Hi all, I'm new to this and have been cruising this forum for a few day now. I see lots of good info and knowledgeable people on here. I hope I am asking this in the right place, I will continue to search the forum for more information.
So here is my situation & questions:
I have a few hundred DVD/BluRay disc's, I want to rip and convert them all to an external hard drive(s)(WD My Book Essentials 1 TB). For the last week, I have been using DVD Decrypter to rip to my HDD, then AutoGK (both free) to convert them to 75% of original quality, 1.5gb AVI files, in about 3-4 hours total (way too long). I have been searching for another all in one solution and ran across a few NERO & other products. I am not opposed to spending a little $$$ for a better/faster solution. Video playback quality is important to me, so I don't want to shrink them down to 750 mb files.
Eventually I will be purchasing a WD HD TV Live media player to stream them across my wireless network for viewing on my HDTV.
Here are my questions:
1)Am I using the best/fastest solution I can get for free, or a minimal charge?
2) Am I on the right track for a total digital media solution, i.e: hardware, software, network setup?
3) How much smaller can I go without losing to much quality?
4) Am I missing anything?
Thanks in advance for your answers, input, & guidance.
I am in a very similar situation to yourself. I have around 200-300 DVDs which I am ripping to be part of my PC which I will put in a HTPC enclosure when I have some cash.
DVD Decrypter, DVD Shrink and DVDFab HD Decrypter (free programs) all seem to take about the same amount of time to rip for me, though DVDFab can handle more encryptions so that's my preference. AutoGK is a good program, but I decided that for maximum quality:size ratio I would go for x264 video and AC3 audio in an mkv. This is produces much better audio and visual quality when compared to Xvid + mp3 in an avi of the same size.
I tried meGUI and Ripbot264 but wasn't impressed so I'm currently using Handbrake (free) which is very powerful and very easy to use. I don't know what your computer specs are but I'm running a AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+ (2.7GHz) and it usually takes around 2-3 hrs for a standard movie. At a CRF of 18 the mkvs are around 1.5-2GB and look amazing.
As for hardware the WD TV Live is a great choice as it will play just about anything you throw at it with decent decoders.
