Compress DVD to store on hard drive library?

[RuggeR29]

Hey All,

I've got a ton of DVDs which I would love to store on my hard drive as a library. This way I can use Vista MCE to browse my movies with MyMovies installed. My question is about storing these DVDs and compressing them.

I do want to maintain as good of quality as possible. I know I can use tools like DVD Shrink to lower quality and size at the same time. I know I can convert the main movie file to a divx or wmv to keep good quality and shrink size. The problem with this, is that I want to keep the extras.

Does anyone know a way I can back up my DVDs to the hard drive, storing them in a more advanced compression (H.264, divx, wmv), but maintaining the menus and extras?

My first thought was using the HD spec, but I know very little about it. Can you convert a regular DVD to HD-DVD to take advantage of advanced compression, but keep the low resolution of DVD?

I'd love to hear from anyone who feels they can help me out, or even explain if it is possible.

[dougwx]

There was a program called ratDVD that was supposed to do what you are asking for, however I have never used it and am not sure if it is even around anymore. There might be a forum here somewhere about ratDVD.

[Baldrick]

The old ratdvd could shrink to vc-1(I think) and it could also keep all menus and extras. But it's no longer developed. I have't seen any other such tools.

HD DVD uses VC-1, H264 or MPEG2 and yes you can use dvd resolutions, see www.videohelp.com/hd#tech . But you wont find any easy dvd to hddvd tools for a loooong time...

[t0nee1]

"I do want to maintain as good of quality as possible."

IMO, if disk space is not a prob. rip to HDD and watch from there.. or use DVDRB Pro, full movie, HCEncoder > quality best ,save to disk and enjoy!!!!

DVDRB does not transcode as shrink and other progs do, hence the name DVD Rebuilder so quality is very good... try the free version first, or buy pro! you won't be disappointed.....

[RuggeR29]

Thanks for the posts guys. Unfortunately, space is a concern for me. I've only got around 250gigs to work with. I figure I've got around 150 dvds currently, and if I say the average dvd is 7gigs each, that already puts me over a terrabyte. I could buy an additional hard drive, but that would still be a short term solution as I plan to continue buying DVDs. Using Nero Recode on high quality I've managed to get my DVD's down to 4.7gb with no real change in quality (in my eyes). I can only imagine a better compression method could get me down a lot further at that same quality level.

It's a shame there are no current tools like ratDVD. And there's no hope of a DVD -> HD-DVD tool in the near future? That's a shame since I'm sure Vista MCE would natively support it. I would have assumed some brilliant programmer would have found a way already!

[RuggeR29]

hmm... out of curiosity, would ratDVD still work for me? I know it's over a year out of date, but does it work with Vista MCE?

[edDV]

Thanks for the posts guys. Unfortunately, space is a concern for me. I've only got around 250gigs to work with. I figure I've got around 150 dvds currently, and if I say the average dvd is 7gigs each, that already puts me over a terrabyte. I could buy an additional hard drive, but that would still be a short term solution as I plan to continue buying DVDs. Using Nero Recode on high quality I've managed to get my DVD's down to 4.7gb with no real change in quality (in my eyes). I can only imagine a better compression method could get me down a lot further at that same quality level.

It's a shame there are no current tools like ratDVD. And there's no hope of a DVD -> HD-DVD tool in the near future? That's a shame since I'm sure Vista MCE would natively support it. I would have assumed some brilliant programmer would have found a way already!

You can't have both quality and further compression. Recompressing DVD will lower quality and take time to process. DVD Shink will get fast good results to 4.4GB/DVD (~56 to 250GB). Divx et. al will reduce quality and take a lot of time. With hard drives down to ~$0.20/GB why spend all that time reducing quality?

[SCDVD]

The latest version of Divx supports menus. I think you will be much more pleased with the video quality using Divx as compared to over compressing the DVD format which will look pretty bad. If you set the Divx file size to 1GB, the video quality will be very close to your original DVD.

[edDV]

The latest version of Divx supports menus. I think you will be much more pleased with the video quality using Divx as compared to over compressing the DVD format which will look pretty bad.

Or save time, don't compress, just buy a larger drive or two. Before long, nearly everyone will be watching on a 40-100 inch screen.

[RuggeR29]

The latest version of Divx supports menus. I think you will be much more pleased with the video quality using Divx as compared to over compressing the DVD format which will look pretty bad. If you set the Divx file size to 1GB, the video quality will be very close to your original DVD.

Divx now supports menus? wow, that sounds like it could solve my problem. Are there any 1-click type solutions to encode a dvd to divx with menus and all? Computing time isn't an issue, but like someone else posted, I don't want to make this a 2nd job. This is one of the reasons I've liked Nero Recode so much. I've got AnyDVD to take care of the copy protection.

[SCDVD]

Here is some info on menus and other advanced features in Divx http://www.divx.com/divx/advanced.php

[jman98]

RuggeR29 - Consider that whatever you do now to compress will at least have a minimal effect on quality. Disk drives are getting cheaper and bigger all the time. Five years from now when multi-terabyte drives are probably going to be cheap, you may regret what you do now. I'd advise storing the movies as they are.

There are only 2 TV shows that I record on my PC and burn to DVD discs. Now that I can record HD TV to my PC, I can only get 2 shows (minus commercials each show is about 22-23 minutes) on a single layer DVD. That's not efficient, but that's how it is right now. HD-DVD and BluRay burners are too expensive right now. My feeling is maybe in the future I can do something with the shows and burn them to a high def format after the price goes down on the burners and blanks, but I don't see that happening for years. However, I am saving the shows now in their original quality because I can at least do that now. Maybe you can follow my example and just keep your movies as they are on a hard drive.

Divx does support menus, but few standalone DVD players support this. File size has NOTHING to do with Divx quality at all. It's all about the bit rate. I use bit rates of 3000 Kbps for 720p encodes and it works very well for me. Similar or slightly lower bit rates for DVD should give excellent results.

[RuggeR29]

again, thank you guys for the useful comments. I certainly understand your concerns about quality (especially considering what forum this is ). I'm not overly concerned with retaining the upmost quality on the hard drive version because I will always have the original DVDs to work with in the future if need be.

Unforunately I only have room for 1 more hard drive in my case (with an adapter bracket) because it is a small form factor box. I already have 3 80gb disks in a RAID 0 stripe. Ideally I could pop in 3 or 4 400gb drives, but unfortunately that's money I simply don't have to spend right now.

My SFF rig is hooked up with toslink audio and component video right now. I'm using Vista and Media Center to view movies on my TV. As it is only a 32" tube, I'm not overly picky (heck, I'm lucky it has component inputs). One day when I have a 50" HDTV, I'm sure I'll be MUCH more picky!

Essentially, I suppose, my goal is to turn my movie library into a giant tivo-like thing. Or another way to think of it would be a local version of On Demand (if any of you have that on your cable tv system). MyMovies with Media Center seems to bring that type of interface to life for me. It's easy enough to my fiance to use and appreciate, which is a huge selling point.

I hope that clears up the intentions of my proposed project!

[anzimike]

Ratdvd seems to be still available at mirror site here;

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/dvd_tools/ratdvd.cfm

It looks like what you need, and it's free so you have nothing to loose but time. It may not work on Windows Vista, though.
Best of luck.