DVD Archiving - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: dexters_lab
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 10, 2019, 09:16:56 am
content: I have slowly been ripping my old DVDs to my computer in a bid to get rid of my physical DVDsAt the moment i rip the entire DVD contents, which can be played back in VLC with all the usual DVD menus & special features, subtitles and alt audio tracks that was on the original DVD but of course i'm looking at many gigs of data for each disk.Now i can recompress them with H.264 / AAC and save gigs of storage using Handbrake and also include all the audio and subtitle tracks but i loose all the DVD menusis there any way to retain all the DVD menus and get the benefits of modern compression?

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 10, 2019, 09:55:00 am
content: Ripping them works until you find the copy protected discs that use title infinity.A 1 TB HDD holds 200 DVD's, sure that's enough, right?That would be $100 for redundant storage. Or $0.50 per disc.I'm sure converting them would take longer and uses more energy. For what, a few hundred MB savings?

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 10, 2019, 09:58:23 am
content: Quote from: Jeroen3 on May 10, 2019, 09:55:00 amWell, from ~4GB to ~700MB, so the space savings would be quite significant. But in the end I still agree with you, insofar as the storage is so cheap as to be "who cares"?I only transcode ripped DVDs so that I can easily copy them to my iPad for travel, and play them on my Apple TV (older kind that doesn't have third-party apps like VLC).

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 10, 2019, 10:01:52 am
content: Do you want lossy copies or a backup?

author: dexters_lab
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 10, 2019, 10:11:36 am
content: yea you could well be right about the low storage costs meaning recompressing them is not really worth it and retaining the original DVD format maybe useful anywayi'm currently averaging 6.5Gb per disk

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 10, 2019, 10:13:20 am
content: Agree with Jeroen3Use software like DVDFab (search for older versions which work fine and don't call home or require internet conn. to work, i use 6.0.2.2 and 9.2.3.5, pm me if you want copies) to create iso images with the protections removed.Optionally, you can select individual titles and select audio tracks and subtitles and export as a single n GB sized VOB or MPG/TS file (or you can batch remux them later to MKV if you don't like VOB)For ex. you may have a movie with 5.1 ac3 448kbps and 192 kbps ac3 stereo (backwards compatibility) and 192 kbps mpeg-2 commentary track and 5-10 subs. Some titles have lossless audio (1411 kbps) as backup audio track, and you can drop that.You can select only 5.1 and commentary track and 2-3 subs and export to single big file.Repeat for extras, bonuses.later if you wish you can recompress commentary tracks to 80-96 kbps AAC/Opus and save maybe 1-200 MBVideo bitrate in general is low enough that it's almost not worth recompressing... you have 4...10 mbps mpeg-2 and you recompress in 3-4 mbps... maybe get 2-3 GB dvds, half the size.With the money paid on electricity bill to software compress 1-200 DVDs at high quality (~10-15 us cents per hour), you'd probably buy half of a 2-3 TB drive.

author: Zucca
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 10, 2019, 10:18:29 am
content: I'm still dealing with ripping VHS go figure.

author: dexters_lab
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 10, 2019, 10:27:27 am
content: Quote from: zucca on May 10, 2019, 10:18:29 amyea been doing a bit of that too with some old Hi8 tapes using a Blackmagic Analog to SDI box and recording the output with a Hyperdeck Shuttle, the files can then be dropped right into Handbrake for de-interlacing and compressing

