[theplastickid]

A buddy of mine has a external 1TB hard drive linked up to his playstation 3. When he loads the PS3 he is able to access all of his films from his hard drive and play them through the PS3. I want to do the same but not with a PS3.

Can anyone recommend any good solutions for backing up all of my 400 DVD's in an electronic format and playing them through my DVD/BluRay Player.

I don't want to have to convert all my DVD's to AVI or MPEG files etc... I'd like to keep the DVD's in the native file format.

I have seen media players and things but I am not too sure how they work, I have read up on them and some reviews but I am still unsure if they are what I need for what I want to acheive.

I would really appreciate some sound advice.

Many THanks,
Brett.

[John7]

You are going to need at least 2 x 2tb USB hard drives @ £200+ each..............................still want to continue?

Oh, and a media player and about 4 weeks sat in front of PC to rip them!

[Andy98765]

As John7 says you need a lot of hard drive space. I run a Windows home server http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...r/default.mspx and our 500 DVD's take up 2.66G of space and with duplication switched on that is 5.32G of space. Duplication is switched on in the Home Server because if a 2G drive fails that is one hell of a load of data down the drink.
All you need is a low power processor PC and lots of SATA ports. I built mine from junk box parts.
I then use My Movies - Home installed on all the PC's in the house via a 1 gig LAN set up. I have even tried running three different movies on three PC's at the same time and had no problems.
The home server holds all our photos, music and films and also backs up every PC daily. In the event of a failure to one of the PC's you can restore it from one of the backup's.

[Broadsword]

Originally Posted by theplastickid

A buddy of mine has a external 1TB hard drive linked up to his playstation 3. When he loads the PS3 he is able to access all of his films from his hard drive and play them through the PS3. I want to do the same but not with a PS3.

Can anyone recommend any good solutions for backing up all of my 400 DVD's in an electronic format and playing them through my DVD/BluRay Player.

I don't want to have to convert all my DVD's to AVI or MPEG files etc... I'd like to keep the DVD's in the native file format.

I have seen media players and things but I am not too sure how they work, I have read up on them and some reviews but I am still unsure if they are what I need for what I want to acheive.

I would really appreciate some sound advice.

Many THanks,
Brett.

You need somthing like makemkv or something that takes a DVD and rips it to a universal format that most media players can read. Takes 20 minutes per disc. You can rip to iso format or to the file structure format but it gets messy, it really is much easier to use mkv. It still takes the same amount of time.

You then need a media player such as the WDTV, WDTV Live, Popcorn hour, xtreamer, O!Play etc etc. Connect that to your pc, either using ethernet cable or using 200Mb homeplugs or a N wireless setup. Lower spec homeplug wont work, nether will non N wireless. Even some 200Mb homeplugs may not be suitable due to bad wiring, cable is best.

The problem is the space, you can compress them but it takes longer.

The popcorn hour or any NMT variant is good as you can create a movie jukebox with them.

It's really quite simple and fun once you get your head round it all. AS has been said though, maybe do it in batches, get the player and a 1TB hardrive either internal if your pc can take it or usb if not and start ripping, add more space if needed. It really is up to you if you use disc mirroring or want to backup the original discs. I have managed a few years on my original discs and never had a problem. But you know the risks and the consequences if you dont.

If you dont mind compressing then DVD shrink does a nice job.

[Matt_C]

Originally Posted by Broadsword

If you dont mind compressing then DVD shrink does a nice job.

It also does a nice job without compressing - just select "No Compression" in the compression level menu when ripping and it won't compress it. Unless I intend to put a DVD onto a disc, I don't compress any of my DVD's I rip.

What I love about DVDShrink is you can "Re-Author" and select only the feature film, and leave off all the menu's, extra's, trailers, etc. You can deselect multiple audio tracks and take only the one you want. For example, I backed up a DVD Thursday, and took only the main film, with only the DTS audiotrack.

Once thats ripped to file, I then convert with Auto Gordian Knot (google AutoGK) to AVI, which does compress, but with the correct algorithms, it's not too bad...

I just choose to convert to AVI as a) space, and b) it's just so much easier to have a single file for each film than a folder with DVD filestructure for each film.....

[next010]

All good advice, my own take

1) Buy a NAS (network attached storage) preferably with 2-4 bays so you can expand in future. This is what I use very small and quiet - uses laptop hard drives.

