If I can explain my situation, as I am semi retired and hope to move abroad from the U.K. within the next year or so. To this end I have just purchased a Mede8er MED500x High Definition Player (http://www.digitalera.co.uk/products/Mede8er_MED500X_Multimedia_Player-1299-145.html) with the intention of converting my 600+ DVD collection to fit onto a couple of 2TB harddrives I intend to purchase shortly.
What format of conversion would give me the best quality for playback.
Considering this requirement the software required would also need to be relatively easy to use and importantly be able to do episodic Dvd's as I also have nearly 2500 hours of tv series on dvd to transfer to harddrive.
It says it handles .iso format and 2000GB divided by 8 would handle 250 full size images.
If you run them through DVD Shrink - about 500 images.
There are variants on this inasmuch as ripping the main movie only and optionally shrinking that, but converting to another format (mkv, mp4)will add to the time and (slightly) lower the quality.
In any case, the act of simply ripping the disk will involve timex600 plus time for each additional step.
Say 20 minutes to rip the disk to an .iso file.
If you want to shrink it to a smaller .iso file - add 20 minutes.
I have DVD shrink and have used it occasionally for a couple of backups, but I don,t think I explain myself in my first post very well, my apologies. (I,m an old silver surfer)
My first and main priority is to backup all my dvd box sets to my multimedia player in a compressed format i.e. divx, xvid, mkv etc and therfore I would like to know which format gives the best quality. I appreciate that any of these formats are not as good as the original.
Plus I would appreciate recommendations for software to do this, bearing in mind I would really like the software to be able to deal with episodic DVDs and be relatively easy for an old duffer like me to use.
My DVD single collection would be on the back burner until this side of my project is finished
Again thanks for the reply and any further help you might provide.
If you are concerned about saving space, then it becomes a trade-off between how much space you want to save over how much visual degradation/quality loss you can accept...You will always have some quality loss when compressing/converting to another format..Best would be to not convert/compress, period..
That said,if saving space is a concern, you need to do some test conversions with different codecs, different settings and tools, to see which works best for your needs..Here are a couple of guides to help you decide..Good luck!..
http://forum.videohelp.com/topic357932.html http://www.dvd-guides.com/guides/dvdrip/...using-handbrake
To add to k00ka's suggestions - you can use the old DVD Decrypter on most of the episodic disks that I have come across and use 'IFO Mode' to select each episode and rip them individually - then use AutoGK to convert it to AVI.
DVD Shrink will work on these types of disk also - each episode is listed as a separate 'Title' and you use 'Re-author' mode to select a title and save it to a new folder.
AGK also lets you load up a batch of jobs so that you can run a bunch overnight.
I checked the link for the player you've bought and it supports mkv and h.264 just fine. So why don't convert to that format with x264 and MeGUI. If you have fast computer it will take around 2 per dvd to get high quality compressed movie at the smallest size. Compress with 1 pass quality mode.
After you rip all your dvd's to ISO, the the program that I have been using for the past 3 years is fairuse wizard (full version). It takes an ISO and converts it to avi. I use the h264 codec2-pass mode and 900kps bitrate this gives me the best quality. Make sure and crop out the blackbars in the preview screen. An average dvd will convert to about 800mb. I have over 800 movies on my 1TB hard drive all converted with fairuse.
This program can batch convert ISO's so you can run the conversions overnite if necessary and will even turn off the computer for you when it's done. This program always keeps the video/audio insync for me.
The h264 codec works best if you have a phenom or intel quad core. That can convert a dvd in 2 hours or less using the 2-pass mode. 1-pass mode is quicker but you loose quality in the action movie fast changing scenes.
