Practical approaches to backing up HD-DVD

[Blue_MiSfit]

Hey folks,

So I'm the recent and proud owner of an Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive, and an 8800gt to decode these lovely high bitrate 1080p streams.

I'm looking into archiving my new HD movies - specifically doing so in a practical and efficient way. I watch my movies on a 1920x1200 pixel 24" LCD, and a 5.1 surround sound system with the capability to do 24 bit 96 KHz decoding.

Ideally I would have a clean and simple solution using MeGUI, possibly some other tools.

I've been evaluating the possibilities for awhile and here's what I've come up with. They all involve the first step, which is ripping the EVOs off the disc with AnyDVD HD (which was a great investment). I also plan on re-encoding all audio down to 5.1 ch Aften AC3, probably at 448kbit. 3mbit for HD audio tracks is nice and all, but for movies I just don't see the point. Music is another story - but those are the exception to the rule for me.

1) Keep the raw video streams, and a 448kbit AC3 of the audio - mux it all in MKV.
-perfect video quality
-fast (relatively) to backup
-massive, to the point of being almost unworkable. 20 movies = 1x 500 GB hard drive.

2) Re-encode to 1080p H.264 and the same AC3 - but fit to a DVD9
-great video quality
-slow as hell to backup. Seriously. 1.2 fps for first pass on my system means 3 days to encode a 2 hour movie. not practical without massive computer upgrade
-nice tight compression. I would keep the files on a hard drive, but burning a DVD9 would be a nice option to offload some capacity

3) Re-encode to 1080p (or maybe 720p) H.264 and the same AC3 - but fit to a DVD5
-still much better quality than DVD. Some risk involved in doing 1080p at these lower bitrates, and I'll always wonder if I made the right choice between 720p and 1080p.
-faster to encode if I do 720p
-even nicer tighter compression

4) Some other option

I guess my biggest concerns are over the massive amount of time that I have to spend to re-encode HD-DVD.

Maybe I'm not seeing things clearly?

I welcome your feedback..

~MiSfit

[Sagekilla]

Well my recommendation to you would to compress it.. If you don't mind some files going over DVD-9 or DVD-5 limit, you can do constant rate factor which is a one pass nearly as good as 2-pass (Practically there is very little difference between the two.)

Secondly, I'd suggest you take a small clip (1 minute or so) of your video and compress it to 1080p and another to 720p. Vary your compression (high bitrate/low crf or low bitrate/high crf) and see what you think of the quality at full screen. If your eyes find 720p adequate on your 24", go right ahead and take advantage of the extra compression. Otherwise, try bumping it up a bit to maybe 1536x864 (16:9 AR) which is in between 720p and 1080p. If you're playing this back on your PC there should be no compatibility issues with using such an oddball resolution.

Edit: In fact, I used 864p on a few video encodes where there sheer amount of detail present over 720p (Wide angle shots of a busy battlefield, for example) was enough to justify it.

[Dark Shikari]

If you want to speed things up, use lower-end encoding settings.

Here's my list of "best bang for the buck" settings going from lowest speed to highest. I'd personally recommend around Q50-Q60 if you need high speed without sacrificing too much quality. I'd recommend using CRF mode; then you only have to specify a quality, not a bitrate, and you only need one pass. Note the bolded ones require Cef's build rather than a pure SVN build.

