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Hazel Heart Interview| Author | Post |
|---|---|
| Nameless1 Member  165 Posts 10/10 |  Posted - Jun 12 2011 : 11:46PMThinking of ripping my DVDs and digitizing them. Any advice? What format is best? I want to maintain the quality, etc. I found a program to do it, but just wondering if anyone had some tips. I want to store them on a hard drive (instead of having DVDs) [Link] |
| Rod Member 908 Posts 8/10 | Posted - Jun 13 2011 : 1:32AM [Link] |
| RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06 | Posted - Jun 13 2011 : 5:42AM One question - Are you going to keep the DVDs or get rid of them? Unless you want the risk of losing everything hanging over your head all the time, you're going to want to make at least one backup copy on a separate physical drive for each DVD you put on a hard disk. And even that isn't foolproof. If I had a bunch of DVDs that I spent a lot of time and money collecting and I was going to put them all on hard drives, I wouldn't really feel comfortable with anything less than three separate copies of each movie. And ideally, you'd want to keep the third archive in a separate location in the safest place you can think of to store it. The problem here is with DVDs, if you lose one or two or five or ten, it's a loss but not a huge one. You can replace them or if not, at least you only lost ten. If you lose a terabyte sized hard drive full of DVDs, you lost every one of them in one pop. And though it's unlikely, it's technically feasible that two hard drives could fail around the same time. Maybe a fire or a theft or something equally catastrophic. I guess it depends on how much your collection means to you. Fortunately, hard drives are relatively cheap. But they're far from free. If you have a large collection, you could be looking at a significant investment. And it's still possible you could lose it all (or at least a big chunk of it) due to the inherent unpredictability of hard drives. DVDs DO degrade too and it's true that they won't last forever either. But a brand new hard drive could fail in a week. You just never know. Edited by - randomprecision on 6/13/2011 5:55:14 AM [Link] |
| ninja1 Senior Member 2939 Posts 1/08 | Posted - Jun 13 2011 : 1:56PM [Link] |
| Nameless1 Member 165 Posts 10/10 | Posted - Jun 13 2011 : 10:43PM Dragging and dropping would be so easy, but doesn't always work (some files can't be read). I guess it depends on the DVD. Ripping them seems like it's going to be pretty tedious though... My intention was to take my library and put them on a HD or Flash Drives. Then, I can watch my DVDs with one of those media players, or just plug the flash drive into my current DVD player (has a USB port and plays different media). So really it's a convienience and storage thing. I really like the shop I normally go to, but I think I'd try more purchasing and downloading online (I know, I know). Just purchase, download, store. I have mixed feeling about it though, because I wouldn't want to lose anything. And if I'm going to end up making back up discs just so I have them "just in case" (which I would do), I might as well just keep the DVDs. [Link] |
| RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06 | Posted - Jun 14 2011 : 9:17AM -------------------------- EDIT - Though if you don't have a lot of them you could store them in Something like this (Without the ice, of course). That would keep the moisture away and the extreme temps wouldn't bother them much I don't think. --------------------------- end edit If they were cheaper, I'd say you might try a solid state drive. They wear out too but they might be more reliable while they last than a mechanical platter-based drive. The problem is they're expensive. I think a 150 GB SSD is still about $250 or more. And really, the way you say you want to do it, you'd be best off with external hard drives. I can't advise on dragging and dropping files. So far, everything I've tried that on worked for me. Maybe some of them are copy protected or something so you can't pull them off the disc? Edited by - randomprecision on 6/14/2011 3:43:20 PM [Link] |
Hardware  All-Star Member Your other left 14595 Posts 3/02 | Posted - Jun 14 2011 : 4:36PM Really, there is no media that is permanent, not even your DVD will last. The closest you can get to permanent storage is probably space on somebody's internet "cloud", which is just their data storage farm that's accessible over the internet. [Link] |
