Help digitizing large collection dvd's

[desertrider]

Hi,

Looking to put my decrypted DvdFab movie collection (900+)on hdd. I was hoping to use PLEX as the manager and I understand it will not play Video_TS files, so I will change them to MKV with DVDFAb. I am not going to stream these to any devices. Will be viewing on home theater projector and 65" tv all hard wired.

Currently using a Mac and would like to have some type Raid as a back-up (so as not to go thru this time consuming process again). Internet service is not great (upload 4-5Mbps download 20-25Mbps) so cloud is not an option.

Here is a list of what I would like to do and need to know:

1. How long does it take to change a Video_TS file to MKV and copy to HDD?
2. Could I use multiple optical drives connected to pc, to make change and copy faster using DVDFAB .
3. Use dedicated Win pc (would have to buy) as a server and for copying.
4. Which RAID to use.
5. Should I consider the DVDFAB movie server as an option.

A little direction in what to do would be very helpful.

[netmask56]

You can save a lot of time by simply using MakeMKV bypassing DVDFab altogether. I have transferred all of my DVD's and BD's discs this way to my NAS.

[desertrider]

Netmask56,

Thanks for the reply. Approx. how long to transfer a file to hdd using MakeMKV. Also did you build the NAS or buy. What are you using as a movie manager?

[lingyi]

Discussed numerous times here. Suggest doing a search as almost everything has been answered in previous threads.

In a [BIG] nutshell (my apologies to those that have read my previous posts about this):

• DVDs, whether on the disc or on your HDD were and always will be digital (digitized) until you view it on your analog screen.
• RAID is not and never has been a true backup solution in any configuration. Lose one or more drives (depending on configuration) and you could lose all the data. True backup means [making] at least one one copy of the data on your HDD(s) to either another HDD(s), cloud, optical disc or tape. Ideally you should follow the 1-2-3/3-2-1 strategy: 3 copies of your data, 2 stored locally on physical media or on the cloud and 1 off[site] on physical or cloud. Personally, I count my original discs as one copy and have two identical sets of HDDs kept onsite. My most critical collection is stored on [thee] HDDs and one is stored in a fireproof bag onsite. My personal philosophy is that if something catastrophic were to happen to my place, my smallest worry would be my large collection of movies and videos. Even my most critical data is nothing that I couldn't recreate or retreive online.
• Note that flash drives and SSDs or any RAM based storage is not a backup solution. By their nature, they rarely fail just partially, it's usually all at once and data recovery is in its infancy and very, very, very expensive and not guaranteed.
• Again, RAID in any configuration is not a backup solution! Even if if the array is recoverable, it's still in one location. My two sets of my video collection are stored on external multi-drive USB 3.0 enclosures. One set is attached to my main PC for rips copied to them. The second is attached to a laptop for viewing on my main HDTV. And a third subset is for viewing on my second HDTV because I can't watch certain videos on my main set which is a plasma and prone to image retention from onscreen logos.
• Yes, you can use multiple optical drives to rip and remux your discs to .mkv. When I had to re-rip my then 600+ disc collection to .iso because of a major brainfart (I formatted both my primary drive and backup), I set up three DVD drives. One internal and two external. Three drives was optimal because it took ~10min to rip each disc* and by the time I inserted and set up what audio and subs I wanted on drive 3, drive 1 had completed the rip. Rinse and repeat 600+ times = ~6000min/60 = 100 hours over a couple of months to complete.
  
  *I did a test with MakeMKV a couple of months ago and found that it took ~10min per disc independent [of] CPU speed/power (tested on an AMD A6 laptop and I7 tower) with external DVD drives. Showing that the limiting factor is the read speed of the optical drive. Blu-Ray discs took ~30-40min per disc.
• IF you're not going to steam and connect the drives directly [to a] device on your projector and TV, there's no need for Plex or any other streaming software. Get an eternal USB 3.0 enclosure or dock, or even better a multi drive enclosure for expansion and connect directly. You can update or sync the drives either through software or sneakernet. I walk the drives I have connected to my TVs and manually copy and sync the files from the drives connected to my PC. I use and used to recommend the 4 & 8 drive Mediasonic Probox(s), because they're very reliable, ( have six in use currently and *knock wood*, the only problem I've had is the fan in one died. I got a replacement and it's been working fine for years. I'm hesitant to recommend them now because the prices have gone up significantly. Though they're still probably lower priced than comparable boxes.
• A major plus to using an external drive box to play your videos from is that instead of remuxing to .mkv or any other container, which will cause you to lose the menus and file structure of you DVDs, you can save to .iso and retain/play the image exactly as if it were a DVD with almost any media player. If you save your Blu_Rays or UHDs to .iso, you'll need a (usually paid) media player as the Blu-Ray and UHD media playback requirements are stricter than DVDs.
• A major con for me about Plex and any other streaming software is that subtitle streaming is hit and miss. Not all sub formats are supported and even those that [are] may not stream correctly, either not at all or not supporting features like colors and positioning. Subtitles can be "burned-in" by transcoding (i.e. embedded temporarily in the video stream) on on the fly, but the effectiveness and speed is dependent on the streaming server. And again, features such as sub color and positioning may be incorrect.
• There are those that recommend (or insist you need) a NAS with or without RAID, but if you're not streaming there's no advantage to a NAS other than possibly putting [it] somewhere out of site and reading/writing files remotely.
• Which brings me to IMO, a major, major advantage to having a completely separate set of drives connected to a laptop/device that's separate from my main PC. In the even[t] of a virus or ransomware, ANY storage device except optical discs accessible by your infected PC at the time it's active, including NAS, RAID, flash drives and cloud storage can be infected [and/or] locked. By having a separate set of drives that are never connected more than two at a time to my main PC, they're almost impossible to infect/lock at the time of the infection/activation.

