DVD to MKV - Is 720p Overkill?

[THRobinson]

I use AnyDVD with CloneDVD, choosing the main movie option and getting rid of unwanted audio. That usually brings the file size down a lot. Majority of my rips will fit on a single layer DVD just by copying the main movie only. I would do that, and THEN compress/encode the DVD to H.264.

Well, originally I was using DVDFab and making ISO files, using only the main movie and English audio. XBMC reads ISO files just fine. But some DVD's were still 5-7GB in size (large audio I suspect).

When I got a hold of a few MKV/MP4 files and saw how good the quality was and how much smaller, and still allowed multiple tracks of audio... I figured if I can average the MKV's at about 1.5GB each, I'll save approximately 500GB of space once everything has been replaced. I have a 3TB drive with 20GB free so... freeing up 500GB would be great. Means an extra 330+ movies.

[THRobinson]

vidcoder only does cq. i can't think of a x264 gui that does crf.

Ah, I guess I'll stop looking for it then.

20min to go, see how VidCoder works now that AnyDVD is running. Hopefully works well... like I mentioned I have a LOT of movies to convert so, hoping to get a process in place and push through them all.

[jagabo]

Xvid4PSP and MeGUI support CRF mode.

[aedipuss]

thanks - never used either of those.

[THRobinson]

VidCoder seems fine now... same movie that produced the garbled 3GB file, after AnyDVD, using the same settings (CQ at 20) now made a 950MB file and quality is great.

Thanks for the help guys.

[jagabo]

One place to look for compression artifacts is in deep shadows. You'll see creepy crawly posterization artifacts.

[ABTsportsline]

I just registered to thank all those involved in this thread. This was exactly my question and there is so much good information here.

Thanks everyone!

[THRobinson]

This is one of the few helpful/friendly forums I know of... great place to find help when needed.

... side note, that program VidCoder also reads ISO files, I queued up like 40 ISO files that I already made from my DVDs and just let it run for about 2 days. Worked like a charm.

Very good quality, and in most cases about 1/3 the size of the ISO.