| Nameless1 Member 165 Posts 10/10 | Posted - Jun 14 2011 : 4:58PM Now I have another question. It may be a stupid one. If you drag and drop, or even if you "rip" the DVD with a program, it's always going to separate everything, am I correct? I mean, it won't rip a "complete" movie, but separate all the chapters. It would be nice if it could be done without separating the chapters. On non-features it's not a big deal, but with features.... [Link] |
| ninja1 Senior Member 2939 Posts 1/08 | Posted - Jun 14 2011 : 5:13PM [Link] |
| Hardware All-Star Member Your other left 14595 Posts 3/02 | Posted - Jun 14 2011 : 5:27PM If you're trying to get an entire movie in a single file then you'll need a conversion program that can read your .VOB files and convert them to another format, like WMV or AVI, which take less space. As to which format is best, that depends on what you intend to play the files back with. WMV is a proprietary format, so people have to pay Microsoft in order to include readers in their players. Thus, other formats like AVI are more widely supported. However, if you're just going to use Windows then WMV should be fine. [Link] |
| RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06 | Posted - Jun 14 2011 : 6:11PM [Link] |
| ninja1 Senior Member 2939 Posts 1/08 | Posted - Jun 14 2011 : 6:31PM [Link] |
| Nameless1 Member 165 Posts 10/10 | Posted - Jun 14 2011 : 10:24PM [Link] |
| Rod Member 908 Posts 8/10 | Posted - Jun 14 2011 : 10:46PM [Link] |
| Bill All-Star Member 5334 Posts 6/00 | Posted - Jun 15 2011 : 7:54PM Personally, I prefer creating .mkv files with Handbrake than mp4 files. But that's because it was recommended to me for use with my media player and I've only had good results. So, why change? If you decide to use Handbrake, download one of the "nightly builds" rather than the official release. They have more functionality. Technically, the nightly build is a beta versions of the software. But I've never experienced a problem with a nightly build. If you do experience a problem, just wait a day or to and download the next nightly build that becomes available. [Link] |
| RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06 | Posted - Jun 17 2011 : 7:00AM I have no idea if it'll be useful for the OP or not and I haven't personally tried it but it looks like a useful utility for people looking to reencode. Edit.... Another possibly useful page Edited by - randomprecision on 6/17/2011 7:26:35 AM [Link] |
| RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06 | Posted - Jun 17 2011 : 9:01AM [Link] |
| Nameless1 Member 165 Posts 10/10 | Posted - Jun 17 2011 : 3:09PM Well, just testing the waters right now, but I'm trying the "drag and drop" method. It seems to be working so far, but I'm not getting a real clean cut between scenes. It just separates the movie into blocks. Works well for the computer, but I would have to edit and convert if I wanted to play them on my TV. Anyway, for now, I'll drag and drop. Once I have all my folders/files together, I'll burn them all on a couple back up DVDs. Then I can watch on my computer (VLC), or if I want to watch on my TV, I can take steps to do that. Edited by - nameless1 on 6/17/2011 3:22:36 PM Edited by - nameless1 on 6/17/2011 3:49:50 PM [Link] |
| Hardware All-Star Member Your other left 14595 Posts 3/02 | Posted - Jun 17 2011 : 3:19PM DVD Decrypter may be your best bet if you're looking to extract chapters from your DVD. [Link] |
| rodtheripper New Member 5 Posts 6/11 | Posted - Jun 18 2011 : 12:52PM In another idea, you can create ISO files of the DVD and store them because he ISO will be a copy of the DVD, titles, etc. You would need something like Daemon Tools to play them. I find the mp4's are small with good picture quality. My 2 cents. [Link] |
| Rod Member 908 Posts 8/10 | Posted - Jun 18 2011 : 7:24PM [Link] |
| RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06 | Posted - Jun 19 2011 : 7:05AM Just realize if you do it that way you can't ever get the full quality of the original DVD back if something happens to the DVD. And again, not sure if those media players will play ISO files. [Link] |
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