[lingyi]

Another con about RAID. While it's touted and true that you can rebuild a RAID, it can take days since you're having to read/write/verify to multiple drives at once. It's takes less then 24 hours to copy and verify 8TB of files, a mix of DVD and Blu-Ray rips/remuxes from one drive to another, both contained in my Probox. You can get slightly faster transfers by connecting the drives internally.

[lingyi]

I've ranted about this (too) many times. Don't use the cheap external hard drives from WD and Seagate for storage or backup. The drives inside are fine, in the case of current 12TB and 14TB WD Easystore drives, they're either red label or rebadged white label NAS drives. Don't know about the 10TB externals and reports are the current (as of a year or so ago) 8TB externals are no long[er] NAS drives. The problem is that since these externals are sold for far less than their internal counterparts, the USB interface and external power supply are cheap and prone to failure. I'm speaking from experience with dozens of these drives over the years. Remove the drives from the case and they're just as good as full priced NAS drives. The catch is that you may void the warranty if you remove the drives from their case. Personally the risk is worthwhile [for me] since I typically upgrade (to higher capacity drives) every two to three years, using the smaller drives a[s] backups.

[netmask56]

Popcorn A-500 media player has it's own built in media manager ~

My NAS is a QNAP TS851-4G with 8 drives

[cornemuse]

Dont know about mkv, tried it & removed everything associated with it.
DVD folders to *.iso typically (for me) (I rip dvds to folders & then "DVDshrink" 'movie only' to iso) takes 3 - 5 minutes. Save on 3½" WD blues, copy to 2½" (WD's) to watch with Argosy - Dune - Micca - player. Dont stream/wifi etc. Got the WD's from Frys (before they did???whatever) for promo code price $39 - $40, 1T blues. I dont like the idea of losing 2-3-7-8 T's of movies in one fell swoop. (1 T = 175± movies)

Redfox AnyDVD + DVDShrink, , , , Works for me

-c-

[desertrider]

lingyi,

Wow a lot of information to take in. I thought this was something simple. At 75 and not being too computer literate this is a lot. I was looking at using PLEX as a movie manager for the way it populates the information and the appearance of the GUI. If I am reading your reply correctly, instead of having a RAID setup, you are suggesting to have a complete set of hdds with all the movies and a second spare set aside in case of a drive failure. Then it seems I have to select an enclosure for the hdds. I looked at the Mediasonic Probox(s) and the prices are as you say. What size hdd (4-6-8tb) are the most reliable? I am not sure how many drives or what configuration I need. Any thoughts on the DVDFAB server.

netmask56,

How does the Popcorn A-500 compare with the DVDFAB server if I decide to go that way/

[lingyi]

Going off topic, but I'm in the opposite camp in regards to HDD storage. I go for the largest drives because per TB they're cheaper, hovering around $15/TB for 8-14TB externals. A stack of 1TB drives which currently run ~$40 would cost $320 for 8TB, versus as as low as $120 for a single 8TB drive of which I can buy two for less than the cost of the stack of 1TB drives and have money left over. A couple of years ago, I bought four brand new decased 2.5" Seagate 4TB drives for $50-$60 each. Never figured out why they where (are, as I think the highly rated sellers are still on eBay). so cheap. As I recall, both sellers said they decased them for testing. One for a mini-RAID setup. Hmmm...

I'm a believer that the more drives, the more probability of failure. While the likelihood of both 4TB drives dying before a single 8TB drive. For me, the cost and time savings (having to restore the data to new drives) is worthwhile.

Since I always decase and use my cheap externals as bare drives in my USB boxes, there is the cost factor of the boxes themselves. At ~$25-30 per bay ($100-$240 per box), it's much cheaper to get a larger drive than buy another box.

I realize that I have an unusually sized collection and usage (all external USB boxes, no NAS or RAID). But just stating what works best for me in cost, time and usability.

[desertrider]

Ok, so if a 8TB drive is enough for my collection, I would get at least 1 more 8TB drive as a backup. That makes sense when not using a RAID setup. Being that my Mac would not be available to run this, I would need a pc or something to act as the server. Any thoughts on this. And what speed hdd should i look for.

[lordsmurf]

Being that my Mac would not be available to run this, I would need a pc or something to act as the server.

I'm currently looking at Pi4 as a Serviio DLNA server.
https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-serviio-media-server-on-raspberry-pi
https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

The Pi would actually be the backup, the primary files would be on my main system external 5tb Seagate drives. The single large Pi drive would be networked over, Serviiio set to update library at an interval, probably use a small VNC to remote in.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/vnc/

For some tasks, the days of needing full computers is over. DLNA is one such task.

This is far cheaper than a NAS, cheaply upgradeable drive sizes.

Encode/rip/whatever (Handbrake somewhat sucks, but I do use it for simple ripping DVDs when possible, noting that it gets confused far too often on fps/res, requiring more manual rip/encode with Hybrid/etc). Then drop the encoded files to both the local attached main drive, then network drop to the Pi4 drive (acting as both backup and play storage).

