This is a beginner question: I have a ton of old dvds and I want to put them all on a portable hard drive so they can be watched on 1080p TVs using the USB input.
What file type and settings should I be using for maximum quality?
The 4 items listed below are what you'll need depending on what route you wish to go,the first two are for ripping,dvdshrink however can cut the front & end of the main movie to remove the intro & outro crap,which will leave more improvement of quality if you decide to place them in a MP4 or MKVcontainer
If you have a ton you need to decide how many movies compared to how much hdd space you have,you also need to take into consideration where this hdd will be played & whether the unit you connect it to has the ability to play a particular format & read a format like mkv or mp4 as this will affect output size of video & it's quality if your drive is formatted to FAT,What you want to do is fairly straight forward it just depends on whether you use a container (mp4,mkv,iso)or not,yeah so i'll stop here till you come back & member attar should be along soon too,he appears to be the most experienced in this dept next to me that is :p
DVDFAB HD Decrypter-to rip & remove protection
DVDShrink-to rip & remove protection & cut front & end frames of main movie title/s
Handbrake-encode to a container of mp4 or mkv
menushrink-use with full movie,removes animation from menu shrinking the file size from anywhere between 0-700mb
What file type does the TV expect to see on the USB input?
The maximum quality would be the actual DVD files - which are mpeg2 - and would require the least amount of work.
Conversion to mp4 or AVI takes time and a quality hit.
