DVD Ripping Advice Needed

[vexhold]

I need some help still with my DVD collection.

This is my current way of doing it.

1.Insert DVD
2.Let AnyDVD do it's thing
3.Open DVDShrink
4.Select ReAuthor
5.Drag only movie over
6.Click Backup

This creates a TS_Audio and TS_Video in a folder with the DVD's name
Sizes vary from 3-6GB per DVD
All movies play fine for me

At the moment I am using Sage on Windows XP but will receive my hd200s on Tuesday.

So my question is...

What is the best way to acheive the following options...

Smallest Size without losing ANY quality
Ability to Queue or have DVDs in a playlist
Be able to FF/RW/Play/Stop/Pause
No menus, chapters, other garbage... just the movie
The best quality English Audio Only
Be able to play on an extender and a windows client


I know its alot of needs, but this is what I need to acheive highest WAF.

I am open to try any and all software packages.

Thanks in advance.

[personalt]

I have had good luck with DVDfab after trying a bunch of other programs.

You can do main movie or whole dvd. When doing main movie I seem to end up around 5 gigs with no compression. At 200 movies on a $129 terrabyte drive I didnt try compression.

I had tried some other software and counldnt fastfoward without crashing.

[S_M_E]

I've had good luck with Nero Recode but it rips them to .mp4, they're not very small (quality is decent though) and it's a pain to set all of the options every time. I might be able to save some of my settings as defaut but I really don't own that many DVD's so I just do them manually.

YMMV...

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by vexhold

Smallest Size without losing ANY quality

Use Handbrake with DVD43 and encode to h264/mkv using an appropriate profile to keep the quality desired (high profile/film)

Originally Posted by vexhold

Be able to play on an extender and a windows client

As long as the windows client is powerful enough to play back high profile h264, that shouldn't be the problem. Not sure on the extender. I think the HD200 shouldn't have a problem.

[vexhold]

I tried using DVDShrink and making it one large .VOB and then renaming it to a .MPG and partwy through the movie it freezes.

Is this the windows limit issue?

Do other formats your refering to eliminate this problem?

[brainbone]

DVD shrink uses Mpeg 2, Handbrake can use h264. Because of this, Handbrake can encode to a smaller file while keeping a higher quality, since h264 (Mpeg 4/AVC) is more efficient than Mpeg 2. Handbrake will just take a bit longer to encode than DVD shrink.

You can then choose the container to put the h264 in. In this case, mkv will probably work best. It will work on your windows clients, and it should work on the HD200s.

You'll need to experiment to find the profile that works best for you. But for animated DVDs (movies for the kids) I use "High Profile/Animated", and then increase the bit rate from the default "1000" to "1300". For Most other DVDs I use "High profile/Film", and make sure to check Detelecine and Decomb, just in case the DVD needs it.

You can use DVD43 as a free alternative to AnyDVD.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by brainbone

DVD shrink uses Mpeg 2, Handbrake can use h264.

It should be made clear that 99% of us don't use DVD Shrink to "shrink" DVDs, we use it because it's one of the few/only solutions to reauthor a DVD rip to contain just the movie. ie, there's no transcoding going on, no quality loss.

Because of this, Handbrake can encode to a smaller file while keeping a higher quality, since h264 (Mpeg 4/AVC) is more efficient than Mpeg 2. Handbrake will just take a bit longer to encode than DVD shrink.

The OP wanted no quality loss, so that means no transcoding, we need to look for ways to remux the DVD MPEG-2 Video and AC3/DTS audio into a different container.

FWIW, I keep coming back to VideoReDo being able to do that.

Actually it looks like eac3to will accept VOB input.

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by stanger89

The OP wanted no quality loss

I guess the "smallest size possible" request put me off track.

[vexhold]

Itried DVD Shrink and the quality was great, but no option of doing playlists

I tried VideoRedo and I lost FF?RW capabilities

I tried DVD Shrink and renaming the .vob to a .mpg and lost FF/RW and locked up partway though movie.

I now am trying Handbrake and tested 2 movies so far and so far so good.

Thanks for your help. If I run into something else I will repost.

[stanger89]

You're losing quality with handbrake though. There's no lossless conversion between MPEG-2 and mpeg-4/h.264. Not to mention the time it takes to transcode the video.

