newbie to blu-ray to avi. help.

[babeflover]

This are my computer specs:Acer Aspire AST180-UA380B AMD Desktop PC - AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 2.4GHz, 1GB DDR2, 160GB SATA HD, NVID

this is the blu-ray reader i'm planning to install.
Lite-On IHOS104 Blu Ray ROM - BD-ROM 4X, DVD-ROM 8X, CD-ROM 32X (OEM).


My questions are:
are they compatible? is this the type( the blu-ray reader is also sata). how long would it take this computer to convert a blu-ray to avi? I know it depends also in the movie but, please give me a idea about how much time?I'm planning to use handbreak.

[neomaine]

babeflover,

Those specs are woefully indadequate for any BR reencoding. But, to answer you're basic question, as long as you have an open SATA port you should be fine to add that BDROM drive.

My recommendations:

- Upgrade to a quad core. Check your mobo for compatibility.
- Get two more HDDs. Internal SATAs would be preferable.
- Keep the 160 as your boot drive.

Without the above the best you'll be able to do is rip the movie. Reencoding to anything will take way too long. If you're willing to continue the upgrade, let us know and we can help on the process.

[Phytrax]

I'm sorry neomaine but that's just a bad answer. OF COURSE you can back up blu-ray with those specs but it will take a while. How long is a complicated question though. If you want to use h264 codec and keep it at 1080p I'd guess it will take you around 3 days for a 2hr movie. That's still usable IMO. If this is your primary computer you could even still use it if the encoder is set to low priority but with only 1 gig of RAM it will not perform well.

If you are converting to say 480p for a cell phone and using a simpler codec it should take less than 1 day, maybe 18 hrs. You're gonna need a lot of hard drive space though. At least 50gb free for most movies to rip then convert. You could possibly burn to DVD after and delete the files on your computer after.

[fritzi93]

babeflover,

Those specs are woefully indadequate for any BR reencoding. But, to answer you're basic question, as long as you have an open SATA port you should be fine to add that BDROM drive.

My recommendations:

- Upgrade to a quad core. Check your mobo for compatibility.
- Get two more HDDs. Internal SATAs would be preferable.
- Keep the 160 as your boot drive.

Without the above the best you'll be able to do is rip the movie. Reencoding to anything will take way too long. If you're willing to continue the upgrade, let us know and we can help on the process.

Agreed.

1) A dual-core is just barely adequate if encoding overnight at a fast setting. If going to the trouble of upgrading, a quad is what you want.

2) Dealing with HD, particularly Blu-Rays, means huge files. I have an OS drive, a dedicated capture drive, and a re-encoding (destination) drive and *still* have to be careful about fragmentation. I move encodes off the computer to external storage (hard drive or optical media) as soon as possible.

3) It *will* take an unacceptable amount of time to re-encode on that rig. An encode taking longer than 1 day is unthinkable.

[Phytrax]

While it is incredibly helpful to know what you think is acceptable, he just asked how long it would take. What is acceptable is just a matter if opinion. I know I would let my movies run for 3 days if the quality gain was sufficient. Sorry if I'm being rude but I don't like the idea of telling someone they can't do something. Its just a matter of how bad you want to.

[neomaine]

I'm sorry neomaine but that's just a bad answer. OF COURSE you can back up blu-ray with those specs but it will take a while. How long is a complicated question though. If you want to use h264 codec and keep it at 1080p I'd guess it will take you around 3 days for a 2hr movie. That's still usable IMO. If this is your primary computer you could even still use it if the encoder is set to low priority but with only 1 gig of RAM it will not perform well.

If you are converting to say 480p for a cell phone and using a simpler codec it should take less than 1 day, maybe 18 hrs. You're gonna need a lot of hard drive space though. At least 50gb free for most movies to rip then convert. You could possibly burn to DVD after and delete the files on your computer after.

I'll give you partial credit for saying it's a bad answer, howver, it's a very good response:

- His basic question was if the BDROM would work. I answer that in the first two lines.

