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Encoders, Transcoder, HD... Oh My
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dadams982
Newbie
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5. January 2010 @ 12:44 |
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So I have been lurking here for hours trying to decipher all the information you all have so generously provided. I have read the entire Ultimate DVD backup thread and came out with more questions than answers.
I am wanting to backup my huge DVD collection to a home server so I can just stream my movies to my media extender.
I know there are many differing views on best encoding/container/audio/whatever... but here are my goals. I want the quality to remain at 100%, I am not concerned with shrinking the size down if that matters. I also want to retain the surround sound experience. I have read a ton of conflicting information on this stuff so am confused on the best for all.
I am considering MKV, but know that may a bit difficult to ascertain.
So can I get your all's thoughts on pressing forward with my goal? Formats, processes, whatever you can throw at me.
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dadams982
Newbie
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5. January 2010 @ 15:01 |
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Wow, just realized how little traffic this particular part of the forum gets.
Anyone have any thoughts on the best standard for preserving the original quality of visual/audio, whilst preserving surround sound
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Moderator
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5. January 2010 @ 15:15 |
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Originally posted by dadams982:
Wow, just realized how little traffic this particular part of the forum gets.
Have you been searching the forums whilst waiting for an answer ?, this is quite a common subject hence there's loads of info on what you're after.
Originally posted by dadams982:
I want the quality to remain at 100%
In this case it's easy, you either just rip DVD's in FILE mode to separate folders ie you'll end up with the various files that make up a DVD, else rip in ISO mode to end up with the movie in one file.
I personally prefer to convert all my movies to AVI (XviD) format using AutoGK, i either use 1.4GB or 700MB depending on the age of movie/whether it's a graphically intensive movie, that way i can keep literally thousands of movies on my media PC, the quality is more than good enough, but if i wanted to watch a movie "in all it's glory" i would just dig out the DVD. Which doesn't happen very often as i can't stand looking for DVD's, i put ease of storage/access over quality. That's not to say mine are rubbish quality (well some of the older movies aren't too good, but then the source DVD's weren't too good anyway).
Other than that you're better off reading the forums for solutions involving higher quality conversions, else wait for other regulars to join the thread, who do MKV conversions for instance.
Main PC ~ Intel C2Q Q6600 (G0 Stepping)/Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3/2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500/Zalman CNPS9700/Antec 900/Corsair HX 620W
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dadams982
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5. January 2010 @ 15:22 |
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Originally posted by creaky:
Originally posted by dadams982:
Wow, just realized how little traffic this particular part of the forum gets.
Have you been searching the forums whilst waiting for an answer ?, this is quite a common subject hence there's loads of info on what you're after.
Originally posted by dadams982:
I want the quality to remain at 100%
In this case it's easy, you either just rip DVD's in FILE mode to separate folders ie you'll end up with the various files that make up a DVD, else rip in ISO mode to end up with the movie in one file.
I personally prefer to convert all my movies to AVI (XviD) format using AutoGK, i either use 1.4GB or 700MB depending on the age of movie/whether it's a graphically intensive movie, that way i can keep literally thousands of movies on my media PC, the quality is more than good enough, but if i wanted to watch a movie "in all it's glory" i would just dig out the DVD. Which doesn't happen very often as i can't stand looking for DVD's, i put ease of storage/access over quality. That's not to say mine are rubbish quality (well some of the older movies aren't too good, but then the source DVD's weren't too good anyway).
Other than that you're better off reading the forums for solutions involving higher quality conversions, else wait for other regulars to join the thread, who do MKV conversions for instance.
Yeah, I have been reading, but things get blurrier and blurrier the deeper I go. I have read the MKV format using H.264 codec is best for vid, but dont know how to keep the surround in pristene condition. I know AC3 is good enough for surround, but having a hell of a time finding the pertinent information for that.
What I have found so far is to decrypt my DVD, then use Handbrake for converting to an MKV... now I am just trying to find the steps to preserve the quality. I don;t care about extras or anything like that, just a high quality reproduced english dub.
I figured it has been asked before, one of the reasons I attempted to tread lightly. Cause I know how the FNG can sound.
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Moderator
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5. January 2010 @ 15:30 |
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I do have 480p/720p and the odd 1080p rips, BD Rips and BR Rips. A lot of the lingo escapes me (for instance my eyes glaze reading about the difference between X.264 and H.264, i just can't be doing with all the lingo), suffice it to say that nice quality is achievable, but as i didn't rip them i know hardly anything about how it's done. For blockbuster type films it's nice to have really nice quality files but as the story of a film is what i watch movies for, the eye candy is always secondary. I don't mean to sound condescending, it's just what i think :)
For DVD's that i rip to fit on a single layer disc i use DVD Rebuilder with the awesome (free) HC encoder, for XviD conversions i use AutoGK as i say, i use very few programs over and above those.