[desertrider]

lordsmurf,
I did not know what a Pi4 was and had to look it up. Wow, things have bypassed me. I was looking to do something simple that I understand and not a lot of steps to get to the results. Thanks for your input and I now have other options to look into.

[lingyi]

@desertrider

Sorry for the wall of text in my first post, but I've been building and refining my video collection for almost 20 years and tried to cover as many bases as possible.

That said:

I'm confused as you why you say you need a server if you're not planning to stream the videos. Are you or are you not planning to connect the hard drive(s) to the projector and TV? If so, what do you plan to use to play them? You need something to act as a media player, whether a Raspberry Pi, Android Box or laptop/PC. Forget the media player that may be built into your TV as it's severely limited in what it can play.

FYI, the Popcorn A-500 (and I believe all Popcorn players) are long discontinued and overly priced used. Same with the Argosy player. Dune still makes a few models, but IMO, way overpriced compared to what $50-100, $200 max can get you today. If you're interested in a media player, I can post some links to some recent threads, but in a nutshell (for real this time), IMO the Good, Better, Best of standalone media players in terms of file compatibility and speed: Good - Android Box, Better - Raspberry Pi, Best - Laptop or PC. I started with a WDTV (a classic that is very limited compared to anything available today), tried an Android box and now use cheap <$200 laptop and just upgraded from my over ten year old PC to a $120 refurbed Dell I5, Win10 machine.

Don't know what happened to Probox. The prices just jumped drastically recently, but the four bay, non-Raid model I use is still $99 from Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-ProBox-HF2-SU3S2-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B003X26VV4/ref=sr...8025645&sr=8-5. If you don't mind the drive(s) being exposed, there's also the four bay dock (I have one of these too) for $69 https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-Bay-Dock-2-5-SATA/dp/B0078H8L04/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=...8025895&sr=8-1 and two bay docks from other manufacturers (I have one of these too. ) are even cheaper. But at least the one I have isn't built as sturdy as the Mediasonic.

The reason I highly recommend at least a two bay dock/enclosure is that transfers are faster than going external USB drive to external USB drive, but since it's so easy to insert and remove the backup drive(s), you're more likely to do it more often.

You don't say whether your collection is DVDs only or mix of DVDs and Blu-Rays. If it's DVDs only, yes your entire collection should easily fit on a single 8TB drive. But if it's both, you need an extra drive(s). I don't recommend the 12 & 14TB drives yet (just got and set up three 12TB drives last month, one original, one backup and one as spare/secondary backup) because they're still new. The three drives I got were all white label WD NAS drives.

As for DVDFab Movie Server, at $199 it's way overpriced. It's been a long time since I've played with it, but I'm sure Plex (also check out Mezzo which I liked better) can work locally as a movie catalog program. KODI is another popular (and free!) program that can be used on an Android Box, Pi or PC. Personally, I don't care about thumbnails and movie meta data. I keep my videos organized in folders for Directors by name, Actresses or TV shows. If I need info about a movie, I do a quick search on IMDB or other sites (my collection is 99.9% Asian). For variety shows (two that I follow have over 450 episodes), I copied and pasted the episode lists to Excel and can search by any of the info provided.

A potential issue with using movie server software even locally is that they may not support .iso(s) and even if they do, sometimes the menus don't work correctly. Unless it's been updated very recently, Plex doesn't support .iso, though Mezzmo does.

As for speed, the majority of the external cum internal drives I have are 5400RPM (many NAS drives are 5400RPM). This is perfectly fine for video storage and playback as it's primarily a write once, read many operation. As I stated above, the rip and/or remux process from DVDs and Blu-Rays are limited by the optical drive speed which is way slower than any hard drive.

FYI, on another thread, I did a test for the OP remuxing .iso(s) on my hard drive with MakeMKV. I ran four instances of MakeMKV simultaneously and it took less than two minutes each on my I7 system. I limited it to four instances because like ripping from multiple optical drives, by the time I set up instance #4, instance #1 was already done and in need of setup.

[lingyi]

You've said a couple of times that you couldn't use your Mac as a movie server. I'd agree it's true, but primarily due to lack of software. Unless you're playing back UHD discs (which have very strict PC hardware requirement due to copy protection), the 'server' requirements for video, even streaming is very low. Which is why an Android Box or Pi can be used.

[lingyi]

Some will claim XXX brand is the best or YYY brand is the worst, but manufacturers can switch components or firmware that may make a once reliable drive series terrible with no why to tell until install and use the drive.

Personally, I now buy based on price per TB and don't worry about failures since I have a backup that I can set and forget it for a day or two. If the drive is under warranty, great. If not I'm out ~$120 - $200 after two to three years. The way I look at it. If I put away $10-20/month (a pack of cigs, a few cups of coffee, loose change in the change jar), I can afford a new drive every year or two and get more storage [for the price]!

