Archival of DVDs and format conversion

[Ace Pace]

I'm looking into archiving a not insignificant DVD collection, home stuff, unencrypted commercial stuff. and I'm wondering about the best way of backing this thing up to a computer. All the DVDs are DVD-Video (and not just file collections). Simply copying the discs as ISOs could be one option, though very inefficient in space. Using a program like DVD-Shrink would significantly reduce the space such raw archives take up, but would leave me with annoying libraries full of myriad Video_TS and Audio_TS Files.

Should I be using a program like Handbreak and convert everything to h.264? Any other programs that do this as easily? Should I stick to AVIs and if so, are there any one step programs that go from DVD-video to a single file?

[General Zod]

I've been using DVD Shrink and Handbrake to convert almost all of my DVDs to .mp4 h.264 files. Converting movies is the easiest and can usually be done in two steps. Rip the video files onto your hdd, then use Handbrake to convert them into something more manageable with the re-size option. Takes about 3 hours to completely convert a movie. (The current release of Handbrake doesn't seem to have an .avi option, but I haven't had any real issues with .mp4s). Ripping TV shows is a bit more complicated, since you have to separate them according to their chapters to break up individual episodes unless you really want everything merged into one video file.

[Darth Wong]

What about subtitles?

[General Zod]

Subtitles are a bit trickier. Forced subs are easy enough to include, but I haven't figured out how to properly include soft subs in Handbrake, yet. Someone else might be able to better explain that. (Most of my dvds don't really need them, so its been a low priority for me.)

[Stark]

I'm pretty sure hardbrake burns the sub channel you choose onto the video. I only use the Windows version (which is crippled) so I'm not 100%.

Ace, Handbrake gives good quality:size, but I'm noticed some colour/brightness shift in some videos (generally becoming washed out). It's easy to do a quick test on 62% though.

[Dominus Atheos]

I don't know about Israel, but hard drives are so cheap here I'd never recommend using handbrake or autogk to backup dvds. You lose directors commentary, subtitles, special features, and alternate languages. DVD shrink always looks terrible whenever I've tried to use it.

I personally just use dvd decrypter to rip the DVD to iso. Everything is intact at 100% quality, and a 1.5tb hdd can be had for $100 and can fit over 200 dvds.

If you are so limited in space that you feel the need to rip to x264, I'd strongly recommend against using Handbrake. The x264 team released a new version of their codec that greatly increases quality and Handbrake hasn't been upgraded to use the new version. StaxRip will give much better quality for a much lower filesize.

For example, I just took the the opening scene to Idiocracy and encoded it with Handbrake and Staxrip. This 28mb video file was the result with Handbrake on it's default settings and this 14mb video file was the result with Staxrip at half the bitrate.

[Stark]

Is that the case? I recently updated my Handbrake and it's quality:size is much better than it used to be (more than 20% better for same settings). I was under the impression they were using an updated codec now.

[Dominus Atheos]

Is that the case? I recently updated my Handbrake and it's quality:size is much better than it used to be (more than 20% better for same settings). I was under the impression they were using an updated codec now.

They use the updated codec, but handbrake doesn't take advantage of all the new options you can do with it. Actually handbrake's encoding is pretty simplistic, and so it's quality per bitrate is pretty low (or lower then it could be anyway). Like I posted, you can get the same quality with Staxrip properly configured at half the bitrate as you can with Handbrake.

[Stark]

That's kicking rad. I rip stuff from DVDs primarily to make it portable (and I don't care about DVD extras) so I'll have to give this a go.

[General Zod]

Is that the case? I recently updated my Handbrake and it's quality:size is much better than it used to be (more than 20% better for same settings). I was under the impression they were using an updated codec now.

The Director's commentary is stored as a separate audio track, so you could just add it as a second track on the .mp4 encode if you really wanted. And who watches special features anyway?

[Thanas]

Sorry if this seems a dumb question, but what is a "proper" configuration of Staxrip?

[Stark]

Heh. My inability to answer that is pretty much why I used Handbrake; set to normal profile, set to 64%, go. I have no idea how all the codec switches work.

[Dominus Atheos]

Sorry if this seems a dumb question, but what is a "proper" configuration of Staxrip?

I would suggest that reading the instructions for the program would be a good place to start.

If you want a simple walkthrough for how to configure it, I made this.

Setting the quality to 25 and preset to "slower" should yield about DVD quality at a very small filesize, around half that of handbrake. Then set the tuner to film or animation depending on which it is. (or Touhou if you're encoding a bullet hell game).

[Thanas]

^Thanks.

[Phantasee]

When I used Handbrake previously, I often got some weird effects at the start of a video. Stuff like the whole scene is washed out (when it starts with a blank, black screen), and slowly goes back to normal colours as the video fades in. What's up with that?

[General Zod]

When I used Handbrake previously, I often got some weird effects at the start of a video. Stuff like the whole scene is washed out (when it starts with a blank, black screen), and slowly goes back to normal colours as the video fades in. What's up with that?

What codecs were you trying to encode it in? h.264 seems to get the best results.

[Phantasee]

H.264. I was making MP4s for my iPod.

[Stark]

Testing with animation suggests staxrip is about 15% larger with similar profiles. The quality is slightly better, but on a small screen its irrelevant.

[Dominus Atheos]

Testing with animation suggests staxrip is about 15% larger with similar profiles. The quality is slightly better, but on a small screen its irrelevant.

15% larger then handbrake? What settings did you use for each?

[Stark]

Xvid-> h264, native iPhone profile, CRF 50 (on 12). Staxrip was faster (once it's five million apps were installed) but it turned out 72mb vs 60mb. Like I said it's not a big deal when fidelity isn't so important on amobile device, but Staxrip's bitrate was consistently higher.

And goddamn my phone incorrectly 'corrected' a lot of those words. . Anyway iPhone doesn't support all the h264 features.