I can't really think of any threads to point you towards as i can't even think of any program names at the moment, but we have enough regulars here that use the programs you'd be interested in, am sure someone will drop by.
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This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 5. January 2010 @ 15:33
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dadams982
Newbie
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5. January 2010 @ 15:33 |
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Originally posted by creaky:
I do have 480p/720p and the odd 1080p rips, BD Rips and BR Rips. A lot of the lingo escapes me (for instance my eyes glaze reading about the difference between X.264 and H.264, i just can't be doing with all the lingo), suffice it to say that nice quality is achievable, but as i didn't rip them i know hardly anything about how it's done. For blockbuster type films it's nice to have really nice quality files but as the story of a film is what i watch movies for, the eye candy is always secondary. I don't mean to sound condescending, it's just what i think :)
For DVD's that i rip to fit on a single layer disc i use DVD Rebuilder with the awesome (free) HC encoder, for XviD conversions i use AutoGK as i say, i use very few programs over and above those.
I was looking at AutoGK and XVid and seen I can get high def, and just have to adjust the settings to my desire, I was just worried about the Surround sound for that one... have you dealt with coding surround sound?
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5. January 2010 @ 15:36 |
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That's the easy bit; none of the various conversions change the actual audio, it's not compressible like video, so you just pick the audio channel(s) you want.
Main PC ~ Intel C2Q Q6600 (G0 Stepping)/Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3/2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500/Zalman CNPS9700/Antec 900/Corsair HX 620W
Network ~ DD-WRT ~ 2node WDS-WPA2/AES ~ Buffalo WHR-G54S. 3node WPA2/AES ~ WRT54GS v6 (inc. WEP BSSID), WRT54G v2, WRT54G2 v1. *** Forum Rules ***
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dadams982
Newbie
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5. January 2010 @ 15:38 |
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Originally posted by creaky:
That's the easy bit; none of the various conversions change the actual audio, it's not compressible like video, so you just pick the audio channel(s) you want.
Then I will definitely give the AutoGK with XVid a shot and let you know how it turned out over the media extender.
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Moderator
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5. January 2010 @ 15:41 |
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Good stuff. One thing to watch out for. If you want a single resulting file you need to pick an odd figure, for instance 1401MB or 1399MB, if you choose 1400MB AutoGK will split the files into two.
P.S. i personally leave everything on default in AutoGK.
Not the end of the world as you can use (for instance) Avidemux (free) to join them together, with no gaps, and in a minute or two. No re-encoding necessary. I've joined 4 part movies this way, that have fallen off the internet :p
And if you find you like AutoGK, it's dead easy to get it to batch queue loads of movies.
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This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 5. January 2010 @ 15:43
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Phred2
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6. February 2010 @ 19:56 |
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Originally posted by dadams982:
my huge DVD collection
Hi,
How many DVD's in the collection?
Cheers,
Phred
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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6. February 2010 @ 20:35 |
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The difference between H.264 and x.264 is the same as Divx/xvid. One is commercial, the other wone is it's open source variant.
I recommend Handbrake, convert using x264. Great quality, youe audio will not be compress(it saves AC3 or Dts as pass-through). Beautiful quality in small size.
http://handbrake.fr/details.php
 Piss me off, and I Will ignore You!This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 6. February 2010 @ 20:35
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Phred2
Newbie
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7. February 2010 @ 23:46 |
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Originally posted by cyprusrom:
I recommend Handbrake, convert using x264.
I?m curious why people would want to convert/encode their standard DVD?s.
Current hard drive costs are at $100 - $110 for a 1.5TB drive. That will drop by the end of 2010 to $100 for 2TB. Full ISO CD rips average out over a DVD collection at about 6GB. That?s $0.40 per DVD now and $0.30 by end of year for disk storage. And full ISO images give one the full uncompressed movie and optional extras. So for a collection of 250 ? 330 DVD?s we?re looking at $100. Or a collection of 660 DVDs, including RAID5, it would only be $300.
But what about a collection of 3,000 DVDs? RIP time becomes a serious problem. Simply ripping to ISO images takes about 7.3 minutes average per DVD. I?ve been pretty successful running three concurrent ISO rips. That equates to a throughput that I can maintain hour after hour of about 20 DVDs/hour. A 3,000 DVD collection will take around 160 hours just to ISO rip or roughly 20+ 8 hour days or 4 weeks solid M-F 9-5. Now if one were to add the extra time to convert/encode, at lets say even a low 30 minutes pre DVD, that would add 1,500 hours to the process. Or 190 8 hour days, or 38 weeks full time M-F 9-5. At 60 minutes per DVD for a convert/encode that would be 76 weeks! The alternative is 18TB or 9 x 2TB drives costing $900 plus server hardware. If one has a 3,000 DVDs collection chances are they have $900 to spend on HTPC hardware.
