Need to rip some DVD's - advice please??

StevieP

StevieP

StevieP

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I'm wanting to backup my West Wing DVD set to my hard drive so I can access it with my home network but have no idea how to go about it!

I saw a recommendation for "Handbrake" but on my first try (albeit with changing no settings!) I've ripped one episode (around 42 minutes) but the resultant file is almost 2GB!?!? :eek:

Can anyone give me any suggestions on what to use and what settings I should be changing?

Ideally I'd like the file size no more than 400-500GB for each episode!

Thanks for any help guys....
 
StevieP said:
I'm wanting to backup my West Wing DVD set to my hard drive so I can access it with my home network but have no idea how to go about it!

I saw a recommendation for "Handbrake" but on my first try (albeit with changing no settings!) I've ripped one episode (around 42 minutes) but the resultant file is almost 2GB!?!? :eek:

Can anyone give me any suggestions on what to use and what settings I should be changing?

Ideally I'd like the file size no more than 400-500GB for each episode!

Thanks for any help guys....
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Nothing wrong with what you're using then ;) :p

Is there not any settings that you can change in Handbrake to reduce the quality / file format to reduce the size at all?
 
StevieP said:
Ideally I'd like the file size no more than 400-500GB for each episode!
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I think you mean Megabyte, usually a 20 minute episode will be less than 200MB, I use AnyDVD, DVD Decrypter or DVDShink, all great programs
 
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Oops, sorry, yes - obviously mean 400MB!!!

I cant see any options in handbrake to backup as an avi file - just MP4 or MKV I think!?!? :confused:

Anyway, I've tried Freemake and it looks to be exactly what I'm looking for - although on my first couple of tries (using different output sizes) - the audio seems ever so slightly off from the video - is there any way to fix this??

Thanks for all the suggestions guys!

*edit* the audio problem only seems to be on my PC but not on my tablet, laptop or TV's - maybe I've not got the best codec's on my PC??

In respect of Freemake - I've tried the output at 400MB max and 800MB max and the 400MB one seems to be very pixelated and lacking in detail - is there anything I can do to fix this without upping the file size too drastically - my West Wing box set has 156 episodes so thats going to take up quite a bit of my NAS space!
 
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soundesciple said:
I use DVD Shrink for good results
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Thanks for the suggestion - to be honest I'm getting on with Freemake - I did give DVD Shrink a go but there didn't appear to be many options for the output file type, size etc!?!?

Freemake does seem to be what I was looking for!
 
Avi, mkv & mp4 are containers, not files. Handbrake is just a really good gui for the h.264 encoder, with perfect presets. Normally the only thing you'd have to touch would the selecting the mkv container, occasionally subs.

Freemake is the other popular option around here. Personally I'm not that fond of it (although I can't explain why) and neither ws my av - however it has presets for most things and seems to support every format ever created. On the other hand, you get far less control over encoding with it than handbrake and . It has one big plus in your case though - it supports cuda.

Given that you've got a decent cpu handbrake would be the obvious choice (imo), however the opencl version is due for release in June and give a nice performance boost.

In any case what usually happens is dvds are ripped with something like dvdfab (free version just targets the main movie) or dvd decrypter then converted with handbrakes normal profile for speed to high profile for archiving (takes longer but resulting file is smaller). If you want mkvs it's a simple case of selecting that after selecting the profile. Ideally you want the ripped dvds on one drive and the output file on a second drive - it's slightly quicker. Finally, handbrake has an encode queue, so you can set it up to encode 30/40 episodes then go to work/bed.

P.S. an average dvd movie will be ~ 1.1GB hp, something with a lot of motion and a good transfer e.g. hot fuzz will be ~ 1.45GB hp or ~ 1.65GB np. 45min episodes should not be 2gb unless they're mpeg :)
 
Be careful if you do decide to install Freemake. It'll install browser plug-ins, toolbars, custom homepage & custom search engine by default.
 
KIA said:
Be careful if you do decide to install Freemake. It'll install browser plug-ins, toolbars, custom homepage & custom search engine by default.
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Never had that issue myself.
 
KIA said:
Be careful if you do decide to install Freemake. It'll install browser plug-ins, toolbars, custom homepage & custom search engine by default.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip but don't worry, I never go for the default install - I hate all the carp that comes with a lot of these free programs!

Thanks for all the feedback guys, much appreciated! And thanks to Azuse05 for the lesson - when I'm less tired and can take it in more, I'll do some proper research I think!

At the moment, using Freemake, anything less than the default file size (around 800MB per 40 minute episode) I'm finding is not good enough quality for me so essentially I have to accept around 125GB of my 2TB NAS is going to be used up which I guess isn't too bad!

I might have a play around with handbrake though if it is possible to get a decent quality rip but with a smaller file size!
 
Try CloneDVD mobile, lots of formats supported, resolution and file size, the only thing it can't do is seperate episode, so if your dvd has 4 episode the output file will end up with 4 episodes in sequence in 1 file and the program is not free but can be use in full for 21 days.
 
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