I buy at least one extra drive as spare for my backup since I remember the 2013 Thailand flow that hit the WD factory there. Drive prices skyrocketed and it took over a year to come back down to pre-flood prices and a good while after to start to fall to the low prices we have now. Fortunately I had enough spare space and a couple of spare drives to weather the price increase. I currently have ~35TB of unused space collectively on my drives, enough to last me 2-3 years max, and a spare 6TB (the smallest drive I use for my main video setup), two 8TB and a 10TB and 12TB for direct replacement if one of those fail. My spare drives are all WD just because they're cheaper than the equivalent Seagate or Hitachi drives. Except for the 6TB, all my spares are NAS drives, decased from WD extnerals. The 10TB is a WD Gold NAS drive that I got as a cost effectiveness test of the longer warranty (5 years vs 1-2 years of the decased drives). I'll know if the price difference was worth it in two years.

For those that remember, 2013 also had another disaster that seriously affected PC users. The Hynix factory had a major fire and since Hynix is a major supplier of RAM chips to other manufacturers, RAM prices shot up. Since RAM prices are far more volatile, rising and dropping without notice, and less of a necessity (i.e. 4GB instead of 8GB), people were better able to ride out the price jump.

[lingyi]

@desertrider

Sorry for the walls of text, but two pats on the back because you're in a far better place at 75 because you're asking questions before starting your project than a 15 year old who "knows it all, because he saw it on Youtube" and comes here crying because what he did resulted in poor quality (overly compressing his videos to save space) or his RAID failed and he didn't have second set of drives as backup.

Take it slow as it will take time to rip (and remux if you want .mkv(s)) and transfer the videos to your hard drive. Do it right, keep at least one backup and you won't have to do it again.

Do get a PC as there are more software options (like DVDShrink as cornemuse and I use). Don't spend too much as ripping/remuxing doesn't require a fast CPU (as demonstrated by my informal test with MakeMKV). My 600+ disc re-rip project was done on my old 2007 PC with an original Quad Core2 processor.

[desertrider]

lingyi,

Your "wall of texts" makes for some good reading even though I have to stop at times to google things I don't understand. Old fart still learning (lol).

Ok, to answer some of the things in no particular order.

* There are no bluray dvds in my collection. I play them in my Oppo.

* Not knowing any better, I used the word "server" instead of explaining that all I want is a program that will organize my collection with cover art.

* Referred to PLEX because I like the way it displayed the dvd,s with the cover art and descriptions.

* I know that I will have to remux my DVDS (mine were ripped with DVDFAB and are Video_TS files) depending upon which movie manager I use.

So my understanding is to get a pc/laptop with Win10, attached some sort of enclosure with Hdd(s), add program(s) to act as a movie manager, for ripping, and get some optical drives to speed up the transferring process.

Now one last question. I want to be able to watch these on either the living room 65" tv or 110" screen in the theater room. Everything will be hardwired (I don't like wifi) and run thru my Integra DTR 70.6 receiver. This setup will be in a different room so how do I access it remotely.

I may have missed something not sure.

[lingyi]

Now one last question. I want to be able to watch these on either the living room 65" tv or 110" screen in the theater room. Everything will be hardwired (I don't like wifi) and run thru my Integra DTR 70.6 receiver. This setup will be in a different room so how do I access it remotely.

Okay, this is where we get back to Plex (or other streaming app) comes into play. Sorry for repeating myself, but I'm trying to consolidate what I've said earlier since we know know your goals and setup. Sorry for the new wall of text and the excessive details, but I want to make things as clear as possible.

1. When you say everything is hardwired, does that include HDMI (which carries the video), in which case you could use your receiver as a splitter/switch to feed the projector and TV.

1a. If you don't have the HDMI signal hard wired to your projector and TV, you need streaming software, a server (and a device connected to both your projector and TV to receive the streamed signal (more about this below).

1b. I've mentioned the cons of using streaming software. Plex doesn't fully support .iso (a containerized version of your DVD) and you'll have to remux to a format it does support, .mkv recommended. However, when you remux to .mkv or any other container like .mp4, you'll lose the DVD menus and each file, main movie, extras will be separate. If you use a program that does support .iso like Mezzmo, some menu functions may not work correctly.

Subtitle support on streaming apps is hit and miss. Since you're playing back only DVDs (assuming commercial DVDs since you say you're ripped/decrypted them, this shouldn't be an issue because the subtitles on DVDs are bitmap images and static onscreen (hardcoded or selectable) or Close Captioned, again generally static on the top or bottom of the screen. However, when you remux to another container, the subtitles changed to separate files, .sub and .idx which is sometimes not show or rendered correctly.

If you have videos that are not from a DVD-Video (i.e. DVD compliant), for example a downloaded video from a TV show, it may use a different subtitle format that is text based and allows positioning anywhere on the screen, these may not be shown correctly when using a streaming app.

2. Most streaming software and standalone media players (more about his below) have video organizers built in. There is also add on video organizers such as discussed on these threads: https://www.videohelp.com/search?siteurl=forum.videohelp.com&q=video+organizer.

The only input that I have on video organizers is that info on them (scraped from websites) isn't always complete or accurate. The thumbnails and info may be wrong, especially when there are multiple versions of the same movie. You can edit the info, but doing so requires search out the correct info anyway.

3. Hardware media players. As I stated above, unless you're able to send the video signal directly to your TV and projector, you'll have to have a hardware media player connected to both to accept the streamed or local signal and play it back. This device can be a cheap PC or laptop*, Raspberry Pi or Android Box (there are other types of devices that can be used a a media player, but the former are the top three). The PC or laptop doesn't have to be powerful or large. You can use a mini, ultra small form factor or older PC.*

*My preferred choice since it will play 99.9% of whatever type of videos you have vs whatever lower percentage playable on other devices. If you're streaming, this isn't a big issue since you can transcode (tailor the stream) to the device used to playback. However, transcoding does result in a sometimes visible reduction in video quality.