- His secondary question was for a specific time. His secondary question which we cannot give a direct answer too because he did not give us any useful information. Movie, enconder, encode settings, video codec needs, audio... nothing. I gave him the next best thing and that was for ANY encoding he is inadequately setup for anything meaningful.

Waiting 3 days is not something reasonable. For you I guess it is. However, you are in a VERY small minority group who would think this was adequate.

You're saying I should have wholly answered:

- Yes
- 3 days

...and left it at that? With those general specs, since the link isn't good any more, they may not even be able to PLAY the final output even if they did wait the three days. Oh, wait, haven't the movie play choppy and pixelated would probably be adequate for you. After all, it would at least play.


Let's see:

- neomaine member since 2001
- Fritzi since 2003
- Phytrax since ... This week?

I gave him a response and an offer of more help. I'll let the OP decide which advice to look at. You know, sometimes it's good to offer more than what the original poster is looking for. Its called guidance.

[Phytrax]

Offering more information is great, and I guess you were trying to help so maybe my response should have been more gentle. Sorry. My main point is that it's possible, which is true no matter how long I've been a member.

Playback would not be a problem if he's burning to DVD for playback on a PS3 like I do. Or if this is a secondary computer he wants to use so that his primary computer isn't short on resources.

[jman98]

Phytrax - You're new here, so welcome. And you do have some good points, but it might be useful for you to consider the following.

1) A good number of members here who are not regular posters, be they new members or old members who rarely participate, feel that anything beyond 3-4 hours of encoding is unreasonable. I wish some people would just have more patience, but they don't.
2) A rather large number of members have the nonsensical opinion that they cannot leave their computers running unattended, such as overnight while they sleep, and they MUST... TURN... OFF... PC... EVERY... NIGHT... or the entire universe will explode or some such bs. This is one of the things that just drives me absolutely nuts around here is to read about people bitching incessantly that some encode job took 6 or 7 hours when if they just ran the damn thing while they slept, they wouldn't care. I have given up trying to talk sense into those people.

So that's why some of the veteran members just assume that everyone new here has no interest in anything but very quick encodes because that's just how things usually work out.

[Phytrax]

Ya, I know everybody is impatient these days. But like I said before, I'd wait a week if I could get bluray quality down under 1gb. I guess I didn't realize I was such a minority.

[neomaine]

Phytrax, first - thanks for backing off a bit. I do appreciate it.

And, yes, for many anything other than an over night for an encode is usually considered too long. Many newbies expect/hope for something no worse than the 2-3 hour range. Very doable but need some heft that the provided PC specs just weren't going to come close too. I was just waiting for the OPs interest before going further.

I have a 2.5Ghz quad core and (used to) have 6-10 hour BR re-encodes. Like jman98, I had no problem waiting for things to run overnight. However, I've since decided to simply invest in larger/more hard drives and avoid the re-encoding alltogether. This can be done easily within an hour per movie and what I was going to steer the OP towards if time was an issue and they didn't want to change their hardware.

[Phytrax]

Wow, 2-3 hrs just seems unattainable to me and I'm running a quad core close to 4ghz. But then I run everything dual pass, h264, Max quality, 1080p. I shoot for about 1.5gb per hour of video and I can't usually tell the difference from the original. But my encodes still take 6hrs including demuxing, etc. I like to carry a lot of movies off to work with me so 20gb per movie is not practical.

[neomaine]

Ah, re-read, there's no conversion/re-encode there. Simply rip to HD and remux to .m2ts for play on my WDTV Live. About .5 to .75 hrs to copy to HD and 5 - 10 to remux to .m2ts.

And, what you have for settings has huge implications for duration if you do re-encode. Personally, its just not cost/time effective anymore. I was well into divx/xvid encodes for awhile and by the time I finally started buying BR, the cost of storage was so low I did really didn't give h264 much of a run.

In many cases, I'm going back to my DVD collection and re-ripping so as not to have ANY compression. Well worth it on my new 60". Only slightly noticed issues on my 46" but now that the main tv is a 60", its quite noticable.