I am trying to make a digital media server with all of my movies in one place to be accessed by desktops connected to big screens, laptops, etc. My main concern is qualtiy.
I have been fiddling aroung with handbrake for a while and read that mp4 with 2560 kbps is a very good quality playback. So I tried that with Iron Man, I watched the video in wmp and vlc. In vlc the colors are good but the edges are horrible, and in wmp the edges are fine but the picture is soft and the colors are dull. I also tried .mkv which was very skippy on vlc and I did not try it on wmp. Also, these are on my 22 inch monitor. I can only imagine what they will look like on the 42 inch screen.
So my questions are what do you think the best way to store a large amount of movies is? I prefer quality over file size and am looking for dvd quality or close. Compared to an upconvert dvd player will anything like this come close. So what is the best way to store these movies?
My second question is what is the best media player to play suggested files? Again quality is the concern. If I am reaching too high then I may not end up doing it. The goal is dvd quality on a 42 inch screen, Thanks for your time and sorry for the long post.
I decided to just keep the iso files and compress for each movie differently. Still can anyone recommend a high quality video player because windows media player wont play isos and vlc player has very jagged edges. Thanks.
how many movies do you have? I have over 3000. All are kept on DVDs. I would think that if you bought external drives you can put them in DVD format and use PowerDVD or RealPlayer or WMP or Quick Time Player or Classic Media Player and the quality would be DVD because you stored them as DVDs! Buy yourself a Tetra Bite external and fit as many as you can! Large external drives don't cost that much any more! I don't store my movies that way but I guess you can do it that way, and you would have the best quality you can get!
Thanks I am getting another terabyte hard drive and storing them as isos. They wont play in WMP without a codec and I haven't tried Realplayer, quick time player or classic media player. I will see if they have a better quality than VLC. Thanks again.
an iso is just an exact image of a full disk. If you're going to store the iso then I suggest not an iso but the full rip of the DVD, which is in the VIDEO_TS folder! If you store these DVDs in this format then you can use the programs I suggested above without having to go through the task of looking for a codec or anything else to use and play the iso!
Just like other CD/DVD image formats, ISO is a file that contains full content of the disc, including every single track, directory, file and information about the structure of the disc (i.e. ISO files can't be used as they are, but they need to be either "mounted" with tools like Daemon Tools or burned to CD or DVD in order to see what files the disc image actually contains). Normally ISO files are being used to replicate existing CD/DVD discs, transfer those discs over the network to other location (or to other person) and burn back to CD/DVD which then would be an identical replica of the original disc.
So do not save as an iso! it's not meant for playback but for duplication as an exact copy of the original CD/DVD. If you rip your DVDs into the original form you will have an AUDIO_TS and a VIDEO_TS folder. The AUDIO_TS will be empty but the VIDEO_TS folder will have the DVD files (IFO, BUP, VOB files). This is standard DVD structure files that tell how to play the DVD and so forth. By keeping the standard structure you can compress it to fit onto a DVD-5 or keep it in it's full form and have TOTAL ORIGINAL QUALITY of the DVD which can be played back by the programs mentioned above without quality loss! If you want you can use a program like DVD Rebuilder Pro to keep the quality as high as possible and still have it fit onto a DVD-5. Store all your DVDs on your large external drive and it will look something like this:
here is Leatherheads with VIDEO_TS folder and you see all the files of it's structure. You can now tell PowerDVD to play this folder and it will! Same with the other programs mentioned above. And it will have full quality! Remember an ISO file is the same thing but it's made for duplication not for play back! Do it this way and you won't have any problems. And if you want to write to disk just use ImgBurn or Nero or CopyToDVD or any other writing program and it will! So you have the best of both worlds.
I will do that thanks. If I have an iso and convert it to a video file via shrink or something will the quality be the same as if I ripped the folder straight from the DVD (neither using compression or both I know the more compression the worse quality). Thanks again.
as said before..... an iso is an image of the full CD/DVD. Why go to the trouble of ripping to an iso when you can just rip the DVD as is? Then if you want the best way to get it to DVD-5 use DVD Rebuilder Pro with CCE! Many members like the free version of DVDRebuilder with HC. Then you won't have to worry about compression. Rebuilder does the best job possible without loss of quality! try it... you'll like it!
I am trying to find out this same information with a few exceptions I want to stream the movies to my PS3 thru my wireless network. I have gotten similar information to rip the dvd except i used dvd decryptor and dvd shrink but i am not going to burn the movies.
i also downloaded TVersity and made it my media server to be able to get the PS3 to read all of the different files but it will not read the Video_ts folder as a whole i have to open it and it will read and play each file one at a time , but it is all scattered like a preview. What program can I use that will read it like it should be read and can transfer it to a format that my PS3 can read ?
