DVD to ?

[le_moi]

Here's my beef......I've got quite a bit of movies, all on full dvd's and the "collection" is growing. For personal reasons I'd like to see all these movies in an external hard drive (no I'm not getting divorced and need to split this collection!!). As you can tell this is a lengthy process and I'd like to see the quality preserved as best as possible.
I was thinking of encoding them in xvid or divx, still deliberating which to stick with.

Q: Anyone know of a better codec to do this with? Nero digital is a good idea, BUT, you can't play their files on anything other their player. I also considered H264, but nothing thats standalone can play this yet.
Q: If I do take on DIVX, I'd like to take advantage of multipass encoding. Anyone know of a good application that I can do this with? Tried AutoGK (doesn't offer this), and couldn't carry it out with megui.

thanks

[jimmalenko]

I like XVID. BTW AutoGK does do 2-pass encoding - simply choose either a predefined size or custom size. Target quality (%) is one pass AFAIK.

[lantern]

I use Fairuse Wizard with xvid (2-pass).

[LOWTECH]

I have done the same and have bought a 320gb PIKAONE external Hard Drive, which is used as normal HD and can be plugged into any TV and used as a Media Centre to play mp3s, photo`s or movies ..... link .....

http://www.pikaone.com/en/products/flycaseTV.htm

[le_moi]

Ok, sorry for the late reply....made lots of progress though
After looking around, decided that it was best to encode in H264.

just one of many http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-103054.html


Nero sounds easy enough to deal with. However, although there are players supporting nero's digital codec (nero's version of xvid)
http://www.nero.com/nerodigital/enu/DVD_Player_Recorder.html

However, I could not find any players supporting nero's digital avc codec (their version of h264)
http://www.nero.com/nerodigital/enu/ND_Standard_AVC_Devices.html

But, telling from the speed tech is moving at now, this is not that big of a concern

Here's the new beef!!! PROBLEMS when encoding with nero under the "standard avc" profile when using 2-pass encoding. It only outputs audio as the file!!! Single pass encoding with "standard avc" is file as well as the regular nero digital (xvid) single and 2 pass encoding scenarios.
Has anyone encountered this? Does anyone knows how to get around this?

If all this fails with nero, I'm back to megui.....
thanks

[mwbridges]

I have used Nero AVC to transcode my library for some time. The resulting copy of my DVD library isexcellent. And, the videos DO play using other players. Both Quicktime and WindowsMediaPlayer play the movies fine.

[Mayotruck]

Here's my beef......I've got quite a bit of movies, all on full dvd's and the "collection" is growing. For personal reasons I'd like to see all these movies in an external hard drive (no I'm not getting divorced and need to split this collection!!). As you can tell this is a lengthy process and I'd like to see the quality preserved as best as possible.
I was thinking of encoding them in xvid or divx, still deliberating which to stick with.

Q: Anyone know of a better codec to do this with? Nero digital is a good idea, BUT, you can't play their files on anything other their player. I also considered H264, but nothing thats standalone can play this yet.
Q: If I do take on DIVX, I'd like to take advantage of multipass encoding. Anyone know of a good application that I can do this with? Tried AutoGK (doesn't offer this), and couldn't carry it out with megui.

thanks

Hi,

To me it sounds like you want to free up some space but keep the movies in High quality. I could be wrong but this is what I do:

1) Extract the DVD//ISO//IMG to a video_TS file.
2) Run DVD shrink and uncheck all unwanted subtitles and languages, then "re-author" the dvd(removes all menus, and warnings)
3) After "re-author" I select JUST the movie from the right hand colum of DVD shrink, and drag it to the DVD structure area.
4) Run "Backup" and save the file to your HD in a video_TS file.(once you get the hang of it this takes about 5-10minutes tops)
5)Download and Open Dr. Divx. (go to settings and choose Quality>Speed look around there are a few of them) and set what ouput size you want on the file(for me 1 hour = 1Gig, is a very HQ movie)
6) Then let it encode, (it will do a duel pass, but this process will take a long time... takes me 8-12 hours depending on everything) But the quality of the movie is exactly the same (or very close to the original DVD and the size is reduced to AT LEAST 1/2)

Or option b to make it xvid:
at Number 5) do this instead
5) Mount the video_TS file with either Daemon Tools or alcohol 120%(makes the video appear to be a DVD(not sure if it will mount a video_TS file if it doesn't use Folder2iso to convert it back to ISO file, then mount it).
6) Use AutoGk and convert it to Xvid or Divx.(options)

So far I have only used Divx but I'm pleased with the results, I have read a few people though that think Xvid is better... I am actually going to test this today. I am currently running a Spiderman Divx, but I will also make it Xvid from the same file.. I will post results when I know. I can't see Xvid being that much better, but I could be wrong.

Hopefully that helps!