Started an adventure... Ripping my entire DVD collection

[Casper]

This is a work in progress. I figured I'd give some pointers, share some stories, etc. while I go through this process. I'll try to keep this thread updated. There is so much to think about when trying to decide what format to use. ISO, VOB, M4V, MP4, MKV, AVI, etc? How do I get all of my DVDs ripped in a timely manner? How do I want to play/stream them? NAS? Dedicated media server? Home theater PC? Wireless? Wired? What software? Do I want to DVR?

We have iPhones, an iPad, an iMac, etc, so I naturally went with M4V off the bat. While the file sizes are relatively small (1-1.5GB), the quality after transcoding isn't all that great. It isn't bad by any means, and these are just DVDs to begin with. But there was certainly some noticeable pixelation on the 42" TV. I knew there'd be some loss, but this project is primarily to get our DVD collection out of the basement, and able to be viewed on any TV/computer in the house. M4V just really isn't going to cut it. I ruled out MP4 and AVI for the same compression quality loss issues. Next I investigated VOB. Compatibility is an issue, so I opted out. Next I tried ISO. ISO looked promising. The video quality was amazing since it's a straight, uncompressed rip. It's the same as watching the DVD itself, with menus and all. An ISO is literally just a disc image. The file sizes are 4-8GB. The downside to ISO though was the time to rip. On a quad-core with 8GB of RAM, it was taking 30-45 minutes per DVD. That's not going to work. This is when I discovered MKV (www.matroska.org). MKVs are essentially a DVD container without the menus and extra stuff, but the video quality is 100% as there's no transcoding. The file sizes are 3-6GB so far, and they quality is just as good as watching the DVD on the player. Best of all, it only takes 10 minutes give or take! MKV it is.

Now that the format is decided, how am I going to rip 250 DVDs without going out of my mind? I did the most research on this issue. I investigated commercial DVD rippers, building a specific rig for ripping, etc. The cheapest way to get it done was roughly $500, and it'd only do two at a time. That just wasn't worth it to me. To do four at a time would cost around $800-1000. Nah. So, I started working on them one by one. As I was sitting at my desk, I'd pop in a DVD and start the rip. Sometimes I get one or two done a night just screwing around. No biggy. Then I discovered the VortexBox (www.vortexbox.org) Linux distribution. There isn't a whole lot of documentation on the website about its DVD ripping abilities, but in their forums it's talking about quite a bit. VortexBox is essentially an all in one server side solution. It's a NAS, a media server, a ripper, etc all in one. I won't go into too much detail about what all VortexBox is and can do, but if you're starting a media PC project it's definitely worth taking a look at. For ripping CDs and DVDs, it's a freaking must have. All you need is to download the ISO, burn it to disk, boot a junk PC laying around to it, and follow the prompts. When it is complete (about fifteen minutes or less), you're ready to roll. All you have to do is put in a DVD. It automatically starts ripping it to MKV format, and puts it in /storage/movies. When it's finished (which is about 10 minutes), it ejects. Drop in the next DVD and let it roll. When you walk by the PC, put in a new DVD. It names the file using the metadata from the disk. Oh, and if you're ripping a CD, it automatically completes the metadata (artist, title, album, etc) and downloads the appropriate coverart. Supposedly you can get it to do the same for DVDs, which I haven't yet tried. I can't believe I didn't find this sooner, and that nobody really seems to talk about this Linux distro. Guess I'm going to go ahead and rip my CDs also.

So, how do I get the DVDs to the TV? This one I'm still working out. I've decided to use XBMC (www.xbmc.org). XBMC is DLNA compliant, which is nice because VortexBox supports DLNA streaming. What does that mean for you? Take the fifteen minutes to setup VortexBox for ripping your DVDs and CDs, and easily stream them directly from there to anything running XBMC. XBMC can run on the iPad, Apple TV, xBox, PC, Mac, etc. So I know I'll be using XMBC, but I don't know on what hardware at the TV yet. I'm seriously leaning towards an Apple TV 2 since they can be had for $89 online right now.

So that's all for now. As I make progress I'll post up. If you have any suggestions, comments, questions, etc feel free to post up. We'll call this a learning experience.

[natedogg624]

subd

some input - i have the apple tv 2 (well worth the price imo) and all my 400 of my movies are on my pc hard drive. I had the same setup you are pursuing with a jb atv2 running xbmc but I kept running into issues with XBMC (continued buffering, random crashes etc). atv2 was lan connected to my network as well as my pc. i even tried updating to the most recent atv2 firmware and rejailbreaking with no luck.

eventually when I moved I started fresh - i factory refreshed my atv2, no jailbreak but this time I bought the stream to me pc app for my ios devices. the gui isn't as glamorous as the xbmc (just a file browser), but i can browse all my movies, tv shows and races from my ipad or iphone and then airplay them right into my atv2 without needing a jailbreak using the app and server installed on my home pc. no file format issues or anything like that. I've yet to see a single movie, show or race re-buffer or stop randomly during the viewing.

ideally I'd like to see stream to me update to look a little better to include metadata, but for now I'm happy.

just some food for thought.

Edited November 29, 2011 by natedogg624

[ross]

What do you plan on doing with all those dvds when you're done?

[Casper]

What do you plan on doing with all those dvds when you're done?

Ah, that's a good question. Legally, I have to keep them. If I sell them, then I no longer have the right to own a digital copy.

[Tony07R6]

I did the same thing with our dvd collection about 2 years ago. I use dvdfab to just rip the main movie (cuts out all the menus and previews and warning crap). All mine are ripped to VOB format, don't remember why I chose that format, but it is what it is now. So far I have over 250 movies on our home theater PC. I use windows media center 7 with the "my movies" interface for cataloging everything, it has a decent user interface for being free. I rip almost every movie we rent if its decent, so we have a pretty good library at this point. I got lazy and haven't bought the boxes I need to stream to our bedroom and my son's yet, but it's on my list of things to do soon.

[jblosser]

Started the same thing 4 or 5 years ago, currently have 650 or so on the network, plus approx. 280 GB of music.

I had been working on my own "Netflix Project", but gave up due to boredom.

When Jr. was 5 or so, paid him a dime apiece to rip all 8 million (approx.) of my CD's.

Stream movies to the telly via the Xbox/DLNA

(shhhh....occasionally fire up PuTTY, ssh home, and watch while working....)

[natedogg624]

the stream to me app i mentioned has the capabilities to stream over 3g, i just can't figure it out.

[jporter12]

I had a Windows Home Server box running, and could stream to the PC's (Media Center) and Xbox, but I did run into the file type problems and such. I'll be following this to maybe work on this again, after I get a computer (other than my laptop) running again.

[vf1000ride]

Don't even get me started on having over 2tb worth of blurays on the pc and having a drive quit.

[Simplysix]

Holy "crap I don't understand" thread

[fox_racing_guy]

Instead of storing movies why not stream them? Here is something I found on the Windows 7 forums a couple weeks ago and it works great. I currently have over 7TB of photo's only and I don't see the need to fill even more hard drive space storing movies.

Follow this guide and enjoy.

http://www.sevenforums.com/media-center/203248-watch-almost-anything-your-pc-xbmc-navix-icefilms-4free.html

[Josh1234]

I just hook up a laptop to the TV

[grapesmuggler27]

Huh...

[demitrix]

Already mentioned but the AppleTV2+JB+XBMC is the way to go. I have the same setup here, although mine works great. If you go that route rip the movies into x264/aac with a Matroska container. The aTV with xbmc eats them up.