How To Archive DVDs

[-Oz-]

I just finished college and now I have a lot of training I will be doing all over the country so I want to store all my DVDs in some format that I can use with GBPVR.

How do you guys store the DVDs:

• As the VIDEO_TS folders?
  
• As *.iso files?
  
• As MPEG-4 (or other format) files?
  

I'm looking for any sort of advice here.

Thanks

[saintjo]

I have done this by converting them into DIVX/AVI files. Then adding the directory they are stored in.

[scb147]

I'm currently starting to archive all my DVDs as .iso files. Only problem is ripping a DVD to the HD takes up ~8GB of space per DVD. So now I'm deciding if I want to rip the DVD to ~4.7GB so I can fit more or not. This will give you all the menus, etc. But if you just want the movies, this probably isn't the way to go.

With the .iso format, you can use Daemon Tools and GBPVR will play the .iso file as a normal DVD. Daemon Tools loads an .iso into a virtual DVD drive. Works great.

[mkenyon2]

I like the .iso and Daemon method, as it's simpler in some respects, but you don't get the ability to stream to the MVP.

Also, some folks like to take the DVD and process it down to just a file so they can put it on a portable player, such as a PDA or iPod video.

One question I have, what is currently the best file format if you want just the video without menus? For my purposes, I don't care about video size, as long as I have the same quality. But you do save room if you don't have the menus and special features.

[scb147]

I like the .iso and Daemon method, as it's simpler in some respects, but you don't get the ability to stream to the MVP.

Didn't think of this... of course, I currently don't have an MVP, so I guess it wasn't something I was thinking about. Now you have me second guessing myself as maybe I only want to get the movie so I could watch down the road with an MVP. :eek:

One question I have, what is currently the best file format if you want just the video without menus? For my purposes, I don't care about video size, as long as I have the same quality. But you do save room if you don't have the menus and special features.

Good question... I would think Xvid or Divx would be best for size. But I don't know the quality of those compared to mpeg2, etc.

[mkenyon2]

DVD Shrink is a nice little GUI for backing up your own DVDs. It offers a couple of ways of doing things, including keeping the menus, but dropping some of the special features. (Like languages you don't need.) This helps keep the size down. Oz may not need the MVP streaming, and keeping an ISO lets you get just the vid later on. (I used Nero once to backup a DVD as a Nero Image file, then ran the DVD using Daemon so I could re-save it using Shrink DVD to make an .iso file.)

Yea, I'm curious about the format size, as well as what could be processed using MVP. I have heard some files can be transcoded through Video LAN, but I have never had success transcoding anything through Video LAN. (Prob cause I never spent the time to do it.)

[bogyver]

I started putting all my dvd's in h.264 using a program called Handbrake if you use it in combination with a program called dvd43 you can rip directly from the dsk otherwise you have to rip it with dvd decrypter or something of the like. I started this project originally for use with my xbox 360 buit now it supports divx so I'm kinda just letting it be for a while.
I have found that aiming for a file about 2.5 gb in size yield a movie with almost if not the same quality as the dvd. Another nice thing about using h.264 is being able to use with the ipod and mp4 with the zune as well.
Also handbrake has lots of options and profiles that can be used and on my athlon 3200 it took about 2 hours to encode a movie using 2 pass

[-Oz-]

i had seen handbrake and currently use DVD shrink to copy movies (which I own)... I figured it would take a long time to rip all the movies but I'll probably just dedicate a computer to do it exclusively.

I really can't decide if in the future I'll regret not having the full size iso's.

[saintjo]

Didn't think of this... of course, I currently don't have an MVP, so I guess it wasn't something I was thinking about. Now you have me second guessing myself as maybe I only want to get the movie so I could watch down the road with an MVP. :eek:
Good question... I would think Xvid or Divx would be best for size. But I don't know the quality of those compared to mpeg2, etc.

I was able to get the DIVX/AVI ones to stream to my MVP.

[bogyver]

i had seen handbrake and currently use DVD shrink to copy movies (which I own)... I figured it would take a long time to rip all the movies but I'll probably just dedicate a computer to do it exclusively.

I really can't decide if in the future I'll regret not having the full size iso's.

You'll like this, I set up a machine to do handbreak with, it was a pentium 3 933 mhz with 256 meg of ram. It took about 18 hours to do a 2 pass encode, it was slow but it worked.