**I just swapped out the 10 year old I was using a media player on my second TV because Win 7 support ends this month and it for the cost of a Win10 license, I was able to buy a complete refurbed PC with Win10 installed.

4. I highly recommend setting up and playing your videos locally and be kept offline because of the potential for a virus or ransomware attack. Anything connected to your PC at anytime locally or over the network, even on the cloud can be attacked. A keylogger can be installed prior to the attack and log what and when any storage is connected, then wait until they are before attacking. The drives on the local server on a large company I worked for was hit by ransomware (from someone's USB drive) and our shared drive had to restored from an offline backup. And I'm currently working at a company restoring the past six months of accounting data that was lost to ransomware. So I'm very, very aware of the damage an attack can do.

Potentially a bit more costly, but I'd recommend:

A cheap PC or laptop for ripping/remuxing your discs to a hdd which can be internal. This will be your original data. This can be attached to your TV or projected and be your media player.

If you get a desktop PC with a open 5.25" drive bay (you can remove the DVD drive since you'll have at least one external to speed up the ripping/remuxing process), you can install a removable drive cage like this https://www.amazon.com/Kingwin-Universal-Tray-Less-Backplane-Enclosure/dp/B00M3WNWB2/r...161797&sr=8-28 instead of getting an external enclosure. More about this below. Note that the cage since hot-swap capable, which means you don't have to restart your PC when you insert a new drive. A function that's probably not necessary for you. If it's important to you, hot swap capable cages are ~twice the price.

Your second setup can be any any type of device, but the most cost effective and safe may be a cheap desktop PC with both the OS (keep it on a separate drive) and storage drive internal and a drive cage. When you need to update the files from the storage drive, insert a transfer drive (I use an SSD mounted on this 2.5" to 3.5" adapter https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EX782JG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ) into your main PC, copy the files then walk then over and insert into your second PC.

Yes, much more troublesome than just transferring over the network, but far less likely for both your drives and PCs being infected or locked in an attack.

My setup is:

• Main PC for ripping/remuxing with my main set of hdds in Probox(s) which are off until I need to add files to them
• Laptop connected to my main TV with a set of hdds in Probox(s)
• Refurbed mini tower PC with hdds Probox(s). One 4 bay box is full and never touched. The second (because I happened to have it) is empty and used to house the transfer drive when needed.

I've been bringing the drives connected to the laptop over to my main PC for transfers/syncing, but thinking about it now, I've been doing it wrong. When I need to update/sync the file on may laptop setup, I'm going to carry the drives from my main setup over to that Probox. This way the virus/ransomware doesn't even know the drives in my second setup exist (barring the remote possibility that the virus/ransomware has already been transferred to my main drives).

For copying/verifying the files, I use Teracopy. Then use ViceVersa to compare the two drives to check that the number and sizes of the files on both drives are identical.

Overly paranoid and troublesome, probably. But losing a nearly 20 year collection to a non-physical catastrophic event by using caution is worthwhile for me.

[lingyi]

Now one last question. I want to be able to watch these on either the living room 65" tv or 110" screen in the theater room. Everything will be hardwired (I don't like wifi) and run thru my Integra DTR 70.6 receiver. This setup will be in a different room so how do I access it remotely.

Okay, this is where we get back to Plex (or other streaming app) comes into play. Sorry for repeating myself, but I'm trying to consolidate what I've said earlier since we know know your goals and setup. Sorry for the new wall of text and the excessive details, but I want to make things as clear as possible.

1. When you say everything is hardwired, does that include HDMI (which carries the video), in which case you could use your receiver as a splitter/switch to feed the projector and TV.

1a. If you don't have the HDMI signal hard wired to your projector and TV, you need streaming software, a server (and a device connected to both your projector and TV to receive the streamed signal (more about this below).

1b. I've mentioned the cons of using streaming software. Plex doesn't fully support .iso (a containerized version of your DVD) and you'll have to remux to a format it does support, .mkv recommended. However, when you remux to .mkv or any other container like .mp4, you'll lose the DVD menus and each file, main movie, extras will be separate. If you use a program that does support .iso like Mezzmo, some menu functions may not work correctly.

Subtitle support on streaming apps is hit and miss. Since you're playing back only DVDs (assuming commercial DVDs since you say you're ripped/decrypted them, this shouldn't be an issue because the subtitles on DVDs are bitmap images and static onscreen (hardcoded or selectable) or Close Captioned, again generally static on the top or bottom of the screen. However, when you remux to another container, the subtitles changed to separate files, .sub and .idx which is sometimes not show or rendered correctly.

If you have videos that are not from a DVD-Video (i.e. DVD compliant), for example a downloaded video from a TV show, it may use a different subtitle format that is text based and allows positioning anywhere on the screen, these may not be shown correctly when using a streaming app.

2. Most streaming software and standalone media players (more about his below) have video organizers built in. There is also add on video organizers such as discussed on these threads: https://www.videohelp.com/search?siteurl=forum.videohelp.com&q=video+organizer.

The only input that I have on video organizers is that info on them (scraped from websites) isn't always complete or accurate. The thumbnails and info may be wrong, especially when there are multiple versions of the same movie. You can edit the info, but doing so requires search out the correct info anyway.

