Keep full DVD ISO or convert to Divx?

[bcknapp]

I am a bit neurotic when it comes to collecting and organization on my computer. For example, I have a bunch of computer games and applications that existed on CD, but since I am not a big fan of optical media and like having everything located on my HDD, I copied all 100+ CDs to my HDD as ISOs and use daemon-tools to read them. As such I am always pondering, should I:

A) Rip DVDs to ISO format to preserve the menus, special features, and full quality of the video, while using large amounts of space (between 3-8GB per movie)

or

B) Convert them to Mpeg-4 Format and save space? And if so.. I am always wavering between what size the file should be, should I split the file in case I ever want to burn it to a CD (which I never do)..., etc.

I have recently learned how to rip and convert DVDs and it's been a lot of fun, but now I'm trying to think ahead for a permanent future solution. 5 years down the line when I have a more permanent setup with perhaps a HD display, will I want to have an image of the DVD with menus and special features and all that? Or will I be happy with the converted movie? The setup I intend to have is a server computer which connects to an Media Center PC which will output to a big HDTV. That'll be a while though :(

Right now I have a fair amount of space (180GB, 120GB, 2x 400GB, 2x 300GB), but I know it would be gone pretty quickly at 8GB per movie.

How do you guys organize and preserve your movies? Do you care that you don't keep the menus when you convert them? Do you have any ideas for long-term solutions?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Well right now what I'm doing is: -

DVD Decrypter in IFO (non file splitting) mode to back-up just the "main movie" part of my DVD's - ie: MPEG-2 (.M2V) video stream, AC3 (.AC3) English audio stream and chapters


MuxMan or DVD Planner BASIC to re-mux/author the RAW streams into a new VIDEO_TS "VOB Title" set.


ImgTool Classic to repack the VIDEO_TS "VOB Title" set to .ISO


Cheers

[setarip_old]

Hi!

In the US, at 30 cents a pop, or less, for single layer burnable media and $2.00 a pop, or less, for double layer burnable media, I find it quite economical to make full copies of my DVD collection as backup...

[bcknapp]

SeeMoreDigital - that is an interesting method... sounds like the advantage of that is that you get rid of the stuff that you don't want or need (ie different language subtitles, extra features, etc) but still keep the DVD quality video.. interesting. Does that save you a lot of space by taking those components out?

setarip_old - I recently bought 2 400GB hard drives for 99bucks each equals out to $0.25 per GB, which is more expensive than your $0.30 per 4 GB (7.5cents/gb) single layer DVDs but is comparable to your $2.00 per 8 GB (25cents/gb) dual layer DVDs.

I used to keep all of my divx movies from about 5 years ago on recordable CDs. I even used the higher quality brands like memorex and others. However out of my CD binder of about 150 movies at the time, I lost about 30 due to damaged CDs. I took great care of the CDs and kept them in a CD binder, but as they got old the foil (or whatever material the data is imprinted upon) ended up degrading, ruining the entire CD. From that point on I kept all my data on hard disks.

I don't know if DVD media these days has somehow improved. If it has I can see how that would be a great solution for many people... but like I said I'm kind of obsessive and I don't like having discs lying around.

My hope is that mass storage will continue to become more affordable and more.. massive.

Does anyone else have any comments or interesting reasons behind your method of archiving movies?

[setarip_old]

I recently bought 2 400GB hard drives for 99bucks eachSo you'rre the guy that got to FRy's ahead of me ;>}

As far as burning backups of DVDs rather than ONLY keeping them on my hard drives, my backup copies are just that - backups. My original, pressed, commercial DVDs are stored away under proper conditions. Therefore, if I should ever discover that a backup no longer functions properly (Hasn't happened yet), it will go in the trash and I'll simply burn a new backup.

On the other hand, if anything ever crashes one of your hard drives and the contents are unrecoverable, you'll have a FAR bigger task of re-ripping MANY of your original DVDs...

[Shinigami-Sama]

RAID-5 Anyone?
N-1 storage Capacity ftw

[SeeMoreDigital]

SeeMoreDigital - that is an interesting method... sounds like the advantage of that is that you get rid of the stuff that you don't want or need (ie different language subtitles, extra features, etc) but still keep the DVD quality video.. interesting. Does that save you a lot of space by taking those components out?Yes indeed it can!

