HDD storage format for DVD rips?

[ConsciousEffect]

given the recant hard drive capacity increase with concurrent price drop i believe it is time for me to outsource all my optical disks but my delima is this. i need to find a way to code my dvds to keep all or as much quality as possible with out using 6-8 gigs per image, the idea is to have my pc hooked up to my 1080p hd tv and i could be wrong but i just dont see 1gb avi's looking nice on a screen that big im willing to use up to say 3 gigs per movie. one thing i had thought about was keeping it in mpeg-4 format but cutting all the adds and credits and extra languages and other stuff out if i did that what sort of file size would i be looking at for a 2hr movie? and what are my options for compromising as little video quality as possible on that big screen

[DJ Bobo]

I could suggest the following: encode to the DivX Plus HD profile using DivX Converter from the DivX 7 package. If you specify a size of 4000MB, the encoder will allocate 15MB/s per minute, since you're working with an SD source. Which means a size of 1800MB for a 2h movie. You add the original 5.1 AC3 and you get yourself excellent quality with less than 2200MB per movie.

[setarip_old]

@ConsciousEffect

Hi! i had thought about was keeping it in mpeg-4 formatTrivial point - standard DVDs are in MPEG-2 format...

[dat720]

Another option is to recode the video stream to h264 using crf (Constant Rate Factor (http://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/CRFGuide) Click for explanation) CRF bassicly lets you specify a target 'quality', if you set a value of say 20 you will have very good quality and a resonably large file, the lower you go the better the quality will be with a increase in filesize also.

I've found 20-22 gets you to under 2gb quite comfortably while retaining very good quality, theres no real way to tell how large a CRF encode will turn out as every movie is different but a rule of thumb is the more action/resolution/colours in the movie the larger it will turn out.

Darker slow scenes like you'd find in a thriller movie are less complex and CRF will use less bits to acheive the same quality, on the otherhand a bright coloured action movie is much more complex and will require more bits for the same quality.

[onesloth]

the idea is to have my pc hooked up to my 1080p hd tv and i could be wrong but i just dont see 1gb avi's looking nice on a screen that big

I hate to be a downer, but DVDs don't look that good on a 1080p sized TV screen *without* any transcoding.

[edit: didn't know I got beat to it]

That said, x264 can get the video on most DVDs down to about a gig without much noticeable quality loss. Try x264 in crf mode(constant quality) with crf between 18 and 22. Encode a short test clip at crf 18, then the same clip at crf 19, etc. then use the highest crf, that looks as good as the original to your eyes, to do the full encode. Using crf will take the guess work out of getting good quality. You may want all your encodes to be the same size, but some can be compressed a lot, and look good, while some can't.

You can significantly increase the compressibility of your video by using a noise or film grain removing avisynth filter. I use mdegrain2 (or 3) on HD sources because some of them have a ridiculous amount of film grain and the video still looks great even when its removed. Granted, mdegrain2 (and 3) are very slow so, if they take too long for you, there are plenty of faster (though probably not as good) filters. With an SD source, however, removing noise/grain might reveal compression artifacts (banding, blocking) so scrutinize your test clips carefully.

You can also transcode the ac3 audio to AAC and save a ton of size.

[DJ Bobo]

You can also transcode the ac3 audio to AAC and save a ton of size.

I don't know about that ton you're mentioning here. Reencoding to 320kbps LC is pretty much a waste of time, since AC3 is only 384 or 448kbps on DVDs (=> negligible size saving), and reencoding to 160kbps HE is not recommended if he wants to retain a minimum of fidelity (HE sounds too artificial to me). And pairing a 2GB video encode w/ AAC-HE is like pairing a 6 cylinders BMW with 14" rims (ugly huh? :rolleyes:)

[onesloth]

160kbps HE is not recommended

By who?;)

I'm sure the OP is perfectly capable of doing an AAC encode himself to decide if the bitrate savings are worth it. AAC (HE or otherwise) is simply more efficient than Dolby Digital, and if you are trying to save space, it behooves you to test your options.

[DJ Bobo]

By who?;)

By me :p
And as far as I can tell, he's not desperate to save bits like an ant. He said, he can allocate up to 3GB per movie, I suggested about 2GB while maxing out video quality and keeping perfect audio quality.
AAC-HE is for 1-CD rips imho, definitely not what he's looking for (keep the small rims for the small cars :D)