DVD to MP4 suggestions please.

[Captain315]

I'm new at this so be patient. I have a collection of DVD's that I want to backup to hard drive. I've been told that MP4 is my best bet for saving space and keeping quality up. I don't know if this is right or not but it's supposed to be. I bought DVDFab to do the job and want to use the generic MP4 conversion option. I don't have a surround sound system to tell what is happening and would like to ask if anyone has done this and what settings I should use to keep the surround sound on the MP4. My hopes are to buy a WD Media Player to hook up to our tv. Also, anyone familiar with Womble MPEG DVD would be appreciated. I tried using it (I really like the program) but when I export it back to hard drive, it shows up as stereo audio. Any advice I could get about doing something like this would be greatly appreciated.

[Baldrick]

If you would like to keep the DVD dolby ac3 surround I guess it would be better to store the video in a mkv(with h264 video and ac3 audio). You can store ac3 surround in a mp4 but many players wont support it, see https://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/h-264-mp4-w-ac3-t363088.html .

It's also possible to shrink the ac3 to aac surround and put in a mp4 but it wont work on many amplifiers/receivers.

[mh2360]

I recently got a WDTV, so of course my entire DVD collection (100+ DVDs) had to go on a hard drive. I thought the same as you: to compress my entire DVD collection to MP4 to save space so I wouldn't have to buy a huge new hard drive.

Well it seemed like a good idea at the time, but eventually I just got fed up of waiting hours for each conversion, so I caved in and got myself a 1TB hard drive. Now I just use MakeMKV to build an MKV of each DVD, complete with subs and chapters, it takes a fraction of the time and you dont lose any quality at all as the MKV is made with the original MPEG2/AC3 streams. These look and play great on the WDTV.

[Captain315]

Thanks for the suggestions, I will try my hand at MKV instead of MP4.

[minerva.thegift]

I have used the .mkv container for both standard definition (DVD) archiving as well as high definition (Blu Ray) archiving, and it has worked well. Just make sure that .mkv files are supported by whatever player you want to use them with - if not, then you might have to use .mp4 since it is somewhat more common in certain types of players. As a side note, for playing .mkv files on your computer, I recommend VLC and/or MPCHC. As mh2360 has pointed out, you have to decide which is more important to you - file size or quality. If you want the absolute best quality possible, follow his advice to use MakeMKV and put the DVD's video and audio (uncompressed) straight into a .mkv file. This will give you a large file, probably at least 4GB. I would recommend looking in the Guides section under tool MakeMKV to see if there's a guide around.

Personally, I don't see much quality loss when using the x264 encoder for video and since it can reduce the file size to about 1/3 (conservative estimate) the size of a DVD, I prefer to use it. For a straightforward yet powerful encoder, try Handbrake - it's cross platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux) and it's fairly customizable yet also easy to use (as encoders go, of course ) If Handbrake doesn't have quite enough options for you, I can suggest MeGUI (a graphical interface for the command line based mencoder) because I've used it in the past and it works well and offers more general customization options, but it can be a bit more difficult to get used to. For high definition encoding I have used Ripbot264 and found it to be straightforward and easy to use - it isn't terribly customizable, but the automatic options usually do a great job.

If you read around here on the forums, you can find some strong arguments for and against encoding - those who want to reduce file size and those who want to keep the 'pure' video from the DVD (or Blu Ray.) You'll also find several people who favor different encoders (XviD, DivX, x264, etc.) and different containers (.mkv, .mp4, .avi, etc.) I personally favor x264 .mkv files, but opinions do certainly vary - generally it comes down to 1)your opinion of video compression, 2)how much hard drive space you have [and are willing to devote to movies] and 3)how much quality loss you can see when encoding [and how important that is to you.]

Of course, there's also the time involved - the amount of time it takes to encode a DVD strongly depends on your computer (and specifically how many threads it has.) On my new computer with an Intel Core i7 processor running 8 threads, I can encode a DVD movie to x264 at 1024 kbps (a setting that I've found works for me - it all comes down to what point you start seeing noticeable quality loss) in around 45 minutes. On my old computer (a Dell Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz, or something like that, with only one core and I think only one thread) it takes around 8-10 hours. If your computer would end up taking a long time to encode each DVD and if you have a lot of them that you want to store, then you might be better off following mh2360's advice and just dumping them straight to (very large) .mkv files with no encoding involved (since it is this encoding that takes such a long time.) Maybe try a DVD or two and see how it goes (and see how much time you're willing to devote to it.) The nice thing is once you start a DVD encoding (i.e. once you get it all set up and start it going) then you can leave your computer alone and don't have to do anything with it, so you can go to bed, go to work, etc. and check back in on it later.

All that is just on the video side - there are also those who argue for and against converting the DVD audio and if they do convert it, then to what format. I tend just keep the original audio (often AC3) but if I do have to encode it I like the OggVorbis format (because it's opensource) or the .mp3 format (because it's widely supported.) That's a whole different can of worms there. Personally, I find that the file size of the DVD audio isn't that much bigger than the file size would be if I converted it, so I usually just leave it. In other words, the gain (in smaller file size) isn't worth the cost (slightly poorer sound quality and slightly more time in the converting process) but again, opinions vary there.

I hope this helps you on your way; feel free to post with any questions you run in to along the way, and don't forget to look in the guides section for tutorials on using either a container transfer (like MakeMKV) or an encoder (like Handbrake.) Good luck!