3. Hardware media players. As I stated above, unless you're able to send the video signal directly to your TV and projector, you'll have to have a hardware media player connected to both to accept the streamed or local signal and play it back. This device can be a cheap PC or laptop*, Raspberry Pi or Android Box (there are other types of devices that can be used a a media player, but the former are the top three). The PC or laptop doesn't have to be powerful or large. You can use a mini, ultra small form factor or older PC.*

*My preferred choice since it will play 99.9% of whatever type of videos you have vs whatever lower percentage playable on other devices. If you're streaming, this isn't a big issue since you can transcode (tailor the stream) to the device used to playback. However, transcoding does result in a sometimes visible reduction in video quality.

**I just swapped out the 10 year old I was using a media player on my second TV because Win 7 support ends this month and it for the cost of a Win10 license, I was able to buy a complete refurbed PC with Win10 installed.

4. I highly recommend setting up and playing your videos locally and be kept offline because of the potential for a virus or ransomware attack. Anything connected to your PC at anytime locally or over the network, even on the cloud can be attacked. A keylogger can be installed prior to the attack and log what and when any storage is connected, then wait until they are before attacking. The drives on the local server on a large company I worked for was hit by ransomware (from someone's USB drive) and our shared drive had to restored from an offline backup. And I'm currently working at a company restoring the past six months of accounting data that was lost to ransomware. So I'm very, very aware of the damage an attack can do.

Potentially a bit more costly, but I'd recommend:

A cheap PC or laptop for ripping/remuxing your discs to a hdd which can be internal. This will be your original data. This can be attached to your TV or projected and be your media player.

If you get a desktop PC with a open 5.25" drive bay (you can remove the DVD drive since you'll have at least one external to speed up the ripping/remuxing process), you can install a removable drive cage like this https://www.amazon.com/Kingwin-Universal-Tray-Less-Backplane-Enclosure/dp/B00M3WNWB2/r...161797&sr=8-28 instead of getting an external enclosure. More about this below. Note that the cage since hot-swap capable, which means you don't have to restart your PC when you insert a new drive. A function that's probably not necessary for you. If it's important to you, hot swap capable cages are ~twice the price.

Your second setup can be any any type of device, but the most cost effective and safe may be a cheap desktop PC with both the OS (keep it on a separate drive) and storage drive internal and a drive cage. When you need to update the files from the storage drive, insert a transfer drive (I use an SSD mounted on this 2.5" to 3.5" adapter https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EX782JG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ) into your main PC, copy the files then walk then over and insert into your second PC.

Yes, much more troublesome than just transferring over the network, but far less likely for both your drives and PCs being infected or locked in an attack.

My setup is:

• Main PC for ripping/remuxing with my main set of hdds in Probox(s) which are off until I need to add files to them
• Laptop connected to my main TV with a set of hdds in Probox(s)
• Refurbed mini tower PC with hdds Probox(s). One 4 bay box is full and never touched. The second (because I happened to have it) is empty and used to house the transfer drive when needed.

I've been bringing the drives connected to the laptop over to my main PC for transfers/syncing, but thinking about it now, I've been doing it wrong. When I need to update/sync the file on may laptop setup, I'm going to carry the drives from my main setup over to that Probox. This way the virus/ransomware doesn't even know the drives in my second setup exist (barring the remote possibility that the virus/ransomware has already been transferred to my main drives).

For copying/verifying the files, I use Teracopy. Then use ViceVersa to compare the two drives to check that the number and sizes of the files on both drives are identical.

Overly paranoid and troublesome, probably. But losing a nearly 20 year collection to a non-physical catastrophic event by using caution is worthwhile for me.

Edit: Thank you to anyone reading for bearing with my walls of text. Hopefully the OP and/or others will benefit from my ramblings. [It's] true that this is all IMO, but I got to where I am with my setup through years of trial and error and going from good enough to what works best for me and to me the safest.

I rarely get to pass on my full experiences and opinions without someone jumping in and saying: You need a NAS. or You need to use RAID or You need to stream using XXX software, or some other solution that works for them, but is usually overkill or unnecessary for the OP.

[lingyi]

Oh...just realized. You have an Oppo Blu-Ray player. You should be able to play your .iso(s) or .mkv(s) through a drive connected to the USB port. Try it with a few files on a flash drive to see if that suits your needs.

Later, if you want, you can rip/remux your Blu-Rays to hdd to have them all available there.

Edit: You may also be able to stream the files from Plex or whatever streaming software you choose to the Oppo too! Look for DLNA in the manual or the specs online.

BTW, being an old fart doesn't have any bearing on learning and more importantly willing to read/absorb what to do. There are a number of regulars here in their 70's and I'm hitting the big 6-0 next month. Hey, that's means I'm a young-un here! As I just said on another thread, at least you're not replying with "Site XXX or YouTube video XXX says to do it this way". If you did, I'd have bid farewell long ago and left you to their advice.

Thanks again for bearing with me. My hope is to see you post that everything went well and you're happy with whatever decisions you've made!

Oh, and an early happy birthday from a young old fart!!!

[desertrider]

lingyi,

I'll answer questions you have as I read along

1. Yes everything is hard wired with HDMI.

1b. I ripped/decrypted only the main movie and do not have any TV shows. Understand now remuxing to another format may cause problems with subtitles.

