Backing up DVDs to MPEG2?

[mvallevand]

I don't think you should discount the iso backup files. I ripped all me audio collection to mp3 and then to FLAC to have it online and big conversions are something you only want to do once.

Most media extenders, play iso files now and the Windows player support is pretty good, vlc plays them just fine as an example. It's kind of shame planning 4-6 GB for each file and then worriing about a few 100k for the extras. It's nice to have the full experience of menus and chapters too.

Martin

[reven]

I don't think you should discount the iso backup files. I ripped all me audio collection to mp3 and then to FLAC to have it online and big conversions are something you only want to do once.

Most media extenders, play iso files now and the Windows player support is pretty good, vlc plays them just fine as an example. It's kind of shame planning 4-6 GB for each file and then worriing about a few 100k for the extras. It's nice to have the full experience of menus and chapters too.

Martin

you may like the menus etc, but i dont. i dont want them, i just want the movie. i dont car about directors commentary, or a stupid blooper reel. i just want to play the movie and have it start straight away and play on pretty much any device i buy. if i really want to see the special features, ill go and get the actual dvd to play.

i use to always watch the special features, but i havent watched any special feature on any dvd for a very long time.

[mvallevand]

Agreed, but that junk could be left out when you create the iso anyway but since I am not planning on buying another hardware player again, have more is better than less. At least don't forget to include the AC3 and DTS tracks.

Anyway to each their own.

Martin

[Anthony]

you may like the menus etc, but i dont. i dont want them, i just want the movie. .... if i really want to see the special features, ill go and get the actual dvd to play.

Like you, I only rip the main movie and the best soundtrack available (5.1 digital, DTS, etc.). There's no point in saving previews, alternate languages, and other extras I'll never use.

I also prefer to save the movie as a single MPG file, as it's compatible with virtually all players both on the PC and standalone media players like my TViX M-4000P. The MPG file is also easy to work with if I want to convert it to another format (i.e. DIVX), or author a couple of smaller movies to a single DVD or something. Compatibility and flexibility are key!

Anyway, I rip the DVD's to my hard drive using "DVD Shrink", then combine the VOB files into a single MPG file using "VideoRedo". You can accomplish the same thing using the free VOB2MPG, but I already have VideoRedo. I don't recall the exact option, but there's a setting in VideoRedo that will automatically load and combine the multiple VOB files in numerical order. Works great and the entire process only takes a few minutes. VideoRedo also corrects any errors that may exist in the MPG stream.

The size of my MPG movie files range from about 2.1 gigs up to 5.1 gigs. It just depends on the quality the movie was encoded with.

Take care,

Anthony

[zehd]

anyone know a good way to back up dvds to a mpeg2 file?

i want to convert all my dvds to mpeg2, without reencoding them (so keeping the exact same quality as the original dvd). i just want the main english 5.1 sound and main movie video (no subtitles, extras or anything).

i know these files will be pretty big, but with hdds getting so cheap, i'm looking at getting a D-Link DNS-343 and shoving 4 1TB drives in there and using that for all my dvds, i should get around 600 discs on it (i think) which is more dvds than i have.

also if i get this working, ill probably have to write a plugin to manage it all

Late to the party...

I'm almost ready to release the latest ZProcess which you could use to convert the vobs to an meg.

In the next release, it will automatically connect all files in a series, vob1, vob2, vob3 etc into one output file.

I'm pretty sure that you will be able to select the first largest VOB (usually the start of the Main Movie) and select a transcode profile (you will probably want one that uses 6 ch of audio (6=5.1)) and off you go...

I also have a code function that can automaticall find first large vob, but currently it's contradicting a different feature... I can add a button so that you find first large Vob with a single button press...

Let me know if you want to take it for a test run...