DVD to .....?

[tonyaldr]

In order to make space in my apartment, I'm considering donating most of my DVDs to our local public library. I've already ripped them to my NAS device, but now it's choking from all the space being consumed. Does it make sense to convert these to DivX, H264 or some other format in order to reclaim space? I view my movies on a 40 inch LCD so I really don't want to see an excessive loss in quality, but I've heard that people are able to compress 4gig DVDs to fit on a 700meg CD with no noticeable difference. Truth or hype? Searching the forums I've come across posts that claim both! Appreciate any current advice. Thanx!

[videopoo]

Just buy more Storage. A Terabyte of HDD space is under $200 these days. You can rip them if you'd like later but I wouldn't do it just because your low on space.

[vieted]

Yeh, converting to DivX did save much space. However any compression bring quality loss. It depends much on how you think about those ripped movies. Try yourself and make decision. I myself accept those losses in order to have movies on my HDD or fit 5-6 DVDs onto 1 DVD-R.

[redwudz]

JMO, but if you have great DVDs, I wouldn't reduce them to Divx/Xvid/H.264 quality. At minimum, I would back them up with DVD Shrink, though that would be a problem if you give away the originals.

I have a couple of 400 disc Sony DVD changers and I put my original DVDs in there. I also have a couple of video servers for lesser quality videos.

[DarrellS]

I have a couple of 400 disc Sony DVD changers and I put my original DVDs in there. I also have a couple of video servers for lesser quality videos.

My friend does the same thing but his Sony changer went out on him and instead of buying another changer, he is looking into converting all his DVDs to DivX and either playing them from his PC to his TV or better yet, get a player like the Philips DVP5990 and play them from an external drive. He wants to keep all the menus and all the extras if he can.

Is this possible with TMPGEnc Divx Author? If I remember correctly, I tried three or four programs and couldn't get any of them to do this. I've seen a couple of .divx movies like this but I have no idea how they were able to create them. They were commercial trailers so I'm sure they used some highend program to create them.

[guns1inger]

If you use Divx Author then you are restricted to using the Divx Player for playback if you want the menus etc. Other players will simply ignore the features they don't support (menus/chapters etc) and just play the movie. Not a great option if you are using a HTPC with a decent media library front-end. Personally, I don't see the need for menus etc if you have a HTPC. Encode at the highest quality you can afford and be done. I would certainly choose a high quality H.264 encode over a DVD Shrink butchering. If you want to maintain the DVD structure but in a smaller space you could use DVD Rebuilder to get down to single disc size. However a good (if slow) HQ H.264 encode should get you comparable quality in half the space again.

[Ai Haibara]

(edit: oops, replied to the wrong topic. Delete this, please.)

[AlanHK]

In order to make space in my apartment, I'm considering donating most of my DVDs to our local public library.

You can also just throw away the boxes and just store the disks in a more compact way -- just plastic envelopes in a file drawer, say. That reduces the space by at least 75% from the original box and package.

Ripping to DivX can be pretty time consuming. You also will lose alternate sound tracks and other features.

[DarrellS]

Gunslinger, if I had my friends money, then I would get a media player and convert everything to H264 but I can't even talk him into building a new PC. It's not like he can't afford it, he makes $600 every Saturday working overtime for APS on top of what he makes the other 5 days he works (no wonder my electric bill is so high).

He already has one divx player and the 5990 is divx ultra certified so playing the files is no problem. He also has the divx software player that will play these ultra files from his PC.

HDD space isn't a problem for my friend. He likes to store his data on hard drives instead of buying tons of discs.

[jagabo]

In order to make space in my apartment, I'm considering donating most of my DVDs to our local public library. I've already ripped them to my NAS device

Note that the MPAA would consider this a copyright violation.