Compress PAL DVDs to watch on WD TV Live Hub...

[nharikrishna]

Hello All,

I have purchased a WD TV Live Hub that has 1 TB of internal storage.

I have about 500 DVDs ripped (actually authored by me from TV Captures of Black & White movies via Canopus ADVC 110). Since the space available on WD TV is only 1 TB, I can place only about 200 DVDs on it.

I would like to compress my DVDs into such a format that I can place more movies on WD TV for watching. Quality should be near identical to the DVDs. All the DVDs are Black & White movies (only a bunch of them in eastman colour) and all are 4:3, sterio audio only.

Which format you would recommend? And also, which free software to use for conversion?

I would be pleased if I can 'convert' the DVDs into a format which reduces each movie to about 1 GB or less.

The WD TV can play almost any format, including mkv, H.264...etc, with the exception of DV AVI, and Real Media files.

Many thanks.

[hech54]

Quality should be near identical to the DVDs.
I would be pleased if I can 'convert' the DVDs into a format which reduces each movie to about 1 GB or less.

Not gonna happen. That is about 1/4 the size of the original. Expecting "near identical" quality at 1/4 the size is absurd.

[nharikrishna]

Ok. These are not any latest blockbusters, just old black & white movies. So I can settle for reasonably good quality.

[jman98]

I believe the recent WD TV models like this one can also play files via a network if that is useful to you. And you don't have to use the internal storage. It supports USB so you could put your files on a larger external drive and attach it via USB if you wish. Do get a USB enclosure that contains its own power supply if you try that.

If you still want to convert, Handbrake might be a good option for you. It uses H.264 to encode the video. If your audio is AC3 then I would leave that alone if Handbrake allows you to do that. If your audio is LPCM then to save space you should let Handbrake convert it.

[jagabo]

h264 plus the original AC3 audio in an MKV container. 1 GB is pushing it but doable. I recommend Handbrake too. Pick a rate factor (quality level) that you are happy with and just use that to encode all your videos. 18 to 20 is probably a good range. The higher the value, the lower the quality and file size.

[nharikrishna]

jman98 & jagabo, thanks for the advice. I tried Handbrake, with MKV container. Final size is 1 GB per movie. The movie looks fine on the computer screen. Considering the fact that it is compressing an already compressed DVD folder, the quality seems to be fine. Also, I like the fact that Handbrake doesn't require me to merge all VOBs into one single VOB. It directly understands the VIDEO_TS folder structure and does the job. There seems to be a batch feature too.

I will put it on the WD TV and see how it upscales it onto my 40" HDTV via HDMI.

[jagabo]

Look in dark noisy areas of the video. That is where x264 has it weakness. See the samples in this post:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/345427-Handbrake-Should-i-leave-it-on?p=2156674&vie...=1#post2156674