So, I wonder why convert/encode?
Cheers,
Phred
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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8. February 2010 @ 00:15 |
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You lost me with all the numbers...I'm not sure what you're pointing at, why convert vs. why not leave everything as an ISO and store the movie that way?
All the extras and other stuff on DVDs is junk. I have maybe 2 DVDs that I backed up the entire disc, the rest of them are movie only.Why waste the unnecessary 4x as much space? Once converted, the file becomes much more versatile, more playback options.The math is simpler than you think.
The conversion is mostly done overnight in batch mode, this is not a full job M-F, a cumbersome process as you might think. All the conversions that I have done were over time. All I do is maybe a couple every week.
As for everybody else, I am sure "huge collection" means something different to everybody. Maybe he's just looking into ripping a couple hundred DVDs, which according to your math, would only take a couple of weeks.
Piss me off, and I Will ignore You!
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8. February 2010 @ 06:29 |
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I spent literally 2 weeks (well the PC did most of the work/time) ripping and encoding literally hundreds of movies to AVI (xvid, 1401MB per movie). The ripping wasn't too bad, i have 2 machines on the go, 9 burners going simultaneously to do the ripping. Encoding was easy, i use AutoGK so it was just a case of queuing the movies up (across 2 machines). I batch encoded roughly 14 movies on each machine at a time, due to disc space, each movie for me takes about an hour. and that's 2 passes by AutoGK.
I also don't care for anything other than the main movie on a DVD, for me it was a long exercise but worth it as the result was a lot of movies accessible from hard drive on the main PC. Each movie is copied to a.n.other hard drive, this way if a hard drive dies i haven't got to go thru all the ripping and encoding again.
Main PC ~ Intel C2Q Q6600 (G0 Stepping)/Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3/2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500/Zalman CNPS9700/Antec 900/Corsair HX 620W
Network ~ DD-WRT ~ 2node WDS-WPA2/AES ~ Buffalo WHR-G54S. 3node WPA2/AES ~ WRT54GS v6 (inc. WEP BSSID), WRT54G v2, WRT54G2 v1. *** Forum Rules ***
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Phred2
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8. February 2010 @ 16:11 |
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Multiple DVD drives work well; it was a revelation to me that it would work. As I mentioned I can keep full rip speed up on a single PC doing three simultaneous rips.
I?m trying to put converting/encoding into perspective when one is building a HTPC DVD library from scratch.
Case 1 ? 500 DVD collection
500 ISO images would be about 3TB; in today?s dollars about $200. Converting/encoding could reduce that storage to 750GB. 750GB drives in today?s dollars are about $75 for a saving of $125. Understanding that the ?savings? come at a cost in lost quality and content ? yes I understand both of you will accept the loss of content/quality but - why for only $125? In addition just handling 500 DVDs once to build the library is enough ? the thought of having to go back and do it all again because one later discovers they really don?t like the quality or wanted the extra content sounds bad to me.
So, for me personally, it doesn?t seem that converting/encoding makes any sense when building a 500 or smaller DVD library.
Case 2 ? 3,000 DVD collection
There are only 24 hours in a day. At an hour per DVD to convert/encode (my experience with dual core 3.0 GHz and your stated time) you could possibly get more that 14 DVDs per machine per day but for this exercise let?s use your real number of 14 for a single machine.
From my above post - 3,000 DVDs will take me about 160 hours just to ISO rip. How long that takes (elapsed time) will depend on how many hours per day I can devote to the process. Realistically I could easily do 3 hours per night on week days and probably get an additional 15 hours over the weekend - total 30 hours/week or an elapsed time of five or six weeks. In six weeks I end up with full quality, full content and scraped info for 3,000 DVDs.
Now if I convert/encode it will add 210 days (3,000 DVDs at 14 per day) _elapsed_ time to the library build. So instead of 5/6 weeks its 30 weeks to end up with a library that?s compressed and doesn?t have full content. Yes I could throw hardware at the convert/encode but that would go a long way to depleting any savings in storage costs gained by compressing. If the thought of having to re-rip 500 DVDs sounded bad, the thought of having to re-rip 3,000 DVDs is terrifying.
So, I?m not seeing the value of converting/encoding for either a 500 collection of for a 3,000 collection.
Phred
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