DVD Collection to Netbook

[BoysBoysBoys]

Hello,

It has been a while since I needed to rip some DVDs. My netbook gets the jitters when playing back h.264 stuff, plus it drains the battery like crazy. I'm going on vacation and I want to use my netbook as a portable DVD player, but we all know that netbooks do not have a DVD-ROM or a lot of hard-drive space.

My question is what is the most optimal encoder that is going to require the least amount of computing power to render? I'm looking at battery performance > quality.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

If you can deal with the size, I'd use MakeMKV to rip my DVD's to MKV files. This will keep optimal quality, as the video isn't re-encoded.

With at most ~9 GB per disc, you can still store at least 17 discs on a typical 160 GB drive. And it's MPEG-2 :-)

But if you need to compress it, then the answer is x264. No other encoder/format reaches the compression efficiency of x264 at the moment.

Given that you manage to fix your H.264 playback problems, of course!

BTW: Good compression efficiency comes at the cost of increased complexity. So if you want good compression, you must spend electricity ;)

However there are tricks to reduce H.264 decoding complexity. Mainly: Use CAVLC instead of CABAC and disable the Loop filter...

[CWR03]

If your netbook has the same small screen as mine and you're not as concerned with quality as you are with battery life, consider good-ol' MPEG-1. At VCD quality you can fit about 5 hours onto a 4 GB USB thumb drive. With power saver set to shut down the hard drive after five minutes, perhaps the USB drive in play will let that happen and help extend playback time.