newbie needs help with settings for stripping without losing any quality

[AverageDoofus2481632]

I've educated and taught myself until I can rip a Blu-ray or DVD to almost any format I want. I can get playable copies, and make playable copies for my portable media. But I want something else, I want to make an Archival copy. A copy that perfectly preserves all image and sound and color of the source. My efforts for higher quality are producing files which are far far larger than the data from the original source disk. Currently I favor HandBrake, but I also can use Wondershare DVD ripper Platinum, DVD decrypter and a few more I collected during my self-education. Could someone give me some guidance on what I need to get the Perfect quality Archival copy I want? I've been trying to use .MKV Files. Should I change formats? and what settings should I use to get the level of quality I need?

Please help. The only motivation I can offer you is to appeal to your sense of charity.

Thank you for reading,

[guns1inger]

There is, in most cases, no higher quality than simply ripping the source and burning as is. Any re-encoding you do will cause some reduction in quality. This means that for most DVDs you will need to burn to verbatim +R DL blanks, and for Bluray, burn to Bluray blanks.

Anything else you do to the disc is asking for lower quality.

[AverageDoofus2481632]

The problem is I already have my hard copy, the Blu-ray or DVD I already bought legally. I want a digital Archival quality copy, call me a packrat, I just want one. Given that, what are my best choices? You said "in most cases" could someone tell me about the other cases?

Thank you for your response

[guns1inger]

The other case is where the source is from a low quality and you are prepared to spend time working with scripts to improve it.

I suspect your request is futile, or at least confused. An archival copy means a copy that is of the same quality as the source, put aside in case the original is damaged. Again, the only way to preserve the original quality is to simply rip the original disc, perhaps to ISO format, and store that on a drive somewhere. In the case of bluray source this could mean files of 30 - 50 GBs in size.

What you seem to be asking for is not an archival copy, but a compressed version suitable for on-line viewing. If this is the case then look at Baldrick's guides in the User Guides section, specifically

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic366744.html

and

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic358185.html

or perhaps this far more convoluted one

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic362452.html

Note : these are designed to produce much smaller files, and will therefore sacrifice quality to do so.

[AverageDoofus2481632]

I suspect your request is futile, or at least confused. An archival copy means a copy that is of the same quality as the source, put aside in case the original is damaged. Again, the only way to preserve the original quality is to simply rip the original disc, perhaps to ISO format, and store that on a drive somewhere. In the case of bluray source this could mean files of 30 - 50 GBs in size.

Ok, Accepting file sizes like that, can you suggest the easiest way to copy a disc directly like that? Will I be able to watch a digital copy like that with my normal media player? Should I use a compression tool like IZarc to save the most space I can? also Just wondering, Is there any other way I can save space with perfect quality?

Thank you

[guns1inger]

Only a small number of players will play ripped bluray structures from a HDD. Most do not. You can convert them to more playable formats (such as MKV) without losing any quality, but you lose your menus and you don't gain much in the way of compression.

If you try to compress the files with standard file compression you will find that many players won't be able to play them back, and because the data is already heavily compressed, you will again gain very little space back.

The guides I linked to earlier will tell you how to rip the contents to your HDD, and even how to put the main feature into an MKV container with or without extra compression (see the second link)

[Dr_Layne]

For archival, simply rip the DVD or BD disc as is. Store on large hard drives. For portable players, convert the movies as needed, download to the portable player, then delete the converted files off the HDD keeping the original ripped files intact.

A_L

[jman98]

I agree with Dr_Layne's advice. Disk drives are cheap. Just ripping and storing will save you a lot of time over trying to convert/compress.

[AverageDoofus2481632]

I've decided to rip and store as you have described, I even found that ziping the file will save me about 10% of space. Thanks for the help, feel free to add more suggestions if anyone has any though

Thanks