Best file format for videos.

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Soldato
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As you may have seen from the hard drive board I am going to be getting a 500GB+ external drive for media (videos and music).

I am going to be backing up some dvds onto this hard drive so I can watch when I am at my girlfriends so I can watch them without having to take the DVDs with me.

I know .MKVs seem to be used for a lot of high quality movies etc. But I am wondering what the best balance between space saving and quality?
Ideally gonna be putting all my House, Prison Break and Heroes box sets onto it. So this will take up a lot of space if I was to rip in AVI.
 
Depends.

MPG can be used well if there is a lot of motion, more than your regular TV program - Console/PC games etc.

Otherwise just stick to DivX/XviD.

Look up some encoding tutorials to get the most out of your encodes and you should be good to go.
 
Mp4 is a good format - can use h.264 video and decent quality aac/mp3 audio.

Mods don't like this kind of talk, or didn't when I asked a similar question.
 
Thanks for the replies guys.

RandomTom said:
Mods don't like this kind of talk, or didn't when I asked a similar question.
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Dunno why since I bought the DVDs (and license to watch said DVD) so I should be allowed to watch them how I want.

Ok, if its not allowed. Get some more replies in so I can store to memory before it is nuked =/

Thanks.
 
eXor said:
What does the law say about personal backups, these days?
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Do you know I haven't a clue. I was under the (possibly incorrect) impression that you could make a backup for personal use. I'll have a Google and report back.

*Edit*

Well I'll be - according to this:

http://www.out-law.com/page-4168

You can't make a backup even for personal use. I doubt that'll stop anyone doing it though.
 
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The Mad Rapper said:
Do you know I haven't a clue. I was under the (possibly incorrect) impression that you could make a backup for personal use. I'll have a Google and report back.
Click to expand...

I think they were trying to stop people bypassing the copy protection or whatever by giving you a voucher that you could do to download a digital copy of the film.

Dont think it caught on. But my opinion is if you buy a film you have the right to make a copy for your own use.

I dont see how it is fair to make you have to buy the film again should you not wish to play it via the DVD. =/

So the general consensus is using AVIs/DIVX/Xvid/MP4
 
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Keep them in their original VOB format just cut the menus and extras. Also I think you can get away with compressing audio and video quite a bit without losing much quality

I find that to be best
 
In terms of storage space MP4s vs AVIs etc what is smaller?

I basically wanna try and load this HDD with as much of my 100s of DVDs as possible lol
 
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