Digitize my DVD collection?

[Scarpad]

I need your thoughts on this matter. I have about 100 DVDs. Should I digitize them onto a hard drive so I can access my music & movie on one Mac? What are the pros & cons?

Thank you!

Well the Con is that its a never ending battle of Storage Problems and the Pro is that it easier to access and nice to have it at a fingertip reach.

I own an ATV and Several Ipods. I have about 200 movies online and probably Double that in TV shows, but lately I've grown tired with constantly encoding and Buying Hard Drives to Keep up. I've been toying with the Idea of doinf future encodes at Ipod Resoltion only which will save space and increase conversion time. And just going back to the DVD to watch. Have'nt done that yet but I'm thinking about it.

 

[Chris Rogers]

As someone who is going through this process right now, it takes more effort than might be expected. I've got a small-to-mid size library of about 200 movies and about 60 seasons worth of TV shows. Both my Macs have been encoding 24 hours a day for the past five days and I'm about half way through my movies.

My suggestion is to do it right the first time. Take the time to research quality settings, make sure you pay attention to some of the smaller details (i.e. which movies have subtitles that you need to double-check are being encoded), and tag every field correctly. This should save you a lot of time in the future.

Another suggestion I have is using Handbrake's new Apple Universal preset. You might not have an iPhone/iPod or an AppleTV currently, but don't discount the possibility that you'll be getting one in the future and would like to play videos on it. The only things that sucks more than encoding all your DVDs once is encoding them twice.

Also, don't underestimate the amount of time it takes you to get everything in order. I've got both my computers running 24 hours a day, but I still have to make sure I've got enough movies queued up to keep it running, plus tagging the video files sometimes takes quite a while. I've noticed I'm spending two to three hours a night getting everything looking good in iTunes and making sure that everything is ready for the next day of encoding.

Finally, make sure you've got the storage space. The DVD files ripped straight from the disc can add up quickly on your internal hard drive. So even if you have an external hard drive that you're planning on putting all these videos on, you've still got to make sure you leave yourself enough space on your internal hard drive to do the actual encoding. Make sure you're deleting the VOB files as soon as you're finished encoding the movie; they take up quite a bit of space.

Obviously, I think all of this is worth it to ensure that I have video files that look good and play on all my devices, but it's not as simple as it often sounds.

I have to agree with EVERYTHING here. Especially encoding twice.

I save hard drive space by encoding in the iPhone/iPod touch format. It has GREAT quality on my 42" Plasma.

 

[JW008]

I save hard drive space by encoding in the iPhone/iPod touch format. It has GREAT quality on my 42" Plasma.

Yep, that Apple Universal preset is exactly what I've been looking for since the day I downloaded Handbrake. The video files look great on my iPhone and my 42" plasma, they don't use up a ton of hard drive space, and I'm fairly certain that it will withstand any future updates from Apple.

If anyone sees Nightstorm on the forums, make sure to thank him for it. He's the reason that preset is there.

 

[paduck]

there is no downside to converting them. just do a little at a time. convenience and space are the main reasons for me. also, many of my kid's dvds are prone to damage so it's nice to have a backup.

This is exactly the reason I got an AppleTV - the kids destroy DVDs like nobody's business!

Although not completely solving the problem, their instructions now are not to touch the DVDs, but to use the little AppleTV remote.

 

[natebookpro]

Half an hour per DVD on average, I think, including copying them to the NAS etc. I am able to work at home often, so have another laptop on my desk dedicated to ripping DVDs. Just have to juggle disks every 30 minutes.

What kind of setup do you have? sounds pretty sweet. My MBP does slightly slower than real time and it sounds like your doing 3 or 4 x real time. Thats w/ tv setting in handbrake 0.9.3

 

[nplima]

ISOs and _TS folders take way too much space. Plus, you have all those annoying previews, FBI warnings, etc. to get through. Just use HandBrake to transcode to mp4. You save a ton of space and it looks pretty much exactly the same as the original DVD.

I have seen this in action:
http://www.dvdfab.com/

copying all DVDs to ISO files that can be opened on any platform where you can use VLC (or a software DVD player).
A ISO file will also be able to be recorded back to an optical disk if it makes sense 10 years from now. I am unsure anyone would have this level of certainty about reading and writing any other type of MPEG format.
As for FBI warnings, DVD Fab does a good job of removing them, along with any other DVD tracks you are not interested in.

At 6 GB per copy, I think it's a cost effective solution.

 

[JPDeckers]

So what do you use to rip them to .ISO format?

I use DVDFab , clone-CD. Copy all, including non-video data etc. Don't care much for FBI warnings, so even have them in (though they become skipable after ripping w/ DVDFab)

Note that this doesn't convert anything, just copying & storing all the data.