2. Understand that there maybe some editing with any of the video organizers when grabbing metadata but hopefully its on the low side.

3. Hardware media player. So, all I need is a pc and run the HDMI to my receiver.

4. I like the idea of the pc and installing a removable drive cage. I was going to buy a pc prior to this endeavor and had set aside $500. Would it be practical to build a mini pc with a SSD for
the OS and install the swappable drive and a DVD burner. This would also be a learning experience.

So with a main computer with all the movies, how is this controlled if it is in another room? This main pc would have a DVD drive for ripping/remuxing.

[desertrider]

lingyi,

just saw your reply. All the dvds I ripped/decrypted with DVDFAB play in the OPPO. How can I tell what format they were ripped too.

[lingyi]

lingyi,

just saw your reply. All the dvds I ripped/decrypted with DVDFAB play in the OPPO. How can I tell what format they were ripped too.

If you truly ripped them with DVDFab, they're an exact bit for bit copy of the original discs less the copy protection (the decryption part). Compare them to the original discs and the file size should be just slightly smaller because of the lack of copy protection. Thinking about it, you say see the video.ts files (VIDEO_TS is the name of the folder they're in), so that's a sign that unless you chose to shrink the files during the rip from a DVD-9 (up to ~8GB) to DVD-5 (~4.7GB), they're the exact same as the originals.

So that's good news. Just to be sure. You put the files on a flash drive and played them on the OPPO from there, correct?

If so you have three options (there's always an IF and options for me <GRIN>:

You could copy the VIDEO-TS folder and contents (no need for the AUDIO_TS and EXTRAS folders which 99% of the time are empty) to your hard drive and rename the folder to whatever you want. Then play the the video that way by navigating to that folder on your OPPO. Kind of clunky way to do it. Note that you can direct copy the folder over to your hard drive only because the copy protection is gone. If you did this with a protected disc, the folder/files would still be copyable, but wouldn't play correctly from the hard drive.

Rip to .iso or convert (not necessary to rip since the copy protection is gone) or using a burn program (ImgBurn on PC, not sure what to use on Mac) and setting the output to .iso on your hard drive instead of burning a disc.

Rip/remux with to .mkv with MakeMKV which is also available for Mac. Your OPPO should also be able to play .mkv(s).

AFAIK, can't rip your Blu-Rays to .iso and play them on your OPPO through the USB ports. They have to be .mkv

[lingyi]

lingyi,

I'll answer questions you have as I read along

1. Yes everything is hard wired with HDMI.

1b. I ripped/decrypted only the main movie and do not have any TV shows. Understand now remuxing to another format may cause problems with subtitles.

2. Understand that there maybe some editing with any of the video organizers when grabbing metadata but hopefully its on the low side.

3. Hardware media player. So, all I need is a pc and run the HDMI to my receiver.

4. I like the idea of the pc and installing a removable drive cage. I was going to buy a pc prior to this endeavor and had set aside $500. Would it be practical to build a mini pc with a SSD for
the OS and install the swappable drive and a DVD burner. This would also be a learning experience.

So with a main computer with all the movies, how is this controlled if it is in another room? This main pc would have a DVD drive for ripping/remuxing.

Woot! Making progress!

1. Much, much easier. You can just run everything from on PC or your Mac.

1b. No. Remuxing isn't the problem. Remuxing is just taking the file(s) from one container (in your case, the DVD itself) and putting them into another container. The analogy I use is: Buy a cake from the bakery and take it from the box and put in your Tupperware container at home. The cake remains the same, just the container is different. In the case of DVDs where even a single movie is contained in multiple video_ts files (1GB max each), it would be like taking six cupcakes from six different bag and putting in your Tupperware container. Like the cake, the cupcakes are exactly the same, just in a different container.

The issue with subtitles is the way streaming programs handle or don't handle them. For many (most?) people it's not an issue because they either don't need the subtitles or rarely use them.

2. Yes, it's inevitable that some tweaking will be required. Less so if they're mainly Hollywood or Western movies.

3. Yes, Connect the HDMI out from your PC into your HDMI in on your receiver (nice one BTW) and send the signal to the TV or projector in the other room. What I'm not sure of is if the 5.1 an 7.1 audio signal is sent through the HDMI cable or you'll have to connect the optical out for that. Where is the receiver located? I'm guessing in the projector room?

4. Yes, building a PC is relatively easy, an 1-1 1/2 project at most for the hardware. And you $500 is plenty until you're also planning to do heavy gaming on your system.

You'd probably have to go with a Mini Tower case to get two externally accessible 5.25 bays and space for an SSD and 3.5" hdd. This is actually better for a first time builder since you'll have much more space to work in, not having to be super careful moving your wiring around in a tight space. Visit pcpartspicker.com to play around and design your system.

While the DIY hardware building is a snap, installing, tweaking and adding software in Win10 can take hours. First of all, when you install Win10, be sure to carefully read every page that comes up during the install, especially the user enhancement/experience pages. This is the where the infamous "I agree to send all my information to Microsoft." options are. Personally I say no to everything at install and turn off anything that doesn't say, paraphrasing of course "This is a really bad thing to disable." in Windows itself. The same thing applies to any software you install. Don't just say yes to everything that pops up. (More about his below).

