DVD Rip of 20 DVDs for QNAP & Dune TV-101

chukwe

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I just bought 20 dvds from Amazon that I need to rip to my Qnap TS-219P+ and viewed from my Dune TV-101.

What's the best software and format to use for the ripping that will give me the best quality?
 
* DVD43 + Imgburn are free if you want an .iso image of the disc so it plays like DVD player.
* AnyDVD does the same as the above combo.

* MakeMKV rips the main movie to a single mkv container with no conversion so original video and audio are present, if you don't care about extras or DVD menus this is the best option.

If you wish to compress the video stream use Handbrake and feed it the output from any of the above tools.
 
Yes Dune plays .iso images.

You have only two output options for Handbrake as it encodes into x264 so MP4 or MKV, MKV will allow you to preserve the AC3 5.1 or DTS 5.1 audio track, use the High Profile preset for better image quality.

Unless your running out of space there's no major reason to convert into x264, MakeMKV will give you just the movie in it's original format in an MKV container MPEG-2/MKV with AC3 or DTS.
 
Hi Next,

I'm getting a bit confused. I already have anydvd & handbrake on my laptop.

Should I use anyDVD or download makemkv?
 
Whichever you prefer, AnyDVD gives .iso images so it plays like putting disc in DVD player with menus.

MakeMKV gives you just the main movie, no menus, no extras.

Handbrake is only if you want to convert the video into x264 which you do not need to do, Dune plays MPEG2/MKV and ISO images.
 
Yes AnyDVD is just a ripping tool, it's not a video converter.

XviD/AVI files though are visually inferior to x264/mkv videos so if compressing video I would stick with x264 if you want best possible picture quality, however XviD/AVI does have the advantage of being very fast to encode if have a weak PC.

Staxrip is one of the better multi format encoders does x264 and XviD, if you want to squeeze every bit of quality out of XviD as it has a good quality preset, you can also use the mkv container as the output and set the audio track to just mux so it keeps the AC3/DTS audio track in place.
 
Hi Next,

Thanks for making things clear for me. I've decided to rip my DVD to mkv format since it's better quality than AVI.

I've download MakeMKV. Let me see how I'll get on with it. Thanks
 
Hi Next,

Thanks for making things clear for me. I've decided to rip my DVD to mkv format since it's better quality than AVI.

I've download MakeMKV. Let me see how I'll get on with it. Thanks

Hi Chukwe,

Please do not confuse things. Mkv is not a video format, it's a container! The quality of your rip depends on how you compress it, mkv doesn't rule or dictate the encoding setting. If you're going to use make mkv, you'll probably be better off just ripping to ISO and you keep the menus, video and extras in the same quality than the original and avoid possible sync issues others have experienced with MakeMKV.
 
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Hi Chukwe,

Please do not confuse things. Mkv is not a video format, it's a container! The quality of your rip depends on how you compress it, mkv doesn't rule or dictate the encoding setting. If you're going to use make mkv, you'll probably be better off just ripping to ISO and you keep the menus, video and extras in the same quality than the original and avoid possible sync issues others have experienced with MakeMKV.

Sorry, I'm a novice in this area.

This is what's happening at the moment. At the time I started this thread, I was using my Dune TV-101 to stream to my Sony bravia tv of six year old and was happy to rip my DVDs with AnyDVD.

Then, yeaterday I bought a Samsung TV UE40D5520 that streams videos from my NAS but only with avi or mkv formats. I don't think it plays .iso formats.

So I need to either Rip my DVDs to avi or mkv.

What's the best action\approach?
 
Sorry, I'm a novice in this area.

This is what's happening at the moment. At the time I started this thread, I was using my Dune TV-101 to stream to my Sony bravia tv of six year old and was happy to rip my DVDs with AnyDVD.

Then, yeaterday I bought a Samsung TV UE40D5520 that streams videos from my NAS but only with avi or mkv formats. I don't think it plays .iso formats.

So I need to either Rip my DVDs to avi or mkv.

What's the best action\approach?

OK that makes it a bit clearer. In that case MakeMKV is your best choice as it'll just take the main film and audio streams and put them in the mkv container without losing quality :thumbsup:
 
I've just bought a Dune H1, and I'm about to start ripping my DVDs. Further to the above I've got a few questions:

-I've seen some places that there are issues with subtitles when using a mkv container. What's the beef here?

-From what I've read above it seems like using a mkv container you are keeping the main picture and audio, but losing certain things. What do you lose, and how much space saving is made?

I'm just thinking whether it's worth losing stuff rather than just ripping it all as is...
 
-I've seen some places that there are issues with subtitles when using a mkv container. What's the beef here?

