Looking for an Elegant way to digitally Archive my DVD's

mang9432

mang9432

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Lately, especially since Netflix instant streaming, I've found myself getting lazier and lazier. Specifically when it comes to putting DVD's in to watch them. For example, I'd like to watch an episode of something. I'm 100x more likely to watch something on the Netflix instant stream than to put in a Futurama disc, just cause I don't have to take it off the shelf, put it in, blah blah.

Anyway, I'm going to buy a 1-2 TB hard drive, and rip all my DVD's to the drive. Here's where the issue comes in.

Should I rip them to Video_TS folders, so I keep the quality intact? Or should I encode them in a format that I can play on my Xbox/PS3, so that i can easily just hang the usb drive off of one of those systems so i can play them that way. I'd like to keep the quality as good as possible, and I'm not adverse to encoding them, but I also don't think there is one file that's going to work on the xbox/ps3 and my iphone and look good on my TV.

Ideally, i'd love to just have a Mac Mini or some small home theater PC type system hooked up to my TV with Plex or some other xbmc-type software so I can navigate all my media that way. But, I don't want to spend a ton of money, preferably under $300, and mac mini's are not cheap. And i'd be perfectly happy for now just to stream the stuff to my 360 or ps3.

I know this is getting long, so here's the scoop. This is what I have to work with.

-Macbook 1.83 Core2Duo
-Dell Inspiron P4 3.0 Ghz (already next to my tv, with the display hooked up HDMI) This machine doesn't have a lot of RAM (256MB i think, and it sort of stutters playing full screen flash video to my TV)
-Samsung 40 inch 1080p LCD
-Xbox 360 Pro w/ 120 GIG HD
-PS3 80GB MGS Bundle Version
-Everything is networked wirelessly with a Linksys WRT54G Router, hooked up to my 20/5 Verizon Fios.
-A buncha DVD's
-$300 (most of this will probably just go to a 1.5 or so TB hard drive)


Has anyone digitally archived a fairly large collection of DVD's? How did you rip them/encode them? What software/hardware (if any) are you using to get them to your TV?

I've been reading about TVersity, and it seems like you can load VIDEO_TS folders in there and it will convert them so they'll play on the xbox/ps3 etc, but i'm worried about real-time encoding as a problem with my slowish computer. I'd be willing to put some RAM into the dell if that would help, but I don't want to dump a ton of money into that computer.

Also, i'd like to leave my laptop out of the mix, so that I can take it away from my apartment without rendering my media setup useless.

Any advice from people who have done something similar would be great. (sorry for the long winded post)
 
Just rip the image of the disc directly. It'll be large (~8.5 gb/movie, or 4.5 gb if you want to compress it), but you can play them just fine with no hassle whatsoever, and storage is insanely cheap these days.
 
[quote name='Liquid 2']Just rip the image of the disc directly. It'll be large (~8.5 gb/movie, or 4.5 gb if you want to compress it), but you can play them just fine with no hassle whatsoever, and storage is insanely cheap these days.[/QUOTE]

the images won't play directly on the 360 or ps3 though, correct?
 
I don't know much about streaming to the 360. I don't know if you can stream an ISO natively or with an intermediate program, or not at all.

But, if you build an HTPC, then you don't need to work around the 360.
 
WD TV from Western Digital. It can play all kinds of different file types (including HD mkv) including iso files (it has trouble playing more than the first episode of a TV DVD that's ripped to Video_TS). However, with the isos, it seems like it can only play the main video files, so you don't get any of the menus. But you get all of this for under $100, plus it has HDMI and digital audio out, plus it has two usb ports so you can have two external hard drives plugged in all the time if you want, plus it's really small and totally worth it.

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-WD-Media-Player/dp/B001JZFQU4
 
i can't believe you gave completely useless info like the size of your tv and speed of your internet connection but won't say how many dvds you have...

the easiest solution is to make ISOs of all the discs, then mount them whenever you wanna watch the DVD... but each movie will then take up 4gb to 9gb, and you could definitely not stream them to your xbox or 360. You'd want a HTPC (emphasis on the PC) to go that route.

a more difficult solution, but tidier and more versatile, is to rip the audio/video off the discs and encode it into a more universal format... compression is up to you, but you could compress down to ~1.5gb per movie without much loss in quality, and you can choose a streaming-friendly file format.

both of them are a lot of work... the second is more work. it's really not worth it either way IMO, switching discs is easier.
 
[quote name='Koggit']i can't believe you gave completely useless info like the size of your tv and speed of your internet connection but won't say how many dvds you have...[/QUOTE] You make me laugh sometimes. :)
[quote name='Koggit'] it's really not worth it either way IMO, switching discs is easier.[/QUOTE]Agreed.
 
I'm planning on doing this but not because I'm now lazy and don't want to put the discs in. Well that is part of it but the biggest part is to protect my SD/HD/BD DVDs. Don't know if I can say the program that I use to rip them but it is a really good program that works for all 3 formats. I have read that Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre will play all 3 formats still when you load them up in Windows Media Center.

You can find all the answeres you need at http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=26/. I know you don't want to here this but you will end up paying more then 300 bucks for a nice HTPC after you get the software and hardware needed. The one I have been looking to build for months now has ranged from 600-800 bucks.
 
The time you spend doing re-encoding and ripping far outweighs the time spent getting up to switch discs. That said, best to re-encode them to x264 and stream it. They become super tiny and look identical to the dvd's themselves.

The software i would use is Mediacoder. I believe there is a PS3 edition of it as well. Encode them to mp4 and you can use any software to stream them. I suggest PMS (PS3 Media Server, use newest beta). Good luck captain lazy.
 
[quote name='blitz6speed']The time you spend doing re-encoding and ripping far outweighs the time spent getting up to switch discs. That said, best to re-encode them to x264 and stream it. They become super tiny and look identical to the dvd's themselves.

Good luck captain lazy.[/QUOTE]

Well of course. But, while I am lazy, it's not all about that. It's more about just wanting to have most or all of my media easily accessible.

I really don't need or want another computer, and I don't have the money to build a HTPC. I think what I'm going to do is just buy a big USB hard drive and rip all the DVD's to high bitrate H.264 MP4's. I'm doing some test rips to make sure what I rip will play on the 360 and hopefully my iphone as well. Then I'll just leave that hooked up to the 360 for now, so I have those files accessible on my TV all the time.

Also, doing the encodes is a little less of a pain as I have about 6 Mac Pro's at work that I can basically use as I please. I'll just run handbrake on them and encode straight off the DVD's. I should be able to get about 12+ a day depending on how busy we are.

Thanks for the advice / snarky comments. :)
 
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