A few days ago I bought The DaVinci Code (PAL 142 mins)... A "full DVD" -to- ISO back-up would have run in at 7.95GB. However a "main movie" -to- ISO back-up comes in at just 5.30GB - a saving of 2.65GB... "a third" :scared:


Cheers

[foxyshadis]

Raid-5 would be great if you get a controller card that allows online expansion. Plug another drive in, let it restripe, and get all that extra capacity. (Though you need acronis or similar tools to then resize the filesystem, if you don't create a new partition.) Nforce won't let you, and it's a software raid anyway, no dedicated chip. (Uses the CPU for raid calculations.)

Otherwise, within a year terabyte drives will be common and multi-terabyte within a few more, assuming hardware innovation continues. Surely for standard definition there's almost no point in converting except consistency's sake and DVD backup.

[zambelli]

Well right now what I'm doing is: -
DVD Decrypter in IFO (non file splitting) mode to back-up just the "main movie" part of my DVD's - ie: MPEG-2 (.M2V) video stream, AC3 (.AC3) English audio stream and chapters
MuxMan or DVD Planner BASIC to re-mux/author the RAW streams into a new VIDEO_TS "VOB Title" set.
ImgTool Classic to repack the VIDEO_TS "VOB Title" set to .ISO
FYI... You can do the same with less intermediate steps by using DVD Shrink and selecting Backup option with "No Compression". Works great with MCE2005's My DVDs feature - all DVDs show up on the list, and selecting any title immediately starts the movie.

[Awatef]

I'm not into HD, so I tend to backup most movies to 700MB size, and then burn up to 6 movies on one DVD-R.
For movies I really care about, I tend to use 1400MB size, that's to facilitate the transfer to 2 CDs, and you get up to 3 movies per DVD-R.

In your case, as you seem to care about quality, I would definitely go the 1400MB way, totalling over 70 movies per 100GB, and preserving excellent video quality (especially if you use H.264 compression) and 5.1 sound.
That would make an excellent video server with a lot of movies :)

[Doobie]

Mpeg4 can be done at the original resolution, and so preserves the visual quality at a smaller file size. Converting to Mpeg4 will give you much better quality than transcoding DVD9 to DVD5. For not-so-good movies, cut down a bit on the resolution, and go for 2-channel audio, for even smaller file sizes. Smaller files are easier to manage.

I have little desire to have menus, especially if it means broken menus or keeping the annoying garbage put on DVDs. These things also take up a lot of space. Of course, you still have your original DVDs safely stored away, if you should decide that you want those menus and whatnot.

Don't worry too much about the future. You might get hit by a car tomorrow. At least, you'll want high-definition movies for your home theater. This means you're going to re-obtain the movies you really like, anyway. I'm thinking something like a future high-definition Vongo (or a movie-download version of Netflix) will be a home-movie-collection-killer.

[masken]

I've personally never like online storage as an archiving option. Maybe on a RAID:ed NAS-unit with a hot- or cold spare, but never in a "PC" of some sort.

Disks will break, it's just a matter of time. It's moving parts with lesser and lesser quality. Even the international manufacturers admit this and many have reduced ww warranty to just one year.

Maybe it's just me...?

[Shinigami-Sama]

Raid-5 would be great if you get a controller card that allows online expansion. Plug another drive in, let it restripe, and get all that extra capacity. (Though you need acronis or similar tools to then resize the filesystem, if you don't create a new partition.) Nforce won't let you, and it's a software raid anyway, no dedicated chip. (Uses the CPU for raid calculations.)


*nix with a SAS iSCSI array?
SATA drives are cheap and SAS controlers are getting cheaper and cheaper.

[zambelli]

Personally, I just don't think recompressing an MPEG-2 source to a more efficient codec is worth the effort given the low cost of disk storage today. If you try to match the quality of the MPEG-2 source with MPEG-4 or VC-1 (which you inevitably never will because of the lossy compression), you will require at least half the original bitrate. I'm sure someone will now object and try to convince me that his 1CD rip of "Matrix" looks great, but c'mon... We're not living in the dark ages of 14" CRT TVs anymore. Project that 1CD low-bitrate rip on a 100" screen and it will look like crap. When thousands of people are spending money of upscaling DVD players just to squeeze that 1% of extra quality out of an aging format, I think re-compressing is a trip in the opposite (wrong) direction. The loss of quality and time spent on re-compressing MPEG-2 just isn't worth it. You might as well just shell out a bit of extra $ and build that disk array you always dreamed of.

[foxyshadis]

Unless you're like Didée, me, or some of the other filterheads. We can pry out every block, artifact, and smear, creating a HD rip out of an SD one. ;) Each rip might take a full day currently (a few days back when IIP was new), require DVD bitrates or higher, and optionally even more processing on playback, but hey, it'll pop on a huge screen.