 

[funkyc]

i think it's a great idea
but don't know anything abt it
i was reading in the paper the other day there is a program that u can store ur ripped dvd's on and u can play everything through frontrow and control everything with ur apple remote
anyone have any idea what i'm talking abt?

 

[pagansoul]

I'm one of those people who have been collecting DVDs since their beginning. I have thousands of disc. I have been ripping for the last 2 years. I find I burn myself out if I do too many in a week so I keep it down to about 3 movies a week or a season of a show. I have also had to redo some of my first rips over as they were fine for my computer monitor (24", previously 20") and my iphone but not my HDTV 32".

In most cases it takes me a half hour to rip a 2 hour movie. I have a 8GB ram Mac Pro. If a movie will not rip using fairmount I use my TVmax. It plays all DVDs and copies like a TiVo. Not the best quality but it works.

I love using my TV. It's nice to have over 1000 movies/TV shows to choose from on any given time. I do find I don't use my Blu-ray movies as much as I thought I would.

 

[Albion]

I concur with most of the other posters...rip away. I use the latest version of MTR (3.0) for ripping, 0.9.3 Hanbrake (universal setting - looks as good as the DVD on a 42" LCD) for encoding and Metax for tagging of movies, although I find that I use TV.com and Wiki for a lot of content (episode synopsis and posters) that Metax cannot find, especially for my TV seasons.

I have about 600+ DVD's and the most laborious ripping/tagging would be the TV seasons. Keeping Handbrake fed does take time if you want it running 24/7, so ripping is a constant task, and tagging is an absolute must if you want your content looking as professional as the purchased content from iTunes.

As far as storage is concerned, I have a FW800 Drobo with 4 1TB drives, providing about 2.7TB of useable space. I'm just under half-way through my rips and at the half-way mark on my Drobo, so I'll probably need to replace a couple of my 1TB drives with 1.5TB drives before I finish my ripping.

Can't stress enough the beauty of having everything available at the touch of a button from either of my HDTV's, getting back bookcase space as I put my DVD's in the garage and no more replacing damaged disks that my 5 year old has mangled.

 

[CJAquino]

I have been readying the thread and I have the apps I need to digitize my dvd library but was wondering if someone wouldn't mind doing a step by step process, doesn't have to be too detailed.

mainly i just want to make sure I am ripping/encoding my dvd's in the best quality.

what setting's should i use for MTR and HB.

 

[rick3000]

-Pick a movie you really want to rip
-Use Mac the Ripper to rip the DVD to a TS_Folder (no settings needed)
(This will work with most DVD's but some MTR can't rip, like Disney's)
-Open HandBrake and select the TS_Folder ripped by MTR.
-Set HB to the setting you want (use presets or do a google search for what works for your needs; I normally do about 1600-1800kbit/s in fullsize)
-Let HB run and your done

You can also just use Handbrake and ignore MTR, but the DVD will only spin so fast so using MTR can be faster.

For Disney's it is more complicated and I just figured out how to do it.
-Open the DVD in DVD Player, right-click on the video and find which track is playing.
-Close DVD Player and open MTR
-Select Title Set Extraction and Select the same Track you found in DVD Player
-Then select all of the chapters
-Run MTR
-Then run the VOB through HandBrake to get an iTunes compatible file

Hope this Helps!

 

[CJAquino]

thanks Rick

although one more question, HB is still taking a very long time to encode the folder from MTR, upwards of 2 hours. So what is the point of using MTR if encoding the video through HB will take just as long as ripping/encoding it through just HB?

thanks for the help again...i'm trying to learn!

 

[rick3000]

The main reason I use MTR first is so I burn the TS_Folder to a DVD and have a backup DVD, but MTR maybe more successful than HB at ripping some protected DVD's than HB.

If HB is slow, try ripping without using H.264, it takes about 75% longer with H.264 but the difference in quality is negligible in my opinion, but you can decide for yourself.

 

[JW008]

thanks Rick

although one more question, HB is still taking a very long time to encode the folder from MTR, upwards of 2 hours. So what is the point of using MTR if encoding the video through HB will take just as long as ripping/encoding it through just HB?

thanks for the help again...i'm trying to learn!

First off--two hours is actually relatively quick for a full-length movie. I've found mine usually take between two and half and three and a half hours to encode.

I use Mac the Ripper to save time when doing multiple DVDs. If I'm just ripping one DVD, I just do it through Handbrake.

