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  1. Member
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    I have recently purchased a Home Server to store all my dvd images. I have about 400 dvd images right now on my home server. They were all ripped with DVD Shrink. I went into the options of DVD Shrink and told it NOT to split the VOB files into 1GB chunks. So now ALL my movies are in 1 file. I then renamed the file from .vob to .mpeg so that my DLNA bluray player can stream it over the network to my tv. Everything works great. the quality of my movies are great mainly becasue there is no compression at all. Each movie file is the exact same same as the DVD.

    My question is this. What would be the best way to convert these files to make them smaller in size without losing a lot of quality. Prior to doing everything the way I did, I tried to use Xilisoft Video Converter, but it was taking 3-4 hours to comvert each movie and I am not gonna spent that much time on this project. I would rather buy additional hard drives and just keep the files as they are.

    I am just asking if there is a better way to do this. Maybe convert a 4gb dvd to 2 gb. Or 3 gb cartoon to 1.5 gb.

    Thanks,
    D
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  2. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    Buy more HDDs then. The best option is H264, which takes time to encode well, but will get you the best file size to quality ratio. Xilisoft is not a tool I would recommend - handbrake would be a better option for this.
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  3. You can get pretty good results pretty quickly with the Divx codec and VirtualDubMod. Use Quality based encoding with a quantizer of 2, encoder mode Balanced.

    I happen to have a 5.5 GB, ~100 minute, VOB file sitting on the computer now. On my Intel Q6600 it will took about 20 minutes to encode. At Q=2 the file was around 1.5 GB. This was a dark horror film with not much action so it compressed more that your typical film. You can increase the quantizer a bit if you find your files are coming out larger than you want. Even at Q=3 the quality is still pretty good (and the files will be significantly smaller).

    You may sometimes have audio sync problems after encoding this way. So check it after encoding.

    A better solution would be to sue DgIndex to build an index file, AviSynth to do some processing (enable DgDecode's deblocking filters), and encode with Divx or Xvid in VirtualDub or VirtualDubMod. That will take more time, both yours and the computers.
    Last edited by jagabo; 3rd Jun 2010 at 22:33.
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    Set your computer up to do the encode overnight, it takes time to do a good re encode but worth the wait for good end results.
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  5. Member
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    Thanks for the information, I have tried the H264 format and it was a much smaller file, however it took a while to convert and I had audio sync issues once it fininshed. I do have handbrake and I know it runs fast, I might try and mess with some of the settings to see what I can get. It's just hard to beat the way that DVDShrink did these movies.

    jagabo, I am gonna try VirtualDubMod as well. I can handle about 15-20 minutes per file. I just can't do 4 hours per dvd. It would take me all year to convert the collection I have.

    I am acutally moving to the disc side of things now. Back when I started building my video library I kept an image of every dvd I copied, but after I had filled up about 10 hard drives (120gb -200gb in size back when they were over 100 per hd). I finally got tired of buying hd's and just kept the disc. So, now that I have converted all the images I kept on the 10 hard drives, I've got to start converting all the disc's I have.

    But I am committed. I am gonna see this through till the end. My goal is to not have any dvd's in my house when I get through. lol !!!

    Thanks again for the assistance.
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  6. so that my DLNA bluray player can stream it over the network to my tv
    FRom the newtwork TO your TV??

    AutoGk is still good, as is FairUSE (free version). x254 will get you the best quality/size ratio but will take significantly longer.
    Using a quality based one pass will save lots of time.
    Cut out some nice representative chunks of 5 mins and use these to test various settings. Nothing worse than setting something up to encode, maxing out all the quality features (motion estimation=godlike!) and then finding the result after 16 hours of processing is a pile of spadulums.
    Aiming for a size reduction of 2/3rds on a 7gb movie sounds about right.
    Of course you want something that can batch jobs up.
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  7. Member
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    Yes, over Network to TV. I have a Acer Home Server where all my Music and Videos are stored (Has 2- 2TB drives installed and room for 2 more). I also have a LG BG590 Blu-Ray player that has a "Home-Link" feature that allows me to play my movies, view photos and listen to music from the Home Server over my home network. It is a great feature.

    The BG570 model will do this as well, it just doesn't have a built in hard drive. (I really did not want the model with hard drive, but it was the only one available). You can also use the older BG390 model, but you have to install some software on your PC or Server to make it work. You should look into it, for someone that has a huge AV library, this is a great setup.

    I will look at AutoGK. And yes, you are right. I am going to use about a 500MB file to see how good the quality is, and it will not take so long to convert. I also am hoping that whatever software I use it can handle batch jobs.

    Thanks for the info.

    D
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  8. Member
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    I won't give any advice on how to make the files smaller. In todays world, there is absolutely no reason to ruin a video by re-encoding to a lower bitrate. Especially for a media server PC with the prices of 1.5 and 2TB HDDs so low.

    Western Digital Caviar Black WD1501FASS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s $109.99
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136592

    Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s $139.99

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136514

    The reason people used DivX before was because 80GB HDDs cost over $100 or people couldn't afford $300 DVD burners and burnt movies to CD (or keeping the file size low for downloading purposes on file sharing sites).

    If you didn't mind spending a little money then IMO, VideRedo would be your best option. You wouldn't have to waste time re-encoding and killing the quality of the files and you could fix any sync issues caused from backing up DVDs by using the quick fix feature.

    If you have the time and a fast multicore core CPU then H264 is another option. It will lower the file size but won't hurt the quality as much as DivX or XviD. If not then VideoRedo would be the way I'd go.
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