Consolidating home video collection on Blue Ray

[ehunter]

I have about 50 DVDs of home videos, too many to keep track of.

Is it possible to rip the contents of each DVD and transfer the material to Blue Ray without loss of quality? I think the answer is going to be yes. Right now I am looking at 50GB Blue Ray disks to do this.

I envision a Blue Ray menu with the title of each movie on the introduction screen. One would select the title and the movie would play.

I would think I would have to line up the ripped VOB files for each movie someway. What free utilities would I need to line up the VOBs and link in a menu?

As I understand it the Dual Layer Blue Ray disk should play in any home player.

Again, what utilities would you use to do this?

[MOVIEGEEK]

Use multiAVCHD.

[guns1inger]

I second that. Just rip the discs to your HDD, then import them into MultiAVCHD. You will lose your original menus, but you can create new ones in MultiAVCHD to replace them. No re-encoding necessary.

[obewon]

multivchd is the way to go,but if you dont wont to re-encode its going to take more than one 50 gb blu ray disc if your dvdr are full ie:4.37 gb per dvdr .you will be lucky to get 10 of them on one bd 50 gig .and i mean lucky.

[yoda313]

Just remember as is the case with any conversion project its best to keep your original sources "just in case". Don't go on tossing the dvds you worked hard on to produce. Even though this is a consolidation new techniques always come up and its best to have a firm starting point rather than a consolidated collection.

Just pop them in a storage container of some type to keep them out of the elements (dust and such).

[ehunter]

Good Tips guys... Thanks.

One other related project I did not want to bring up just yet....

I am currently converting all moms and dads 78s + LP to WAV format. I am impressed with the quality I can get with even the oldest 100yo 78s.

Another thing I want to do is put all this music on Blue Ray(s) too.

I thought I would merge the sound tracks into a black video screen that floats the title around the picture, or something, or maybe spins a repetitive record around until the next track plays. I would want something that compresses the simple video very well so that the major datafile is mainly the sound track.

I have not thought about this too much and am looking for ideas.

Thoughts?

[MOVIEGEEK]

Good Tips guys... Thanks.

One other related project I did not want to bring up just yet....

I am currently converting all moms and dads 78s + LP to WAV format. I am impressed with the quality I can get with even the oldest 100yo 78s.

Another thing I want to do is put all this music on Blue Ray(s) too.

I thought I would merge the sound tracks into a black video screen that floats the title around the picture, or something, or maybe spins a repetitive record around until the next track plays. I would want something that compresses the simple video very well so that the major datafile is mainly the sound track.

I have not thought about this too much and am looking for ideas.

Thoughts?

Not possible with Blu-ray unless you have access to expensive authoring programs(Scenerist, etc), you can add the music as a second track though. You can also make a music DVD with any authoring program.

[yoda313]

Just a suggestion but why not buy a cheapo no name mp3 player? You can get a multi gig mp3 player for under 50.00 anywhere, even drug stores nowadays.

That might be more convenient than a bluray audio or dvd audio disc. Though the dvd audio disc is certainly possible. But you won't have the same compact portable form that a mp3 player can give you.

Or better yet buy a used one on ebay or another auction site. They are much more practical.

Just my opinion on the matter of course.

[ehunter]

Moviegeek - I’m not sure I understand why Blue Ray is not a workable media for the music.

If I can consolidate my above DVD video collection to Blue Ray, which has at least stereo sound, why cant I then mux my LP/78 music into a black screen DVD that will compress perfectly and then put that on Blue Ray also?

Technically I think I can do it. The Blue Ray would play through the stereo/5.1 sound system so I know of no problems there. I think selecting the song set you would like to hear would be cumbersome although I don’t plan to want to hear song per song depending on the title. I would rather just select Xmas music when the time comes and ALL the Xmas music gets played one after the other.

Yoda- I am not the kind of guy who walks around with plugs in his ears listening to music so I am not particularly warm to the MP3 idea. I also don’t like the idea of converting to MP3 and tossing out some of the dynamic range of the sound. The intent is to play this on my home system. I would like to keep the 20-20khz data.

[multiAVCHD]

multiAVCHD allows you to create audio Blu-ray discs.

[creamyhorror]

I am currently converting all moms and dads 78s + LP to WAV format. I am impressed with the quality I can get with even the oldest 100yo 78s.

Another thing I want to do is put all this music on Blue Ray(s) too.

I thought I would merge the sound tracks into a black video screen that floats the title around the picture, or something, or maybe spins a repetitive record around until the next track plays. I would want something that compresses the simple video very well so that the major datafile is mainly the sound track.

Why not keep it all on a hard drive (with backups) and play it with a networked player or HTPC? Then you can select tracks for playback easily (relative to a Blu-ray player). For lossless audio, you can use FLAC to compress the WAVs for some space savings.

In fact, you can simply keep your 50 DVDs on a hard drive too, and play them back with a player/HTPC with a minimum of fuss, compared to the much more laborious route of authoring BD-Rs from them.

Look at the Xtreamer or Asus O!Play or any other modern player with good DVD playback.