Basically, Handbrake has an option to queue multiple video files. For example, lets say I wanted to rip all eight DVDs from all three season of Arrested Development. Basically, I rip the first disc of the first season through Mac the Ripper (which takes approximately thirty minutes) and then start encoding that file through Handbrake. While that is encoding, I rip the other seven discs and then put them in the Handbrake queue. What this does is keep Handbrake constantly encoding instead of having to switch out each individual disc after Handbrake is finished encoding it. This means, I can leave it to encode while I sleep at night, since there's no discs that have to be switched out.

I find this method to be a bit more of a hassle, but it saves me significant time.

 

[Albion]

thanks Rick

although one more question, HB is still taking a very long time to encode the folder from MTR, upwards of 2 hours. So what is the point of using MTR if encoding the video through HB will take just as long as ripping/encoding it through just HB?

thanks for the help again...i'm trying to learn!

as others have indicated, it's all about the queue! Encoding is your bottleneck in the workflow as it takes the longest, therefore you want to do that when you are at work or asleep. Ripping is relatively quick, so my workflow is to rip a bunch of DVD's using MTR and then queue them up in HB. Often, if I'm doing TV seasons, I can have upwards of over 100 files queued up in HB, which I constantly just keeping adding to as I rip new DVD's. The alternative is to laboriously encode directly from the DVD using HB which takes upwards of two hours. In that time you could have ripped between 4 and 8 DVD's and have them queued up in HB and doing something else with your time.

 

[NightStorm]

thanks Rick

although one more question, HB is still taking a very long time to encode the folder from MTR, upwards of 2 hours. So what is the point of using MTR if encoding the video through HB will take just as long as ripping/encoding it through just HB?

thanks for the help again...i'm trying to learn!

I'd love to have 2-hour encode times again... darn HD-DVD encodes are taking between 13-16 hours to complete.

 

[CJAquino]

thanks, I got it down now. Appreciate the help.

Now what about HD DVD's and Blu Rays? I'm assuming you'll have to have a different drive that will read either HD or Blu Ray in order to rip them?

 

[GimmeSlack12]

I just bought a 1Tb drive and have begun putting full VIDEO_TS folders on my MiniMedia machine. I have realized that Front Row plays VIDEO_TS folders natively and it is fantastic. Just place the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS in a folder and then FR sees that folder as a DVD.

Since I don't have too many DVD's I am not compressing with HandBrake (yet), but that's the beauty of having the uncompressed files on my hard drive.

 

[rhett7660]

First off--two hours is actually relatively quick for a full-length movie. I've found mine usually take between two and half and three and a half hours to encode.

Not to rub it in, I am averaging about 15-20 minutes per encode!

 

[mwsh2000]

Great for the kids movies

In my case, I was going to rip my entire collection, and am now rethinking that. I think it would be best to rip my children's DVD's just for the convenience, since these are the movies that get watched the most in our house. The best part about it for me is the speed. It starts right up, and you don't need to sit through 10 previews (or fast forward through them). Also, cartoons look better to me than live action stuff. I would guess that this is because there is less detail. Just for reference, I use the TV setting in Handbrake.

 

[rhett7660]

In my case, I was going to rip my entire collection, and am now rethinking that. I think it would be best to rip my children's DVD's just for the convenience, since these are the movies that get watched the most in our house. The best part about it for me is the speed. It starts right up, and you don't need to sit through 10 previews (or fast forward through them). Also, cartoons look better to me than live action stuff. I would guess that this is because there is less detail. Just for reference, I use the TV setting in Handbrake.

I still plan on ripping my entire collection. However I have mainly been ripping the items we watch the most right now. I agree about starting right up, it is nice very nice...

 

[HiFiGuy528]

I just bought a 1Tb drive and have begun putting full VIDEO_TS folders on my MiniMedia machine. I have realized that Front Row plays VIDEO_TS folders natively and it is fantastic. Just place the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS in a folder and then FR sees that folder as a DVD.

Since I don't have too many DVD's I am not compressing with HandBrake (yet), but that's the beauty of having the uncompressed files on my hard drive.

I think having the movies on my HD is more important to me than making them for iPod or iPhone viewing.

Did you use MTR to rip?
How did you point the ripped files to Front Row?
Can you import it to iTunes movie library?

 

[CJAquino]

Did you use MTR to rip?
How did you point the ripped files to Front Row?
Can you import it to iTunes movie library?

I tried this, and used MTR and then opened Front Row>Movies>Movies Folder(I put the TS folder in my Movies Folder)

it lets you use all of the DVD extra features and what not.

 

[HiFiGuy528]

Looks like Drive in by Telestream is at my liking, but I can't use iTunes to manage my library.

Few things are top on my list that MTR & Handbrake lacked.

- ease of use, all in one app.
- 5.1 surround
- original quality, not compressed
- fast transfer time

Has anyone here used Drive in or found a way to use iTunes to manage the library?