What is best way to archive DVD-r discs

[jay1028]

This is 2020 and in all my searches, all I can turn up is old info from 10 years ago and older. I have a lot of family DVDs and want to archive them in the event the optical discs go unreadable or corrupt somehow. So far I have been using imgburn to create an iso of the dvd and store on external HDs. Is there a better way to create a disc backup or smaller backup file? What is anyone else using?
Thanks

[johns0]

What i do for dvds is use makemkv and store the mkv on hdd,iso's are ok to store but not many readers can play iso files if you wanted to play them quickly.

[johnmeyer]

If these are DVDs you created yourself, you can simply copy the VIDEO_TS folder to a hard drive, just using drag 'n drop in Windows Explorer or Mac Finder. No need for a ripper or anything else. When you want to play those files, just drop the VIDEO_TS folder stored on your hard drive onto your media player. Most media players will put the main DVD menu up on your screen and you can then navigate the menus, just like you would on a set-top DVD player, and watch the video.

I would advise against doing anything else because you might lose something (like subtitles or alternate audio tracks). You certainly want to avoid anything that would re-encode the video.

[lingyi]

DVDFab (the DVD decryption part is always free after the trial ends) or DVDShrink to iso.

As johnmeyer stated, don't re-encode. The space and costs savings is literally pennies. If you want to re-encode to say H.264 for sharing, make a copy but keep the original file as is.