Best way to rip DVDs?

Do you find the compression of DVD shrink effects the quality to a great level?

Or do you just not compress at all?
 
DVDShrink is great if you want to compress and keep all of the features but you do lose quality. If you only want the movie and all of the other features like chapters, digital audio (untouuched) then converting and re-encoding to MKV using x264 will give you better quality and far smaller files than you will ever get with DVDShrink.
 
Do you find the compression of DVD shrink effects the quality to a great level?

Or do you just not compress at all?

I don't compress at all.

DVDShrink compression isn't good, but re-encoding? Nah, might as well buy a bigger HD (just takes too long)
 
Just ripping my DVDs would be ideal as 5-10 mins I can rip a film. However, it would mean me having a NAS (I would need 4TB+ to store all of my discs). The cost of this (buying a NAS to support more than 4 TB would be £350+ just for the driveless unit) plus my network is pretty poor so streaming may be problematic, I decided to re-encode.

I don't think 1-1.5 hours to re-encode a film is bad and I simply rip all to HDD on my PC and set them all to encode at once. Come back the following day and they are done for me. So, I don't have an issue with that. If I was to have to babysit each encode or each film took 8+ hours then it may be a different matter.
 
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Is it recommended that you don't use VOB files? LOTR 2 disc takes 10.5gb in VOB format!

Is it possible to go from DVD to h264/x264?

This is all confusing. I just want one file at DVD quality with the AC3/DTS sountrack within a small file.

I encoded all my Extended editions of LTOR last night.

On x.264 high quality with both the DTS and AC3 soundtracks, all chapters and 1 set of subtitles:

Fellowship Disc 1 = 1.7gig
Fellowship Disc 2 = 2.04 gig

Two Towers disc 1 = 2.08 gig
Two Towers disc 2 = 2.47 gig

Return of the king disc 1 = 2.3 gig
Return of the king disc 2 = 2.58 gig

Total disk space used for all 3 extended editions: 13.5gig.

Quality is great :)
 
I encoded all my Extended editions of LTOR last night.

On x.264 high quality with both the DTS and AC3 soundtracks, all chapters and 1 set of subtitles:

Fellowship Disc 1 = 1.7gig
Fellowship Disc 2 = 2.04 gig

Two Towers disc 1 = 2.08 gig
Two Towers disc 2 = 2.47 gig

Return of the king disc 1 = 2.3 gig
Return of the king disc 2 = 2.58 gig

Total disk space used for all 3 extended editions: 13.5gig.

Quality is great :)

Wow! I could probably save more space by using the DTS soundtrack only and using no subtitles.

Is the quailty as good as dvd?

Can you tell me exactly how you did it (I use a laptop)?
 
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I encoded all my Extended editions of LTOR last night.

On x.264 high quality with both the DTS and AC3 soundtracks, all chapters and 1 set of subtitles:

Fellowship Disc 1 = 1.7gig
Fellowship Disc 2 = 2.04 gig

Two Towers disc 1 = 2.08 gig
Two Towers disc 2 = 2.47 gig

Return of the king disc 1 = 2.3 gig
Return of the king disc 2 = 2.58 gig

Total disk space used for all 3 extended editions: 13.5gig.

Quality is great :)

Does that give you one video file per disc or do the chapters get included?
 
Does that give you one video file per disc or do the chapters get included?

I have 6 MKV files, 2 for each film. Each MKV has its own chapter points exactly as on the original discs. Your NMT needs to recognise chapters in MKV files to be able to make use of them though. My PCH C-200 does recognise chapters in MKVs :thumbsup: I put a tag on the end of each file: [PART1] and [PART2] which will be interpreted by YAMJ and create a playlist so when the first disc is finished, the second will play (if I select Play All).

@saguk1234:

There is no real difference between the DVD and the rips.

I used AnyDVDHD to rip the full discs to my hard drive.
used handbrake on High quality preset to encode.

I will do a handbrake guide if it would be useful but it isn't rocket science. Generally, once you have a disc set to rip, the settings are the same you just make sure that you select the correct audio stream you want and output format. In the case of these films I set 2 audio tracks AC£ output as AC3 passthrough and DTS set as DTS passthrough.

If you download Handbrake & have a go I can help out with any questions.

Handbrake can rip the DVDs direct from disc but then you can't queue encodes up, thats why I rip to hard drive before encoding.
 
I used AnyDVDHD to rip the full discs to my hard drive.
used handbrake on High quality preset to encode.


One last one from me (possibly), any reason why you use that and not Makemkv? just personal preference?
 
MakeMKV simply re-formats the DVD into an MKV file (single file instead of multiple VOB files). So the size will be comparable to the size of the DVD.

Handbrake re-encodes the DVD into h264 format video (better than a VOB which is MPeg2) so you still get an MKV but the video files are far smaller.

An MKV is a container, not a video format. MKVs can store mpeg, h264, dixv/xvid etc. They can also store multiple subtitles, chapters, bitstream audio. At the moment they won't store HD Audio like DTS-HD or Dolby THD but apparently they are working on that.

So, in essence MKVs are one of the best containers and handbrake actually re-encodes your DVDs to almost the exact quality of your DVD but with a greatly reduced filesize.
 
Sorry i mean why use AnyDVDHD to rip it and not Makemkv
 
You mean 'and not Handbrake'? :)

I use any DVD to rip it (you could use DVDShrink with the no crompression setting) because it enables me to use the batch queue.