Q100 --bframe 16 --me esa --fpel-cmp satd --merange 24 --subme 7 --no-fast-pskip --partitions all --8x8dct --bime --ref 16 --trellis 2 --mixed-refs --weightb --me-prepass --b-rdo
Q95 --bframe 16 --me esa --merange 20 --subme 7 --no-fast-pskip --partitions all --8x8dct --bime --ref 10 --trellis 2 --mixed-refs --weightb --me-prepass --b-rdo
Q90 --bframe 16 --me umh --merange 16 --subme 7 --no-fast-pskip --partitions all --8x8dct --bime --ref 6 --trellis 2 --mixed-refs --weightb --me-prepass --b-rdo
Q85 --bframe 16 --me umh --merange 16 --subme 7 --no-fast-pskip --partitions all --8x8dct --bime --ref 6 --trellis 2 --mixed-refs --weightb --me-prepass --b-rdo
Q80 --bframe 16 --me umh --merange 16 --subme 7 --partitions all --8x8dct --bime --ref 6 --trellis 1 --mixed-refs --weightb --me-prepass --b-rdo
Q75 --bframe 16 --me umh --merange 12 --subme 7 --partitions all --8x8dct --bime --ref 5 --trellis 1 --mixed-refs --weightb --b-rdo
Q70 --bframe 16 --me umh --merange 12 --subme 6 --partitions all --8x8dct --bime --ref 5 --trellis 1 --mixed-refs --weightb
Q65 --bframe 16 --me umh --merange 8 --subme 5 --partitions i8x8,b8x8,p8x8,i4x4 --8x8dct --bime --ref 5 --trellis 1 --mixed-refs --weightb
Q60 --bframe 16 --me hex --subme 4 --partitions i8x8,b8x8,p8x8,i4x4 --8x8dct --bime --ref 5 --trellis 1 --mixed-refs --weightb
Q55 --bframe 16 --me hex --subme 4 --partitions i8x8,b8x8,p8x8,i4x4 --8x8dct --bime --ref 4 --mixed-refs --weightb
Q50 --bframe 16 --me hex --subme 3 --partitions i8x8,b8x8,p8x8 --8x8dct --bime --ref 4 --mixed-refs --weightb
Q45 --bframe 16 --me hex --subme 3 --partitions i8x8,b8x8,p8x8 --8x8dct --ref 3 --mixed-refs --weightb
Q40 --bframe 16 --me hex --subme 3 --partitions i8x8,b8x8,p8x8 --8x8dct --ref 2 --mixed-refs --weightb
Q35 --bframe 16 --me dia --subme 3 --partitions i8x8,b8x8,p8x8 --8x8dct --weightb
Q30 --bframe 16 --me hex --subme 3 --partitions i8x8,b8x8 --8x8dct --weightb
Q25 --bframe 16 --me dia --subme 3 --partitions i8x8,b8x8 --8x8dct --weightb
Q20 --bframe 16 --me hex --subme 3 --partitions b8x8 --weightb
Q15 --bframe 16 --me hex --subme 3 --partitions none --weightb
Q10 --bframe 16 --me hex --subme 2 --partitions none --weightb
Q5 --bframe 16 --me dia --merange 12 --subme 2 --partitions none
Q0 --bframe 16 --me dia --merange 8 --subme 1 --partitions none

[Sagekilla]

Also, lower resolution always helps. 720p < 1080p for encoding time. But, this is a bit subjective since if there's no noticeable quality boost from going to 1080p, you should simply downsample to 720p doing something like a Lanczos4Resize(1280,720) in avisynth.


Edit: Just as a little something to put out there, the upscaling script I use to upscale animated content runs at a mere 1 fps when converting to 1024x576 and encoding using insane x264 settings.

[prOnorama]

4 ) Don't back up now but wait 2-3 years when HD size and processor speed has increased. Also there will probably be affordable HD DVD/Blu-Ray burners then so you can do 1:1 backups (or maybe still re-encodes to single layer)

Just back up the rare stuff you really can't miss now.

IMO no sense in backing up some popular HD film when you can easily replace it for a few $ ;)

I do the same with my DVD collection: rare stuff (imports, OOP) get backed up. Popular, easily available stuff I don't back up.

[saint-francis]

4 ) Don't back up now but wait 2-3 years

Just back up the rare stuff you really can't miss now.

IMO no sense in backing up some popular HD film when you can easily replace it for a few $ ;)


The problem here is that if he did buy a movie and it gets ruined some how he then needs to buy it again. Just tossing money away. If I buy a movie I want to keep it as long as I can. I want my grandchildren to have it when I die. I like to take care of all of my materials. As soon as I get a movie it gets ripped and then goes into the closet well out of the reach of the children; who over the years have developed a taste for destroying boxed sets and pricey Criterion editions.

