scratched you'll get very little for them if you sell, so you could just keep them in disc wallets. In fact you'll get very little for used DVDs anyway I reckon. I've got a couple of disc wallets that hold maybe 50 or 100 discs. I then binned the DVD cases so these 2-3 wallets take up very little space rather than having shelf upon shelf covered with DVDs. They rarely get watched at all now, but some of the kids ones are handy if we have young visitors otherwise I'd get rid of them altogether since I now rent on line from Blockbuster and as BluRays are no more expensive using the online rental, then not much need for DVDs at all myself (just to give some background to m point of view regarding DVDs).
Red Firecracker said:
I finished doing this for my collection yesterday. 400 DVD/Blu-Rays ripped to 2.7Tb using MakeMKV, just ripping the main feature and audio track, no extras or subtitles. Easy as anything, it's just a time issue, I was getting through 10 discs per day at work.
10 a day? I got through this lot in a bout 3 days...
Admittedly though I did cheat a bit - 3 PC's + several external disc drives.
Unfortunately my Oppo BDP-93 won't stream HD audio in an mkv container so I have to use m2ts for them.http://www.kaleidescape.com/products/
Brilliant. If you had a budget in mind, times it by 100 and you might get close
Brilliant. If you had a budget in mind, times it by 100 and you might get close
For anyone that does this and then sells the originals do you not even see that as being slightly wrong?
Assuming most don't, are you not worried that you'll loose the digital copies and want to be able to get back those films? At some point unless you have a very robust storage solution it will break.
I'm going through my CD collection and ripping them to FLAC at the moment and will likely not put them all back on the shelves but I'm not getting rid of the ones I don't, they're just going to be kept in a box somewhere out of the way.
Assuming most don't, are you not worried that you'll loose the digital copies and want to be able to get back those films? At some point unless you have a very robust storage solution it will break.
I'm going through my CD collection and ripping them to FLAC at the moment and will likely not put them all back on the shelves but I'm not getting rid of the ones I don't, they're just going to be kept in a box somewhere out of the way.
nonuts said:
For anyone that does this and then sells the originals do you not even see that as being slightly wrong?
Assuming most don't, are you not worried that you'll loose the digital copies and want to be able to get back those films? At some point unless you have a very robust storage solution it will break.
I'm going through my CD collection and ripping them to FLAC at the moment and will likely not put them all back on the shelves but I'm not getting rid of the ones I don't, they're just going to be kept in a box somewhere out of the way.
Nobody is suggesting to sell or get rid of the originals. Anybody can see that it is piracy.Assuming most don't, are you not worried that you'll loose the digital copies and want to be able to get back those films? At some point unless you have a very robust storage solution it will break.
I'm going through my CD collection and ripping them to FLAC at the moment and will likely not put them all back on the shelves but I'm not getting rid of the ones I don't, they're just going to be kept in a box somewhere out of the way.
Normally would rip the CD/DVD and then chuck into a box in the loft.
nonuts said:
tim2100 said:
Nobody is suggesting to sell or get rid of the originals. Anybody can see that it is piracy.
In the OP "...and then either ebaying or charity shopping them."
I saw the 'I have no intentions of distributing this' line and assumed that was the digital and physical copies.
nonuts said:
Okay, so back to my other question, what are you going to do when that HDD fails and you've got rid of all your originals?
Its a good point. I will be getting a solid state drive which are more reliable but I guess keeping the originals somewhere is good idea. Or keeping a second digital copy somewhere.After I'd ripped them, I stuck all my DVDs & CDs onto a few spindles (the things you get bulk recordable DVD/CDs on that hold 50 disks) and all of the covers & booklets in a box file before sticking the cases in the recycling. Takes up much less space now and I can still get at them if necessary.
944fan said:
nonuts said:
Okay, so back to my other question, what are you going to do when that HDD fails and you've got rid of all your originals?
Its a good point. I will be getting a solid state drive which are more reliable but I guess keeping the originals somewhere is good idea. Or keeping a second digital copy somewhere.Regardless of reliability, an SSD would be a very expensive way of providing storage for a media player.
You mention a 1TB external disk in your original post, looking at what's available to do that on SSD would cost in the region of 700 pounds (something like a LaCie Little Big Disk with 2 x 500GB SSD) and not really provide much benefit over a 1Tb spinning disk (60 pounds). Given the huge price difference it would be cheaper to buy 2 external 1Tb drives and retain one of them as a backup.
The bigger decision is whether you want to have some centralised storage, shared over a wired or wireless network with a media player, or whether you're happy just to plug and external drive into the media player.
The benefit of the former would be that multiple devices could access the movies (i.e. multiple media players in different rooms, PCs, Tablets, Smartphones etc) and that new films can be added from the PC over the network. This approach would typically use a NAS device to store the files and then a network connected streamer(s) to play the content. The only downside of this is probably cost (NAS will cost a little more than an external USB drive) and be a little harder to set up.
The other option is to use an external USB drive and plug it directly into the medial player to play the files. This is simpler, but can't be easily shared across multiple media players at the same time. It also means that the drive needs to be removed from the player and plugged into the PC to add new files. On final consideration may also be how long the media player takes to index a large hard drive when it's first/re-connected. I used one of the early WD Live Media Players and while it was pretty quick when I plugged in USB Pen Drives (8-16GB) it took a fair amount of time to scan and index a 2TB external drive - however this was a couple of years ago so they may have improved this since. In terms of compatibility it played every format I tried and had some online players as well (iPlayer etc)
When I use makeMKV the output for an average DVD quality film is between 2-4Gb, so about 300 films on average on a 1TB drive. You could compress further or convert to a smaller format, but this could take a significant amount of time depending on how much CPU/GPU power your PC has.
You mention a 1TB external disk in your original post, looking at what's available to do that on SSD would cost in the region of 700 pounds (something like a LaCie Little Big Disk with 2 x 500GB SSD) and not really provide much benefit over a 1Tb spinning disk (60 pounds). Given the huge price difference it would be cheaper to buy 2 external 1Tb drives and retain one of them as a backup.
The bigger decision is whether you want to have some centralised storage, shared over a wired or wireless network with a media player, or whether you're happy just to plug and external drive into the media player.
The benefit of the former would be that multiple devices could access the movies (i.e. multiple media players in different rooms, PCs, Tablets, Smartphones etc) and that new films can be added from the PC over the network. This approach would typically use a NAS device to store the files and then a network connected streamer(s) to play the content. The only downside of this is probably cost (NAS will cost a little more than an external USB drive) and be a little harder to set up.
The other option is to use an external USB drive and plug it directly into the medial player to play the files. This is simpler, but can't be easily shared across multiple media players at the same time. It also means that the drive needs to be removed from the player and plugged into the PC to add new files. On final consideration may also be how long the media player takes to index a large hard drive when it's first/re-connected. I used one of the early WD Live Media Players and while it was pretty quick when I plugged in USB Pen Drives (8-16GB) it took a fair amount of time to scan and index a 2TB external drive - however this was a couple of years ago so they may have improved this since. In terms of compatibility it played every format I tried and had some online players as well (iPlayer etc)
When I use makeMKV the output for an average DVD quality film is between 2-4Gb, so about 300 films on average on a 1TB drive. You could compress further or convert to a smaller format, but this could take a significant amount of time depending on how much CPU/GPU power your PC has.
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