2) To keep original image quality you can rip to ISO image which takes the entire DVD but requires a player capable of mounting ISO images and playing them including menus (not all do).

Check out a player like Popcornhour which has ISO support & can play files from network shares.

3) The other way to keep image quality is to use MakeMKV which rips the original main movie video and audio of a DVD into a single MKV container.

Check out player like WDTV Live (the WDTV Live will play an ISO but has no menu support) & can play files from network shares.

Personally if you dont care for menus or extras MakeMKV is the way to go as it also gives space saving cutting out the extras from the DVD, it will be slow going though to rip all 400 even though at least its not encoding into another format so it will only take a short while to do each one. Watch out some DVD drives are speed locked to 8x in a PC, one without such a lock can rip faster.

Playing on your existing DVD/Blu-ray player is likely not possible unless it supports the above formats, your friend probably converted his movies to be playable on the PS3 as it doesn't support the above formats either that why its best to get a proper media player with wide ranging media support.

[Broadsword]

Originally Posted by Matt_C

It also does a nice job without compressing - just select "No Compression" in the compression level menu when ripping and it won't compress it. Unless I intend to put a DVD onto a disc, I don't compress any of my DVD's I rip.

Makemkv will also do the same though and strip out the security which dvdshrink won't. So its either use something like ripit4me or pass the disc through twice.

[Matt_C]

What security? The anti-copy security? DVDShrink does remove that - if it didn't it wouldn't be able to rip the content from the DVD! The only problem DVDShrink has with security is it's unable to do ARccOS protected discs, and the program is no longer supported so it won't get an update for it. But I still use it as I've only ever found one disc it won't rip (which was ARccOS protected) and one it wouldn't read (a weird invalid DVD structure was reported) but other than that it's been faultless, and it's so easy to use

[Broadsword]

Must have had an update since I last used it then. You used to have to dvd decrypt first.

[Matt_C]

I've been using it for about 5yrs, and have never had to do that!

[Broadsword]

Originally Posted by Matt_C

I've been using it for about 5yrs, and have never had to do that!

Hmmmm well there was a reason why I stopped using it and started using ripit4me instead, I remember it wouldn't sort some discs, mostly Sony and Disney discs, and it happened a lot. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't a one stop solution.

[lmaolmao]

I would suggest one of these three:

1- Movie only, no menus - rip the movies you want with no compression, use mkv as the format. Tools - MakeMkv and possibly DVD43(free)

2 - Complete disc from hdd - Rip movies to .iso including all extras, sub tracks, audio tracks. - use "Imgburn with dvd43" or "anydvdhd" (costs)

3 - Menus and movie - DVD shrink + possibly DVD43 and Anydvdhd (costs)

now, i know there is no WRONG way to do this, but those of you using autoGK and automkv are doing it WRONG!

Many spend 20 mins or however long it takes to rip to hdd, then a couple hours (more if you do it properly) to encode them to a smaller filesize. All in the name of saving some space. Space which is getting cheaper and cheaper. I'm surprised members of an avforum are happy with the picture quality at the end of it. It's like taking a backwards step since first watching the new fangled dvd format! There's not meant to be a regression in playback quality (especially when factoring in the cost of a tv/speakers/player! and the time costs of a project such as proposed above.)

[deckingman]

Great thread guys. I'm thinking of doing something similar but I'd want to do Blu Ray discs as well and not lose any information (including HD audio). Is this possible? If so, what hardware / software would I need in addition to, or instead of, what has been mentioned. Ta.

[next010]

Originally Posted by deckingman

Great thread guys. I'm thinking of doing something similar but I'd want to do Blu Ray discs as well and not lose any information (including HD audio). Is this possible? If so, what hardware / software would I need in addition to, or instead of, what has been mentioned. Ta.

Buy a Popcornhour C-200, rip your Blu-ray using AnyDVD-HD to an ISO image and it will play them.

Alternatively follow the manual MKV creation guide here substituting AC3 audio for your HD audio of choice to place the main movie in an MKV container. You can also use the ClownBD app to do the same thing though its more involved to setup & I find the other method easier.

That is strictly for keeping HD audio track, if you dont care for HD audio track just use MakeMKV does everything for you works on Blu-ray & DVD.