1-step rip and convert for backing up collection - Acrok versus DVDFab

[Nevyn522]

My family is looking at a short term relocation, and bringing all the discs seems silly versus bringing an external harddrive and streaming. Unfortunately, we're looking at leaving in about a month, so we don't have time to do this as we acquire discs. MakeMKV is able to rip at ~4x without me playing with drive firmware, but given that compression is by default greater than 1x, I'm not particularly concerned about riplock or getting around it.

I've downloaded every piece of Bluray ripping/converting software I could find; after playing with several pieces of software, I'm really down to two options. Everything else was consistently at less than the frame rate. As a test I encoded Raiders of the Lost Ark, the start of a trilogy I plan to take with me. The film is 1 hour and 55 minutes long, or 115 minutes.

DVDFab is the one that gets recommended here, and has some nice features (matching non-standard aspect ratios automatically, for instance). Once I enabled GPU assistance on the decoding, the speed went from 162 minutes encoding to 119 minutes. On the downside, DVDFab only supports Intel and nVidia for encoding assistance -- and I have neither. But from what I understand, DVDFab is one of the best on updates, and there's a new dinosaur movie arriving today.

I've barely seen mention of Acrok here -- the few times it gets dismissed as not being DVDFab or MakeMKV. However, with default settings Acrok took 92 minutes to encode, and once I tweaked it to better match DVDFab (non-standard aspect ratio, including forced subtitles), it took only 102 minutes. Fifteen minutes per blu-ray isn't huge, but it is very perceptible.

I'm assuming that Acrok is slow to update, or there's some other reason they get no love? I'm also looking into the Autoripper at https://videoscripts.wordpress.com/, but the download link is currently busted -- in short, I'm willing to consider other options, but given that AMD's APP extensions aren't identified in my video card, I'm taking what I can get. As most of the time I won't be clicking "go," the easier any process is, the more likely movies will get correctly converted while I'm at work.

PS: In my paranoid fantasies the blatant similarities between some of the software has me convinced they're actually the same software with different skin -- and I'm picturing that they're funding the either the Yakuza, the Bratva, or the Triad. I'm crazy, right? Right?

[hech54]

Remember the good old days when companies would actually PAY for their own advertising?

[Nevyn522]

What a welcome! I hope other people in this forum aren't this aggressive to newcomers. Video HELP seems like "helping" would be implicit.

No one paid me. I didn't even link to either app, although the automated tooling may have. If you'd rather, I could strip out all the useful, concrete information and publish a bland, generic post about "what software should I use?" rather than based on my actual experiences.

Here, I'll give you the data I'm working from:
PS D:\Video\Films\video> gci -r -i Raider* | ? { $_.Length -gt 100000000 } | sort-object -Descending Length | % { $time = ($_.LastWriteTimeUtc - $_.CreationTimeUtc); ( $_.Name + ' : ' + $_.Length + ' : ' + $time.TotalMinutes) }
Raiders Of The Lost Ark_001(3).mp4 : 5284674850 : 92.2320992566667
Raiders Of The Lost Ark_001.mp4 : 5284659793 : 102.281381076667
RAIDERS_OF_THE_LOST_ARK.Title800.mp4 : 4974401089 : 162.763214896667
RAIDERS_OF_THE_LOST_ARK.Title800_1.mp4 : 4971099745 : 119.257087341667

[Kerry56]

Assuming you aren't a spammer, I do believe you are speaking to the wrong audience. Most of us around here don't give a rat's posterior about speed of encoding with H264 anymore. Once it got to a manageable level, it became irrelevant. And very few of us use Fab for anything other than decryption. We are much more likely to complain about a GUI that doesn't give full control over the X264 encoder than bitch about a few minutes of encoding time.

I've never even heard of Acrok, but the name does seem appropriate. Looks like any one of a dozen of the cookie-cutter Chinese conversion programs.

In the end, it doesn't matter what we think. If the results are acceptable to you, and you don't get tremendous numbers of problems from failed decryption, or artifacts in the videos, or failed video/audio synchronization that often show up with the Chinese conversion programs, then use what you want. You just won't get much help using either program here. We simply don't work with them, though you might find a few with experience using DVDFab.

[hech54]

What a welcome! I hope other people in this forum aren't this aggressive to newcomers. Video HELP seems like "helping" would be implicit.

No one paid me.

And yet you knew EXACTLY what I was implying.

[hech54]

I use DVDFabDecrypter or AnyDVD to decrypt......then HandBrake if I need to re-encode. Almost everything else out there found via Google search is a trojan/malware/virus laden minefield best left alone.

[Nevyn522]

We are much more likely to complain about a GUI that doesn't give full control over the X264 encoder than bitch about a few minutes of encoding time.

In the end, it doesn't matter what we think. If the results are acceptable to you, and you don't get tremendous numbers of problems from failed decryption, or artifacts in the videos, or failed video/audio synchronization that often show up with the Chinese conversion programs, then use what you want. You just won't get much help using either program here. We simply don't work with them, though you might find a few with experience using DVDFab.

Thank you, Kerry56! I didn't even know what problems to look out for. Bad A/V sync is hard to detect automatically, so I'd rather go with something more trustworthy than less -- and 20 minutes isn't worth every movie being unusable. As I've got the space, defaulting settings as much as possible just makes it easier to batch encode -- although I am a little surprised you're not ripping to x265.

then HandBrake if I need to re-encode

I've used Handbrake for DVDs before. Given the issues Kerry56 flagged, I'll see about automating ripping via MakeMKV or AnyDVDHD and then batch encoding.

Thank you!

[Kerry56]

VidCoder is a different GUI for Handbrake, and many here recommend it as easier to use for batch encodes.

[Chopmeister]

I use Vidcoder for mine. Only ever use DVDFab or other such software to get the disks to the hard drive for encoding, not for the actual encode. Actually, mostly I still use DVD Decrypter or IMGBURN, as most of the disks I rip are off my DVD recorder and there are no protection issues to contend with.

[Nevyn522]

VidCoder is a different GUI for Handbrake, and many here recommend it as easier to use for batch encodes.

Thank you Kerry56 and Chopmeister! My final solution:
DVDFab Passkey for decrypting and ripping to the harddisk, followed by VidCoder running concurrent batch conversions. I can make sure to add things like forced subtitles, while my wife just needs to worry about "put in disk, copy."