As I mentioned above, eac3to can remux video and mkv supports mpeg-2, so you could probably use that (perhaps plus mkvtoolnix) to remux a VOB from DVD Shrink to MKV.

Also tsRemuX can open vobs and appears to be able to remux a vob to a ts file.

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by stanger89

You're losing quality with handbrake though. There's no lossless conversion between MPEG-2 and mpeg-4/h.264. Not to mention the time it takes to transcode the video.

The quality loss is minimal (difficult for most to tell the difference unless you sit less than 4' from a 46" screen) as long as you're not too aggressive in the compression, and the source doesn't have too much artifacting to begin with.

The time to encode is certainly a problem, though with handbrake's ability to queue, I'm willing to put up with it in order to delay purchasing more Hard disks (and SATA controllers). Many pockets just aren't as deep as they once were.

[dislecksea]

DVD backs up my movies to my server just fine. For mine I do main movie (no menus or extras), only 1 audio stream, no subtitles. I play them on my extender no problem: ff/rw works great.

Give the cost of storage, I am not sweating compression at this point.

[queequeg99]

Originally Posted by vexhold

I tried using DVDShrink and making it one large .VOB and then renaming it to a .MPG and partwy through the movie it freezes.

Is this the windows limit issue?

Do other formats your refering to eliminate this problem?

This isn't a Windows issue. It's a DVD format issue. The file format for DVD video calls for vob files to be no more than 1gig each. The authors of most players know this and their software was written accordingly. So when it hits the 1gig point in a huge file, the software chokes. There might be some players out there that can handle larger files but I don't know what they are.

Here is some information on the DVD file structure:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f72/tutoria...ructure-77646/

[vexhold]

So Stanger, your saying I should Use DVD Shrink to create my TS_Video folder which contains the .vob file and then use eac3to to convert that file to a .mkv file?

An this would be the same .mkv filetype I have now with HandBrake but with zero quality loss?

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by vexhold

So Stanger, your saying I should Use DVD Shrink to create my TS_Video folder which contains the .vob file and then use eac3to to convert that file to a .mkv file?

An this would be the same .mkv filetype I have now with HandBrake but with zero quality loss?

mkvtoolnix should also accomplish the same.

Basically, it will move the contents of the VOB into an MKV container. No compression will take place, so the MKV will be roughly the same size and exactly the same quality as the VOB(s).

You'll need to use DVD shrink to isolate the main move first.

[TechJunkie]

If time is money and quality is what you want then you can not beat DVDFab. 5 minutes to rip a dvd movie into its original format and plays perfectly on a HD100 and a HD200 extender. Drop a jpeg of the movie into the folder and you also get a view of the movie in SageTV. DVD Fab just moves the contains of the DVD onto your hard drive and removes the security and region information.

[vexhold]

So when I use DVDShrink I'm going to uncheck the option to split the .vob's into 1GB files

Take the large .vob and input it into mkvtoolnix and it will output a mkv file.

Do I need any of the other files created by DVDShrink that are inside the TS_Video folder after that?

Now is this something you have tried and works with all my requirments, or is this something that you "think" will work. Either way is fine as I will test it thouroughly, but just wanted to know ahead of time. My HD200's arrive tommorrow.


**On a side note**

I really appreciate your help guys, I am a network guru by trade, but this audio/video stuff is all new to me (Greek as it were). The more I learn the more fascinated I become and want to learn more and more. I then hope to help others better as you are to me. Thanks.

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by vexhold

Now is this something you have tried and works with all my requirments, or is this something that you "think" will work.

This is something that may work. I've created mkvs from VOBs using mkvtoolnix that work in VLC player, but have not tested them in SageTV, or on the HD200.

Originally Posted by vexhold

Do I need any of the other files created by DVDShrink that are inside the TS_Video folder after that?

No.

[aaronlalonde]

ive been using anydvd and clonedvd to rip to my storage drive. Im now wanting to do the same thing easily with excellent quality with blu ray to play on my extenders

ive been thru a few posts but it is all as clear as mud

[aaronlalonde]

where might I find some directions, in english, for txmuxer? I ran a dvd thru it and ended up witha 20gb ts file. on a sage client i get an error, on the extender it shows a runtime of 0.00

**update**

I ended up using anydvdHD to rip a copy of the dvd, found the largets m2ts file, moved it to the top level folder, renamed it with the movie name.

It plays on the extender but not the client.