That being said, I would suggest that you try to back up your HD DVD's in 720p with good x264 settings and just put out of your mind what the computer is doing while it's encoding. If in a year from now, or even a month, you decide you want to have them on hand in 1080p you can always rip it again. You may even have a more robust processor by then. I think the real key here though is to start the movie encoding and then forget about it until it's done. Does it matter if encoding takes all week? Do you need to have your PC for some other processor intensive work so often? If you have a dual core machine you could just set x264's affinity to one core and then you'd have all the extra processing power on hand that you'd need. Personally I encode all of my movies with the MeGUI HQ Insane profile (which some people think is just plain dumb) and backing up a HD DVD to 720p takes me about 1/2 a day and it's time well spent. I would gladly let it take all week if I could get better quality in less space.

Just my two cents.

[cacepi]

The problem here is that if he did buy a movie and it gets ruined some how he then needs to buy it again. Just tossing money away.
It costs money to encode too, you know.

The bigger question is; what is your time worth? 3 days to a week encoding right now or letting the technology reach the point that HD-DVD/Blu-ray is as cheap as DVD backup? Those bits on the disc don't have an expiration date.

Wait.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Well... call me an impulsive bastard, but I just dropped the bomb on a q6600, 4 gigs of ram, and all the kit I will need to take it beyond 3 GHz without breaking a sweat.... and another 500 gig hard drive.....

so... :)

Newegg gets another $750 of my hard earned cash....

~MiSfit

[Sharktooth]

cheap quads are the ultimate solution for x264 HD encoding.
however from my experience, a 720p backup looks good on DVD-5. a 1080p backup is OK on DVD-9 (or 2 DVD-5s).
you can try 1080p on DVD-5 but you need to clean (filter) the source as much as possible...

[laserfan]

I absolutely do not see the point of "backing-up" an HD-DVD to a lesser format of any kind UNLESS it is for a program that either yourself or your children will watch over & over & over again via some other medium (whether SD DVD or streaming player) i.e. you would be likely to damage the disc by handling, and having seen the program many many times you don't give it a critical look any more.

Only the original HD DVD contains "the look and sound of perfect" and why would anyone here want to compromise that in any way?

I have re-worked favorite SD movies to "clean-up" the ugliness of studio previews/trailers/logos/warnings/blah/blah/blah/ad-nauseum but it does appear that at least the initial HD DVDs on the market are limiting this junk to the level of acceptability...

[Sharktooth]

I have no HD-DVD burner... so i must use standard DVDs...

[audyovydeo]

I absolutely do not see the point of "backing-up" an HD-DVD to a lesser format of any kind UNLESS it is for a program that either yourself or your children will watch over & over & over again via some other medium

Voila another think-alike !

Fascinating : it's the first time I see the economics of backing up discussed in detail.
I personally NEVER back up a DVD movie. Too much of a waste of time, energy, storage space, money (in order of decreasing importance).

When you buy a DVD you get some data at a given quality on a storage medium. From the price we can desume a price per GB ratio.
If you want to convert it to something else, for whatever reason, you can easily make an approximate calculation considering :


the target storage and its price per GB (DVD5 or hard disk?)
the price of the encoding PC if one is needed



So the real cost of backing up an given DVD is :


the cost of its storage
the "chunk" of PC cost to amortize
electricity cost
time


1 and 3 can easily be calculated. 2 is a little tricker. 4 is near-impossible to estimate, but it's the most precious thing.
This, again, to produce a second copy of something we already have ...

cheers
audyovydeo

[Furiousflea]

Voila another think-alike !

Fascinating : it's the first time I see the economics of backing up discussed in detail.
I personally NEVER back up a DVD movie. Too much of a waste of time, energy, storage space, money (in order of decreasing importance).

When you buy a DVD you get some data at a given quality on a storage medium. From the price we can desume a price per GB ratio.
If you want to convert it to something else, for whatever reason, you can easily make an approximate calculation considering :


the target storage and its price per GB (DVD5 or hard disk?)
the price of the encoding PC if one is needed



So the real cost of backing up an given DVD is :


the cost of its storage
the "chunk" of PC cost to amortize
electricity cost
time


1 and 3 can easily be calculated. 2 is a little tricker. 4 is near-impossible to estimate, but it's the most precious thing.
This, again, to produce a second copy of something we already have ...

cheers
audyovydeo

Yeah all well and good, but different people place different values at different times on 4

You're obviously placing a lot of value on it....