That depends on the player and what subtitles it supports.

-From what I've read above it seems like using a mkv container you are keeping the main picture and audio, but losing certain things. What do you lose, and how much space saving is made?

It's not about space saving primarily, most people who use MakeMKV just want the main movie and don't care about menus or extras on the disc. How much space is saved by jettisoning those varies from disc to disc.
 
I've seen some places that there are issues with subtitles when using a mkv container. What's the beef here?

MakeMKV outputs the forced subtitles as a separate audio track but doesn't mark it as forced, so you have to manually select it on the Dune to see the forced subtitles.
 
It's not about space saving primarily, most people who use MakeMKV just want the main movie and don't care about menus or extras on the disc. How much space is saved by jettisoning those varies from disc to disc.

Roughly how much saving is there? Are we talking moving from 4 gig-ish to 2 gig-ish, or 4 gig-ish to 3.9 gig-ish?

MakeMKV outputs the forced subtitles as a separate audio track but doesn't mark it as forced, so you have to manually select it on the Dune to see the forced subtitles.

What are forced subtitles, if you'll excuse the ignorance?
 
Roughly how much saving is there? Are we talking moving from 4 gig-ish to 2 gig-ish, or 4 gig-ish to 3.9 gig-ish?

Depends on the DVD, some DVD's might use up the full disc for the movie and have all the extras on a second disc, if there's no second disc then roughly speaking the movie minus the extras might be around 4-5GB if there are any extras on the disc at all.

What are forced subtitles, if you'll excuse the ignorance?

Forced subtitles are the subs displayed in english when a foreign language is being spoken on screen in an english speaking movie.

Forced subs vary from movie to movie, some movies will have the subtitles burned into the video stream but others might have the subtitles as a separate subtitle track on the DVD, when this happens you need subtitles enabled on the media player or manually set the forced subtitles flag in the mkv file so the player displays the subtitles even if subtitles are disabled.

However not all media players support the forced flag in mkv, the number of movies with forced subs isn't that high but it's something to be aware of.
 
Forced subs vary from movie to movie, some movies will have the subtitles burned into the video stream but others might have the subtitles as a separate subtitle track on the DVD, when this happens you need subtitles enabled on the media player or manually set the forced subtitles flag in the mkv file so the player displays the subtitles even if subtitles are disabled.

So all I'd need to do is to set the subtitles to "on" when watching the film, and they'd come up? That doesn't seem so bad to me...

Thanks for your help guys.
 
So all I'd need to do is to set the subtitles to "on" when watching the film, and they'd come up? That doesn't seem so bad to me...

Yes, although if you have more than one subtitle track you would need to select the correct one. You can also set the Dune up to play subtitles from files automatically so if you have only the forced subs then you don't have to do anything.
 
Yeah the problem is you don't know which track is the forced subtitles track so that requires a little bit of work. I use this method to isolate the forced subtitles track so it's the only subtitle present in the container;

1) Rip taking all English subtitle tracks in MakeMKV.
2) Play the video in VLC at a point you know forced subtitles will be on screen.
3) With subtitles disabled in VLC if text appears then it is part of video stream.
4) If no text appears then enable subtitles and cycle through the subtitles to find the right track.
5) Once the right track is identified, drop the mkv file into MKVmerge and deselect all other subtitle tracks.
6) Select the subtitle track and set the forced track flag to yes.
7) Click start muxing.

This will leave you with the movie only having the forced subtitles in addition with the forced flag set if you have subtitles globally disabled and if that's not supported you can still turn on subtitles globally and only the forced subs will show.
 
Aaaah, I can see that there might be a problem here with films that are English language, but where there are bits that are spoken in a foreign language, and this is where the subtitles appear. If this is the case, and I'm ripping a film that I haven't seen, then how do I know when they will be on the screen (step 2 above)?
 
There is a list maintained over here which might be of help but it's by no means comprehensive.

I'm afraid as it's from memory having seen the movie usually, I've forgotten a few that have had forced subtitles myself.
 
Aaaah, I can see that there might be a problem here with films that are English language, but where there are bits that are spoken in a foreign language, and this is where the subtitles appear. If this is the case, and I'm ripping a film that I haven't seen, then how do I know when they will be on the screen (step 2 above)?

You can use Mkvtoolnix to make mkv from dvd.

mkvtoolnix -- Matroska tools for Linux/Unix and Windows

Load the folder you might need to put the Video ts folder on the hard drive, when you add the folder, you will see the video & audio files, you can untick the audio files you don't want, then create mkv, takes about 3 minutes, highlight the audio file to see what subs it has,

If its not correct run it again, its very quick.
 
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