****

If you're using just one PC. You could remote into it using VNC software through your tablet, phone or laptop. My personal favorite is UltraVNC, which is free. Setup the server on your main PC and install the viewer app on whatever you're using on the other end. The nice thing about VNC is it's cross platform. In general, any VNC viewer can be used to connect to and control the PC with the server.

I have a question though. If you're going to be sending the video via HMDI only to, I assume the TV. How are you going to do a backup of your main PC? I take it insert the backup drive into the drive cage? This is fine, though risky if your system get's hit be a virus/ransomware.

A tip. Since SSDs are so relatively cheap <$100, in addition to regular system backups, immediately after I've installed and tweaked my OS, I make a clone of the drive to another SSD. This way in a worst case scenerio, rather than just restoring to a known good version of the OS. I just swap out the drives. Then once I'm sure the new disk is working correctly, clone the newly installed disk contents to the old SSD. Rinse and repeat and needed.

[lordsmurf]

lordsmurf,
I did not know what a Pi4 was and had to look it up. Wow, things have bypassed me. I was looking to do something simple that I understand and not a lot of steps to get to the results. Thanks for your input and I now have other options to look into.

Pi isn't really complex anymore, lots of GUI tools. The Linux base is equally easy. After that initial setup, you can just VNC over to it, or connect via network on your Win/Mac/Lin system. For the most part, it's unattended. Plug into UPS to keep it powered during outages. Use a good Pi case to not overheat.

The slight learning curve isn't really daunting, but lots of people have a technophobia of something new. Just get past that.

[desertrider]

lingyi,

You asked, "So that's good news. Just to be sure. You put the files on a flash drive and played them on the OPPO from there, correct?" I meant that all the ripped dvds play in the OPPO. I currently don't have a DVD writer for the mac to copy a disc to usb.

The receiver is located in a a/v rack in the living room.

I don't under stand what you are asking, "I have a question though. If you're going to be sending the video via HMDI only to, I assume the TV. How are you going to do a backup of your main PC? I take it insert the backup drive into the drive cage? This is fine, though risky if your system get's hit be a virus/ransomware."

Both TV and projector have HDMI. I thought my backup is done after I first copy everything to HDD and then make another copy which is then set aside in case i have a HDD failure. I would only do another backup if I ripped more DVDs.

So much info to absorb. I have an Elan G home system which controls everything thru an Hr2 remote, so I was hopeful to be able to control this new setup thru one remote to keep things simple. We will see how this goes.

I will start looking at mini cases and such.


lordsmurf,

I will look into pi to see how easy it might be to learn. But not sure if I want to go that way and thanks again for replying and giving me the info.

[lingyi]

Ahhh...I thought you copied the DVDs to a flash drive. Oops!

Okay. We'll go back a bit. Hang in there!

When you say "Yes everything is hard wired with HDMI.", does that mean that the second room (assuming with the projector) currently has or you have a way to run an HDMI cable from the receiver to that room?

If Yes, then you just need one PC from which you can send the HDMI output of the PC into the receiver which in turn can split and send the output to both TV and projector.

If No, then you still need to have a device in the second room to play the videos from, either streamed to it from the main PC or with it's own hard drive from which to play them.


If you're just using a single PC (sending the HDMI signal to both rooms through the receiver) you'll need a way remote control that PC.

Your Elan G system is really nice. Reading up on it, you can control A/V devices and I suspect it may be possible to remote control your PC with some special software installed on it. Check with your dealer/installer about this.

If not, you'll have to remotely view the screen on the PC (which doesn't have to be on) as if you were sitting in front of it. This is where VNC comes in.

If you have a second PC/other device in the second room, you connect that directly to your TV/projector and navigate that way.


As for backup. Yes, backup everything the hard drive on main/only PC to a drive you insert into the drive cage. Sorry I made it confusing. I was in the mindset of what I do as I outlined above.

If you have a second PC/other device setup in the second room, the hard drive you use on that can be your backup hard drive that you copy the files to from you main PC.

[desertrider]

Ok, the a/v rack in the living room has the receiver which has HDMI outputs to living room tv and to the projector in the theater room. The proposed pc setup would go into another room off the kitchen.

All the rooms were wired with multiple cat5 and coax when we built the house. I would use Dual CAT5 Extenders back to the receiver from the pc in this room. The receiver has an HDMI input for pc.

I will be talking to Elan tech support to see what is possible about controlling the pc.

For a pc I would be looking at an SSD for Win10 OS and a case where I could put 2 swappable HDDs and an optical drive. Would also need additional optical drives to speed up the copying process.

[lingyi]

Woot again! We're getting there!

There's no real advantage to using an internal optical drive as even with USB 2.0 the transfer speed doesn't bottleneck the read/rip speed of the DVDs/Blu-Rays. This makes it easier to find a smaller case as most have two 5.25 bays at most.

For your external optical drives, if it doesn't have a Y-cable which allows you to use two USB ports, you can get them at Amazon. The reason is that even though a single USB 3.0 port should provide enough power, sometimes, especially ehen playing/ripping Blu-Rays, the drive will slow down because of low power. Also, don't stack the drives on each other, the vibration may cause one of more the drives to slow down because of read errors while ripping.

Yes, definitely an SSD or consider an M.2 SSD that connects directly to the MB and is faster. A 240 or 500GB drive for <$100 should be more than enough for your needs. Won't do anything to helps your ripping, but since you're building new, something to consider. I use a 120GB SSD in my main system and since I don't any type of gaming, it's more than enough.