Why?

I could make a similar argument, that you should quit your job and go on benefits because its so important?

No?

[audyovydeo]

You're obviously placing a lot of value on it....

Why?


I was merely making a cost-case. I spend my days costing and estimating IT projects, and the workload fairly outstrips the hardware and software costs (on average, depends on the project obviously). When factoring in recurrent costs, not just set up costs.



I could make a similar argument, that you should quit your job and go on benefits because its so important?

No?

I don't get the analogy, but I agree that the preciousness of time is in the eye of the time-spender (to paraphrase).

What remains easily quantifiable is the amount of time needed to reencode, no matter its cost/unit.
I spend endless hours encoding my own DV material, not re-encoding DVDs.

cheers
audyovydeo

[laserfan]

You're obviously placing a lot of value on [time].... Why?Ha, ha! You're obviously too young yet to appreciate that your time on this planet is limited!!! :D

I appreciate that a number of people do it (back-up HD DVDs) for "fun" i.e. as an interesting/educational hobby. I will myself probably attempt some "best of" conversions/edits/compilations for playback on my media player. But "backups" for the purpose of saving "just in case" an original is scratched is silly. Of course, if any "backups" are being done of rental discs, or to "share with friends" well, if that isn't illegal in your country it is at least not nice! :p

[Sagekilla]

Ha, ha! You're obviously too young yet to appreciate that your time on this planet is limited!!! :D

I appreciate that a number of people do it (back-up HD DVDs) for "fun" i.e. as an interesting/educational hobby. I will myself probably attempt some "best of" conversions/edits/compilations for playback on my media player. But "backups" for the purpose of saving "just in case" an original is scratched is silly. Of course, if any "backups" are being done of rental discs, or to "share with friends" well, if that isn't illegal in your country it is at least not nice! :p

I do it because it's infinitely easier to load up any one of my movies without having to search for where my DVD may be, or in a more common and worse case, where the disc is. Plus, bonus points for being able to watch it from any other computer in the household as well as on our projection system :)

[buzzqw]

EDIT: nevermind .. i will open a new thread

BHH

[bgbop15]

I do it because it's infinitely easier to load up any one of my movies without having to search for where my DVD may be, or in a more common and worse case, where the disc is. Plus, bonus points for being able to watch it from any other computer in the household as well as on our projection system :)

same here.

Now back the the op...

I vote #1

Hard Drive space is so cheap right now, its ridiculous.

For me, the best way would be to rebuild the .evos from my HD-DVD with just 1 video and 1 audio, and have that work in media center. But it doesn't :(

Until then, I just cant bring myself to compress anything anymore than it already is!

[uncertainty]

same here.

Now back the the op...

I vote #1

Hard Drive space is so cheap right now, its ridiculous.

For me, the best way would be to rebuild the .evos from my HD-DVD with just 1 video and 1 audio, and have that work in media center. But it doesn't :(

Until then, I just cant bring myself to compress anything anymore than it already is!

You also have to take into account additional hardware when you can no longer add hd's to your current setup. For example I have 2 2TB Raid5 servers using the motherboard's raid controller (ICH8R). If I need to add more storage I will be looking at another $300+ overhead in order to accomodate extra drives.

[Sagekilla]

same here.

Now back the the op...

I vote #1

Hard Drive space is so cheap right now, its ridiculous.

For me, the best way would be to rebuild the .evos from my HD-DVD with just 1 video and 1 audio, and have that work in media center. But it doesn't :(

Until then, I just cant bring myself to compress anything anymore than it already is!

It is cheap but, it's not that cheap. 500 GB will cost $100 on newegg, and if each blu-ray movie ends up being about 25 GB each, that's only 20 movies for one hard drive compared to maybe a hundred if compressed to 5 GB each.