Transferring my DVD collection to HTPC

[DampCat]

Hello.

Sorry mods, close if inappropriate. It's clear i'm not up to anything nefarious but i'm unsure on the rules re: ripping.

I'm looking to start ripping my extensive DVD collection to a hard drive for use in a HTPC. My question is, what settings do people use for their rips? I want the best quality possible, but obviously not sure i want each movie taking up 5gb as that's just silly. I guess 1.5gb per movie is fine if it will look nice on a decent sized screen (32"- 37").

In addition, what do you guys do about backups? It would be sucky if a HDD failed and you lost terabytes of movies/series etc. I'm going to be keeping all my DVD's and their cases but storing them away, so if there's a catastrophic failure i will still have the hard copies, but for the cost of HDDs these days it's worth getting a second if it will save me 12 days of ripping in an emergency.

Cheers

 

[DampCat]

Personally, I think the best option is to copy what's on the disc to the hard drive even if it does use up 5gb. HDDs are so cheap now, 1tb=200discs? It'll just play back like playing the disc then.

You'll obviously you have to circumvent the copy protection but I can't help you with that I'm afraid.

Indeed, but i have well over 500 discs, and 2.5terabytes will be ~ £180 which is a lot for some time saving!

 

[DampCat]

What XVID settings would you recommend for that?

cheers all!

 

[DampCat]

I already have Handbrake for strategic iPod Touch purposes, so i'll use that with Make-MKV to make the best use of my time. That way i can queue the ripping overnight and such.

Oh and NAS Raid 1 to keep things nice and safe.

Cheers guys