[olug] DVD Ripping

Thu Oct 16 14:39:34 UTC 2008

H.264 is probably going to be smaller and almost always better than
XVID. It just takes longer to encode.  Done right however, an XVID can
look very nice.  I have some HD XVID's of BattleStar Galactica
episodes coming in at about 12meg/min but they are gorgeous.  I
realize that is way to big for your constraints, but know it can be
done.  I've seen some good stuff encoded pretty small with XVID.

> Long ago when I grabbed movies off p2p networks and stuff, I was content
> with 2 CD movies in divx/xvid -- but -- after watching some more dvd's after
> the fact, I found their quality to be... well.. lacking.

First of all, shame on you ;-)  Second of all, a lot of people who do
releases in "the scene" don't really know what they are doing.  If you
go find a maVen XVID release (have to be older as they now often use,
that's right, H.264) you'll be impressed in comparison (not that I'm
encouraging you to pirate again).

> ...decoding PC would need to be at most a couple years old probably.

Another good point, though I'm sure your PS3 could handle it. Although
does the PS3 even support this sort of thing? I haven't bought a new
console since forever.

>... although I suppose I'd have to look at Myth's movie
> playback features (and if I'd just need to rip as .iso or what).

Elisa [0] looks really good.  That's what I'm going to switch to once
the TV part is released.

[0] http://elisa.fluendo.com/

- John Hobbs

john at velvetcache.org

On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 9:23 AM, T. J. Brumfield <enderandrew at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for the info.  I'm not too worried about time per disc, though
> with so many perhaps I should be.  I'd rather find something that
> works well, and saves me from ripping multiple times, even if it takes
> longer per rip.
>
> I thought the big advantage of xvid was the small file size.  Xvid
> rips are often under 1 gig.  But some of them aren't very good quality
> that I can tell.
>
> Depending on how small I get the movies, and how many HDDs I can
> afford determines if I end up going RAID 1 or RAID 5.  I'm using over
> 500 gigs on my gaming rig right now, without a movie collection.
>
> -- T. J.
>
> On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 9:16 AM, John Hobbs <john at velvetcache.org> wrote:
>> H.264 is pretty great, but can be slow to encode.  Most, uh, shared
>> copies, of DVD's out there are going to be XVID/DIVX because they are
>> pretty good and don't take forever to encode.  There are different
>> "best" settings on those for different movie types, i.e. anime has
>> different needs (more solid color swatches) then an action movie, so
>> you might want to do things a genre at a time.
>>
>> As for applications, dvd::rip [0] is my favorite Linux app. and you
>> can use it in a cluster to do your processing even faster.  Don't know
>> how simple it would be to just "put in and rip" though, at the very
>> least you'll need to change settings for different aspect ratios.
>>
>> [0] http://www2.exit1.org/dvdrip/
>>
>> - John Hobbs
>>
>> john at velvetcache.org
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 9:07 AM, T. J. Brumfield <enderandrew at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I have about 400 or so DVDs sitting on shelves behind me.  A long time
>>> ago I ripped all my music and just got rid of all my CDs.  Given that
>>> I can stream video wirelessly from my PC to either my hacked XBox, or
>>> even better my PS3 and watch them on my big screen, do I need my DVD
>>> collection anymore?  When I'm less broke (perhaps in the spring with
>>> my tax rebate helping) I want to build a new gaming PC, but throw in
>>> as many 1.5 TB (or 2 TB disks if they have them by then) disks as I
>>> can afford, and my case/power supply can handle into a RAID.  After
>>> than I'd like to rip all my DVDs to that RAID.  I currently dual-boot
>>> on my gaming rig (for gaming obviously) so I can do this in Windows or
>>> Linux.  Since I have to rip about 400 movies, and several TV sets, it
>>> would be nice if I can make this fairly simple.  I don't want to have
>>> to change codec settings with each disc, ripping each disc repeatedly
>>> to try and get a decent rip.
>>>
>>> I'd like the rips to be smaller than the 4.7 GB your average DVD is
>>> sitting at, barely crossing the single/dual layer line.  However, at
>>> the same time I want the quality to be pretty decent, so I don't
>>> regret getting rid of the physical discs.  With a decent sized TV
>>> (56") flaws are more apparent.  Obviously, quality is somewhat a
>>> matter of taste, but I'm looking for recommendations on what programs
>>> to use, which codecs to use, and which settings.
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>> -- T. J. Brumfield
>>> "In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of
>>> people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
>>> --Douglas Adams
>>> "Nihilism makes me smile."
>>> --Christopher Quick
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> OLUG mailing list
>>> OLUG at olug.org
>>> https://lists.olug.org/mailman/listinfo/olug
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> OLUG mailing list
>> OLUG at olug.org
>> https://lists.olug.org/mailman/listinfo/olug
>>
>
>
>
> --
> "In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of
> people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
> --Douglas Adams
> "Nihilism makes me smile."
> --Christopher Quick
> _______________________________________________
> OLUG mailing list
> OLUG at olug.org
> https://lists.olug.org/mailman/listinfo/olug
>