iPod Handbrake + TV show DVD's

[cleo]

I'm using Handbrake for the first time to rip my DVDs for a plane flight. I'm *so* not an expert at this stuff, so be easy on me!

With regular movie DVDs Handbrake has been really smart about picking out the actual feature. How does it work with TV shows on DVD? Do you do each episode separately? If so, how do you know which tracks to rip? And can you queue them all up instead of doing them consecutively?

Also, in terms of quality... I'm not looking for anything stellar... I just want to fill up my 8GB with as much variety as possible to keep me occupied for as long as possible. (16hrs would be awesome -- I have a battery pack -- but that might be hoping for too much.) Anyway, how many MB can I compress a 44m show to and still have it watchable? (I'm used to watching hulu, so my standards are not high.)

 

[Razeus]

I'm using Handbrake for the first time to rip my DVDs for a plane flight. I'm *so* not an expert at this stuff, so be easy on me!

With regular movie DVDs Handbrake has been really smart about picking out the actual feature. How does it work with TV shows on DVD? Do you do each episode separately? If so, how do you know which tracks to rip? And can you queue them all up instead of doing them consecutively?

Also, in terms of quality... I'm not looking for anything stellar... I just want to fill up my 8GB with as much variety as possible to keep me occupied for as long as possible. (16hrs would be awesome -- I have a battery pack -- but that might be hoping for too much.) Anyway, how many MB can I compress a 44m show to and still have it watchable? (I'm used to watching hulu, so my standards are not high.)

I've encoded Lost, The Office, Heroes and X-Files (all seasons of each show) -
With TV Show DVD's, what you have to do is rip all the ones that say ~44m (or ~22m for sitcom's). There's no telling which is which, but I've had success in assuming that the top one listed is the first episode of the disc and so forth. I'll select each file and que them up.

Sometimes you just have the rip them, assigning a file name to it, then go back and rename the file after viewing it to make sure you've got the right name to the right file.

I always encode at 1500kbps video h.264 with 48/128 AAC audio using 2 passes. My resolution is iPhone native rez at 480. The file size for a 44 min episode is about 500MB, which is rather large, but it looks great on both my iPhone, my laptop and when I stream to my 42" HDTV so having just one file to use in all scenario's is great and easier to manage.

For you however, I would go no lower than 700kbps for video, which should make your 44 min shows about 250MB's in size for each episode.

 

[Narcosynthesis]

Handbrake won't automatically pick up on the fact it is a tv series, so if left to its own devices will give you a three hour long compilation instead of 6 30 minute shows...

All you have to do is record each episode separately. At the top left of the window there is a 'title' box, if you open the menu next to it you will see the dvd split into all the chapters, which for a tv series will be the separate episodes and any other video tracks included. Pick the top item of the correct length, rename it to the episode title (or whatever it is you want to distinguish the episodes with) by replacing the dvd name at the end of the destination then click add to queue. You then just need to repeat that for each episode, adding them to the queue as you go and when you hit start it will rip them all one after another to different files without you having to reset anything.

As for quality, it depends on what you consider 'acceptable' - if all you want is something to watch on a plane then delete the files then I would say you could drop the quality down a fair bit and still have an 'acceptable' show, obviously it won't look as nice as full dvd quality on a big tv, but for a couple of plane rides you could easily make do...

 

[Scarpad]

I've encoded Lost, The Office, Heroes and X-Files (all seasons of each show) -
With TV Show DVD's, what you have to do is rip all the ones that say ~44m (or ~22m for sitcom's). There's no telling which is which, but I've had success in assuming that the top one listed is the first episode of the disc and so forth. I'll select each file and que them up.

Sometimes you just have the rip them, assigning a file name to it, then go back and rename the file after viewing it to make sure you've got the right name to the right file.

I always encode at 1500kbps video h.264 with 48/128 AAC audio using 2 passes. My resolution is iPhone native rez at 480. The file size for a 44 min episode is about 500MB, which is rather large, but it looks great on both my iPhone, my laptop and when I stream to my 42" HDTV so having just one file to use in all scenario's is great and easier to manage.

For you however, I would go no lower than 700kbps for video, which should make your 44 min shows about 250MB's in size for each episode.

Yuck trying to watch a 480 res file on my HDTV would make my head ache, If I'm going to watch it at all on my TV I encode to no lower than 640, if it's Wide I use 720, than the resultant vid looks quite watchable on my 47" Sony.

 

[Razeus]

Yuck trying to watch a 480 res file on my HDTV would make my head ache, If I'm going to watch it at all on my TV I encode to no lower than 640, if it's Wide I use 720, than the resultant vid looks quite watchable on my 47" Sony.

I watch that res all the time on my HDTV, very acceptable. but to each his own.