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 10, 2019, 10:36:07 am
content: Hard drives are getting so cheap that i wouldn't bother.Every re-encoding of video causes degradation in quality unless its lossless. The 2nd codec tries to reproduce any artifacts caused by the 1st one and makes them worse because the artifacts in a different codec look different. This is the reason why YouTube creators often upload 4K video to YouTube despite most of there audience not even having 4K monitors to watch it. That high bitrate 4K video gets downsampled on the servers before encoding into that 1080p version that most users watch. This makes the input to the encoder as clean as possible to ensure there are no re-encoding artifacts and results in a higher quality 1080p video.Its also easy to mess up something in the encoding process and result in poor quality, garbled result or missing contents. When you have this much content you likely won't actually check each one to make sure its a 100% working copy. Unlike with a direct DVD rip, when decent ripping software doesn't show any errors then you can be pretty darn sure its a perfect 1:1 copy.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 10, 2019, 01:50:15 pm
content: Kinda funny, but when I first discovered Handbrake I thought it was great I could simply get a file that I could click-click and play instantly without having to wait or skip though through all the useless fluff added to the DVD.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 10, 2019, 02:00:55 pm
content: I agree, transcoding them is such a waste of time.We have some older WDTV players in the office playing nature videos off a USB key for reception area guests. They can't handle newer videos we downloaded that were encoded with x265 (in an MKV container). The x265 videos are smaller in size but still look high quality so I prefer getting those now a days.So I decided to convert the x265 videos to x264 (which our office media players could handle) either in MP4 or MKV containers and they play, but it takes forever to convert each video. Certainly I wouldn't want to have to do this with an entire library of files! I mean it's easy and all... but what a waste of computing time.I would just use a batch file with ffmpeg and have it go for several weeks, but only in the winter time when I need the extra heat from my CPU!

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 10, 2019, 02:40:35 pm
content: Quote from: rdl on May 10, 2019, 01:50:15 pmThis, frankly, is the biggest advantage of ripping, IMHO!The other day I wanted to watch a Blu-ray with a friend. Not only did it take like 2 full minutes to boot, read, and get through the unskippable crap to the menu... it refused to load the menu. It looks like the disc itself (which is less than 10 years old and in absolutely impeccable condition) has somehow degraded to where it won't play any more. (Other discs work fine in the player, so I doubt it's the equipment.)So I just went on bittorrent and downloaded it. No crap, just plays...

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 10, 2019, 09:28:37 pm
content: If these are films or series I'd download backups from Piratebay or get a Netflix subscription so you can watch a movie/series when you want and save money on storage. Either way you can get rid of the unskippable crap on most DVDs.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2019, 02:03:09 am
content: Quote from: edy on May 10, 2019, 02:00:55 pmWDTV boxes were great! Too bad WD stopped supporting WDTV rather abruptly. I have an Andriod-TV box with VLC and Netflix, but I go to my WDTV-Live box to play DVD-ISO or Netflix. The user interface is a lot friendlier to use than DVD on VLC or NetFlix on Andriod.When they abruptly stopped the support, there was no letting user know on the forum. Suddenly, a final release was pushed out and it was work-in-progress. Some of the problems that WD-staff replied in the forum as "fix-pending" was unaddressed in the final version. It doesn't resume (always starts from beginning) and while supporting subtitles, the one word feed back (language selected) is shown at too far left H-position so you have to guess from the last few characters like "lish" or "ench" that you have selected English or French or whatever... Suddenly, we are left with a dead forum, and a bug-filled work-in-progress final release.The next-to-last version was great with DVD-ISO. It worked with subtitle fine, it resumed DVD fine, but it hangs with latest Netflix. I swapped between the last two versions a few times and eventually settled on their latest. I still prefer WD for ISO's and Netflix...- BUT -That one act of sudden abandonment left me with a very bad taste in my mouth with WD. I avoided WD's HDD's whenever I have a semi-reasonable alternative.

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2019, 09:53:28 am
content: I worked my way through a shelf of DVDs including lots of off-air stuff about six years ago, running two notebooks and a desktop machine in parallel it took a couple of weeks but it was well worth it.Why?Firstly, despite being carefully stored about 10% of the DVDs have now rotted and there are large patches where the silver layer has disappeared. Secondly I now have 6m of shelf space reduced down to four hard drives that sit inside the media PC, much easier to handle.One final tip, after you have finished doing this take TWO backups of your work and hold one offsite.

author: DDunfield
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2019, 01:22:35 pm
content: Quote from: German_EE on May 11, 2019, 09:53:28 amThis was what I did when I had to rip some 1500 DVDs:http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/dvdload/index.htmIt was fun to build.Dave

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2019, 01:38:50 pm
content: Oh nice oneLove the thrown together engineering to get it done. Might not look pretty but it's pretty elegant in its simplicity.I did do a rough calculation how long this takes. If you do a 10 minute rip and do it for 8 hours a day you can only do about 50 discs per day. This means 1500 would take 30 days, so about a month! Yikes that's a lot of work.