If handbrake rips the disc, it does it directly from the disc so you can only encode 1 disc at a time then when that is finished you have to change the disc and do your next film.

However, ripping to HDD first with AnyDVD means I have copies of the DVD discs on my hard drive. I can set disc 1 to encode in handbrake then point handbrake to disc 2 on my hard drive (whilst it is encoding disc 1), set the settings for disc 2 and add it to a queue. Then I can set up disc 3 etc.

This means I can set lots of discs up in a queue and just leave my PC/handbrake on without me doing anything. I currently have 24 films in the queue and handbrake processes them 1 by 1 without my intevention.
 
Just encoding 2 DVDs with handrake - will try them tomorrow compared to the original versions and take some screenies for comparison :)
 
Just encoding 2 DVDs with handrake - will try them tomorrow compared to the original versions and take some screenies for comparison :)

Be good to hear your opinions on the results :thumbsup:
 
I'm also trying a Blu-Ray, but unfortunately it doesn't do lossless passthrough :(
 
I'm also trying a Blu-Ray, but unfortunately it doesn't do lossless passthrough :(

yeah, they are looking at adding that to Handbrake soon I hear.

You can always encode no audio with Handbrake then mux in the original audio stream with mkvmerge.

Tho the C-200 doesn't do HD audio from single file rips (yet) ;)
 
Tho the C-200 doesn't do HD audio from single file rips (yet) ;)

Funny you mention that, I'm in the process of converting my single files to BluRay structures :)
 
The dvd drive in my laptop reads a 8x speed. Can I use external desktop drive running at 16x speed without any problems?
 
The dvd drive in my laptop reads a 8x speed. Can I use external desktop drive running at 16x speed without any problems?

Drive speed doesn't matter, it just means the rip will be slower on slower drives.
 
Rom, how do you change the aspect ratio? Default is set @ 1.78:1 which is squeezing my rips...
 
Rom, how do you change the aspect ratio? Default is set @ 1.78:1 which is squeezing my rips...

If you leave anamorphic as 'Loose' then Handbrake should sort that out for you. The 1.78:1 is a bit misleading as that is what ALL DVDs are encoded in.

Basically the DVD resolution is 4:3. on a widescreen film it can be anamorphic or not. Anamorphic will use where the black bars at the top & bottom usually are for extra information. If it is not anamorphic then the studio will basically encode black bars on the top & bottom.

You should (in 99% of cases) get the correct aspect ratio with anamorphic set to loose and crop set to automatic. Make sure to have 'fit to screen' set in the PCH for playback. Every DVD I have encoded & tried on my PCH come out correctly with these settings.

If you are still having issues, let me know your settings and I will try an encode myself.
 
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Thanks for this :) I've just set 20 files to re-encode overnight. If the quality is good then I'll be a happy man - just worked out that I'll free up about 750GB from doing all of my DVDs. Which is good because I currently have 800GB left out of 10.7TB :eek: :(

The big test for me will be dark scenes on discs, I'm hoping I won't see any macro blocking - if I can then I'll be sticking to my .ISOs! Fingers crossed....
 
Thanks for this :) I've just set 20 files to re-encode overnight. If the quality is good then I'll be a happy man - just worked out that I'll free up about 750GB from doing all of my DVDs. Which is good because I currently have 800GB left out of 10.7TB :eek: :(

The big test for me will be dark scenes on discs, I'm hoping I won't see any macro blocking - if I can then I'll be sticking to my .ISOs! Fingers crossed....

I'm sure you will be pleasantly surprised. Any macroblocking you get will be blocking on the source DVD. The settings I gave would give you far better sampling than the original DVD (so it is a bit of overkill, but I'm staying on the safe side).

When you are encoding 800+ DVDs then even 1/3 saved space amounts to a lot of drive space. I'm about 60% through my collection (of DVDs) - about 600 discs (currently doing last series of Star Trek TNG - over 40 discs in total). My used disc space up to now is just short of 800gig so another 500 to play with :D

if you want to tweak the quality further then you can go to the advanced tab and change 'Reference Frames' from the default 3 to say 5. This will take longer to encode but will do more analysis of the picture for a better encode. However, set this too high and some media players will refuse to play the file.

If you are encoding animation you can up the B Frames setting ( go up to about 9 max).

There is a nice explanation of the advanced options here
 
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The thing that I like about handbrake is the ability to queue - I'm encoding directly from my NAS, and I have 350 DVDs on there, plus about 200 TV show files, all ripped already as ISOs with all menus and unwanted audio/subtitles/video stripped out. Which means I can queue 100 files if need be and just walk away for a few days :)

I might need to leave my PC running for a week, but tbh I'm not bothered about that - I'm currently running close to capacity on my NAS which is loaded with 7 x 2TB drives, so it's not just a case of adding another drive or buying bigger ones - I'm at the max of what I can do without buying another NAS :)

I'm hoping it's all going to work out well, and I've just worked out I should save around 1.3TB of space if I include all the TV series........ :thumbsup:
 
Nice one! I forgot that you had all ISOs already....should make the job a lot easier simply setting the options for each disc. The batch facility is great, made the job a lot less painless.

Please feed back on what you think of the results as I would like to see what other people think. I am more than happy with my encodes .... except for a little hiccup when I thought I would encode everything in 24P and the video was stuttering. Always leave at original framerate to avoid this problem, the NMT can convert to 24P well enough.
 

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