Now the problem is I don't have the huge screen. I bet it'd be cheaper just to clear a wall off and get a decent projector, my 19" is getting prematurely obselete.

[zambelli]

Unless you're like Didée, me, or some of the other filterheads. We can pry out every block, artifact, and smear, creating a HD rip out of an SD one. ;) Each rip might take a full day currently (a few days back when IIP was new), require DVD bitrates or higher, and optionally even more processing on playback, but hey, it'll pop on a huge screen.
I've considered that and I've certainly tried. But it's actually remarkably difficult to get a good HD encode that's an improvement over a well-scaled SD source and doesn't introduce its own compression artifacts. Also, it's rather time consuming because there's no one-size-fits-all Avisynth solution (yet), as we all know. You pretty much have to run a custom script for every encode and tweak each plugin accordingly. Also, how does one define "improved"? Sharper? With less grain? Personally, I like film grain. I would never consider an encode that takes out film grain to be an improvement. :) There's definitely an art to making mediocre sources look better, and if you can streamline that process somehow - you should check if any Hollywood post-production houses are hiring, because that's a skill one could easily sell! :D

A good goal would be to take an MPEG-2 source, scale it to at least 720p, do a bit of Avisynth magic, encode at the same average bitrate as the source to H.264 or VC-1, and end up with an HD video that takes up the same space but looks considerably better.

But the ultimate ideal solution would be to do that same thing in realtime and never even encode to a lossy format. ;)

[bb]

Have a look at DvdReMake (free) or DvdReMake Pro from
http://www.dimadsoft.com

Using this software you can strip off any content you don't need. You may preserve the menus, if you like, deactivate buttons that point to deleted content, etc.

bb

[Scarpad]

I primarily use Divx or Xvid now for encoding movies and TV shows for my Portable players. I do so at a High resolution so I can watch it on a 32" LCD and it looks Decent enough, but I agree it would'nt look great on my 65" or 96" screens. If I was archiving for something that large I would just rip to the Vob file the main movie.

[ukb008]

bcknapp had asked in his original post: Convert them (i.e., the DVDs) to Mpeg-4 Format and save space? And if so.. I am always wavering between what size the file should be, should I split the file in case I ever want to burn it to a CD (which I never do)...

I have found out that, given unlimited target size and quality while transcoding a DVD-5 (or DVD-9), AutoGK balks at producing more than 2.7 GB in its finished avi files, with ac3 audio. And at that size the video is quite indistinguishable in quality from the original DVD.

So what I do is this:

1. Store my DVD originals 'properly' (whatever is my understanding of such properness - cool, dark and dry place, refraining from touching data surface, not writing anything ever on the picture on the surface, never play it in a noisy player ...etc.

2. I make mpeg4 backups with unlimited quality and target file-size, and then write that with other stuff (like info from a few IMDb pages, some covers from http://www.cdcovers.cc, the agk_log file etc. The price of the DVD-blanks and DVD-Writers have fallen so much that I don't make 700 MB rips any more.

3. For some reason, I feel uneasy about storing movie titles in the hard drive. For one thing, they're not portable enough. For another, there's this specter of a hard drive crash...

4. A rethinking of the entire scheme will be necessary once Blue-Ray/HD-DVD becomes more affordable and poise a real threat to DVD-R media.

Regards.

[DrivenByDemons]

FWIW, I re-encode with AutoGK using a target quality of 75. This leaves the AC3/DTS audio entact and gives a very good encode. Menus/Extras mean zip to me so I have no problem losing them. The size is unpredictable in this case but it's usually below 2 Gigs. I then store those movies on my Infrant NAS (awesome product if you have the cash, uses RAID-X which is expandable on the fly) and play them through my XBOX using XBMC. Really a great setup I think... I keep meaning to look into H.264 but I hear the encoding time is ridiculous compared to xvid.

[ahwhwl]

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[Shinigami-Sama]

FWIW, I re-encode with AutoGK using a target quality of 75. This leaves the AC3/DTS audio entact and gives a very good encode. Menus/Extras mean zip to me so I have no problem losing them. The size is unpredictable in this case but it's usually below 2 Gigs. I then store those movies on my Infrant NAS (awesome product if you have the cash, uses RAID-X which is expandable on the fly) and play them through my XBOX using XBMC. Really a great setup I think... I keep meaning to look into H.264 but I hear the encoding time is ridiculous compared to xvid.

actualy this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=116773) should dramitcaly reduce that long assed encode
I'm currently working on some testing for it; well begining to atelast