author: DDunfield
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2019, 02:08:59 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on May 11, 2019, 01:38:50 pmI ran it from shortly after I got up till late evening, usually about 13-14 hours a day, some days longer.I'd say it averaged 8-10 mins per., depending on how full the disc was and how fast it could read it.All told it was about 15 days IIRC.Wasn't so bad work wise - input hopper held around 60-70 discs, I would fill it at startup and usually only once or twice again each day. Almost never had to service it, and I rigged up a wireless alert so I didn't have to stay with it.Dave

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2019, 03:57:01 pm
content: IF you have so many discs, at some point you can ask yourself how important (expensive) is your time.I mean, you can buy used DVD-ROM drives for something like 5$ ... an online store in my country sells DVD-ROM drives for 3.75$ each :https://www.citgrup.ro/componente/calculator/dvd-rom_refurbished_sata/50397.htmlNew drives are less than 20$, ex. this one's 16$ after applying 2$ off coupon:https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136276You can offset them at around 2 minute each and you'll basically rip 20-30 discs in an hour.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2019, 12:28:29 am
content: USB DVD players are even cheaper. Connect a bunch to a HUB and you can rip multiple DVDs at the same time.Less than $6 each:https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Portable-Universal-Drive-USB-Drive-External-DVD-CD-Writer-External-CD-ROM-Drive-for-Desktop-Computer/32955641112.html

author: wilfred
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2019, 01:12:31 am
content: I did my DVD collection a few years back and if I recall correctly I used K3B (on Linux) to make ISO images of the disks first and then I ran them through Handbrake. Since I could queue multiple disks up, as ISO images, I was able to take advantage of running 24/7 without needing to remember to attend to disk changes. It saved me time too because it was faster to queue ISO images up than an actual DVD in a drive.Don't overlook saving the subtitles. Your hearing might not always be perfect.Given the rate I actually go back to watch them and with hard drive space much more available now at very low cost I might now just rip the ISO image and leave it at that. But they're done so that's that.

author: dexters_lab
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 12, 2019, 08:26:15 am
content: yep, i decided i am not transcoding them, it really isn't worth the time and effort to do it, the DVDs are all ripped as de-encrypted files rather than ISOsi think i am getting there, 680gb ripped so far, i think i have about another 120 disks to do. The biggest one will be the seven seasons of StarTrek TNG!

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2019, 01:19:21 pm
content: I wouldn’t bother ripping those. The HD remaster of STNG is worth it.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2019, 11:43:11 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on May 11, 2019, 01:38:50 pmBut when you are ripping it, don't you want to just spend a bit extra time and eliminate the annoying stuff? You know, that short slide that said "This movie contains scenes not suitable for children..." and all buttons are disabled while that slide is being shown. Worst are those short public service announcement (and button-disabled) video on "how bad drinking will affect your driving", so on, so on... I consider previews as junk too. Previews for the same movie probably exist somewhere else multiple times if you have a reasonably large collection.I recall a 7.8gb DVD that after junk removal doesn't even fill a 4.5gb single sided DVD. (Can't remember which unless I dig out the box of originals in the basement).If any assessment (for junk-clips vs good-clips) is done, it will probably take another 5 minutes assessment alone. Simple junk removal (by whole/entire VTS) can probably be done within a few minutes. When junk clip(s) are in a VTS with along with other good clips, partial VTS removal will take tens of minutes per VTS.Ideal output would be a clean DVD without advertisement and junk-clips. Re-editing with clean-DVD as target would probably make it couple of hour per DVD on average.To go to the extremes, one can recompress the semi-junk further. Semi-junks are like "How we made this movie"... Those somewhat interesting extra features that you don't mind keeping when they are not a space hog.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2019, 11:55:27 pm
content: In my first post, I recommended a software called DVDFab ... it can work on inserted discs or iso images.So you can use it once to make iso images with some safe defaults like only removing disc protections, leaving the rest untouched.Later you can open iso image and select a preset that disables those warning clips, you can uncheck any audio dubbing in foreign languages leaving only english/original track and commentary tracks... and so on.It can be faster than doing it while reading data from disc... keep the disc drive busy instead of pausing after every disc.

author: hwj-d
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2019, 12:09:07 am
content: Rip them to ISO's without transcoding, get a new low spining WD-RED for that, and store it as dedicated external Disk in your bookshelf.That would be my suggestion.