Copying DVDs to bluray

[Raffaz]

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone can offer any advice on this.

I ripped all my DVDs a while back and copied them to blank DVDs to try and make some room and also so i didnt wreck the originals. I used DVD moviefactory and i ended up with about 4 films per DVD.

Its come to that time again where i have ran out of room and im wanting to re-copy all of the films to 50GB bluray discs, i reckon i can get 20 films per bluray, this will save me a load of space.

Can anyone recommend any software or point me to a guide that will allow me to do this? They will still need to play on a standalone DVD player, with menus if possible.

Cheers

Mick

[redwudz]

They will never play on a stand alone DVD player, maybe a stand alone Blu-ray player, but I doubt it. If you convert them to BD compatible format, then they 'might' play on a BD stand alone player, depending on the player and how they are converted. Menus are also unlikely unless they are authored to BD specifications.

Blu-ray is an entirely different format than DVD. Look to the upper left on this page for 'WHAT IS' Blu-ray and DVD and do a comparison.

And four DVDs per disc sounds like a lot of quality loss. That would be about 2GB per DVD, assuming a 7.95GB DVD DL disc. MPEG formats don't compress well. I use MKV format and they end up at about 2GB, but MKV (H.264) has quite a bit more compression and can still retain a fair amount of quality at those sizes.

[teodz1984]

"Only A Standalone Player can play a Blueray Player"

inspired from from "Revenge of the Ninja (1983): "Only a Ninja can stop a Ninja"

[jman98]

"Only A Standalone Player can play a Blueray Player"

inspired from from "Revenge of the Ninja (1983): "Only a Ninja can stop a Ninja"

Humor fail.

[Raffaz]

Sorry, my mistake, i meant a standalone bluray player, all i want to do is basically archive all of these films onto bluray and have 1 menu with the titles so i can select the film from there, i can easily seperate the films from the DVDs again so i will have the seperate films to work with.

Cheers

[Raffaz]

@ redwudz, cheers for the reply. I understand that there will be quality loss but thats fine, the films were ripped from my DVDs using shrink and then reconverted, so the quality is still ok for DVDs, i know that the quality wont get any better but thats to be expected. Im more interested in trying to maintain the size they are but get a load more on the bluray media.

Cheers

[MindController]

You can demux the videos you're wanting to archive into their elementary streams, .m2v and .mp2/.wav/.ac3. You can use PgcDemux for that.

Then, using Adobe Encore, you could use those demuxed files to create a custom blu-ray disc with a working menu.

However, Adobe Encore is extremely buggy. So you have about a 50/50 chance of actually getting it's blu-ray functionality to work properly :/

[redwudz]

I have converted most all my DVDs to MKV, mostly to to save space and get rid of the cumbersome DVD container. I use Vidcoder for this. I do back up these conversions to Blu-ray disc, but only as data. I don't even own a BD standalone player. I use my PCs for playback and avoid all the crap about BD standalone compatibility. Most of my DVDs end up at about 1.5 - 2GB size and very decent quality. I can get about 10 - 12 converted videos on each BD disc. I do this as a backup if one of my hard drive fails so I won't have to do the conversion again.

Trying to convert a DVD to a compatible BD is a waste of time, IMO. BDs were designed for the convenience of Hollywood, not any of us, and the standalone players are so messed up they barely play the commercial BDs. Just my opinion.

[Farscape1]

Trying to convert a DVD to a compatible BD is a waste of time, IMO. BDs were designed for the convenience of Hollywood, not any of us, and the standalone players are so messed up they barely play the commercial BDs. Just my opinion.

That's not exactly true. DVD specifications are written into the BD specs. I have backed up a lot of my complete series boxsets (x-files, stargate sg-1, all of my star treks not available on BD, etc.) onto BD-Rs without compressing anything (just a straight rip and remux...well I'll leave out audio tracks that I have no use for). MakeMKV and multiAVCHD are my best friends for that process.

A typical season fits quite nicely onto 2 25 GB BD-Rs. Saves a ton of shelf space for me and is far more convenient when I have a viewing marathon.