Import DVD Library to computer

[the taker]

Hello, I'm new to this particular forum, but had commented quite a bit while this site was part of Tom's Hardware. I'm sure that the discussions have been done to death on importing DVDs to computer, but I just see too many options out there to know what will work good for me.

I have an iPod nano that plays video, so watching the occasional movie or TV show in there would be great. I've also tried converters for AVI show downloads off bittorrent, to convert to iPod, but don't seem to have any success there either.I've tried some free downloads and experimented with settings (Handbrake and can't remember what else) but just can't seem to get a good import. I've got a brand new SATA DVD Burner, and instead of archiving movies to another DVD, I'd like to start importing them to a computer viewable file.

Can anyone let me know what has worked for them on starting to create a DVD/video library, and how to make it as few clicks as possible to get a file imported successfully?

Thanks,
caretakerthe

 

[scotty]

I too have wrestled with this... The trick with importing/converting DVD's is formats. What works well for one device won't necessarily work well or work at all on other devices or formats down the road. Not to mention, converting can be trickier than ripping because you're potentially dealing with tons fof different input formats of different quality.

That said, your best bet these days format-wise is H.264/AVC, which is pretty much the wave of the future, and pretty much everyone is on the bandwagon, including Apple. It's also what BluRay is encoded in, in case you didn't know. As far as a container goes, MP4 is pretty safe and universally compatible. MKV is even better and more flexible, but there's less support for it amongst consumer devices. H.264 in an MP4 offers good compression, high quality, good audio options, and widespread support. There's no universally 'best' format, but that would be the closest. Getting a file to play on a computer is rarely an issue, as you can obviously just load whatever codecs you need to just use VLC. Don't worry about your computers.

Program-wise, I've had the best success with handbrake. It offers tons of options, it's easy to use, and is actively developed and supported with good support forums. The 'Universal Apple' preset is pretty good, and will play on virtually anything. That would be your best bet especially with an iPod. A friend of mine has had good success with another program called XiliSoft DVD Ripper / Converter. I tried it and it's pretty solid, but not terribly good support. There's many others as well. Handbrake is in my opinion the best mix of power, ease of use, and most importantly, support. You say you're not getting good imports, what's going on?

I've wrestled with this issue a lot and there's just no 'best' answer simply because it can depend on so many factors about what will be playing it later. A couple other good options would be Microsoft's VC-1/WMV or Xvid/MP4, both with good support and most players/devices will handle them. Unfortunately with these formats they're not compatible on most Apple products, so that can be a killer if you need that compatibility. Hence again, H264.

 

[the taker]

thanks for the reply Scotty. I guess I'm mostly using iTunes/iPod, so I'd be looking for compatible files that way. In the future I may do an HTPC, but at that point, I'm sure that whichever htpc software/OS I use, I could find a plug-in for mp4 or whatever the extension is for movies in itunes. the main thing i want is the shows from avi, and will probably focus on DVDs later.

I only have a 4GB iPod nano, so the smaller file size the better on video files. most of the shows I find online are 720p resolution (350MB per 1hour (45min minus commercials)). Seems like even converting to quicktime format creates a much larger file. Any way to keep most of the quality and keep the size similar? the success I had made a 200MB or so file balloon close to a GB for the standard res show that I converted from AVI to quicktime.

 

[scotty]

Here goes...

Before we go further, a quick note about formats and terminology because you seem to be confusing the two. Encoding methods (codecs) and containers are two different things. "AVI" is a container, it can have many different types of video inside of it, like Mpeg, Divx, etc. You could have two AVI files with potentially very different kinds of videos inside. Same goes for MP4, MKV, and many other containers. You can have the exact same H.264 video inside an .MP4, .M4V, .MKV, file/container. There's some good background about containers here, and here. 'Quicktime' isn't really a format, it's a playback platform. Quicktime can play lots of different kinds of files. As far as video goes, apple generally deals in MP4 and M4V containers, using mpeg-4 or AVC encoding, played back via. the quicktime player. That said, most videos downloaded from the internet as "AVI" use divx encoding - and by default, Quicktime sets itself as the default player for .AVI files. But the two dont have much to do with each other, you can play these files in WMP, VLC, etc.

That said, 350MB per hour for 720p video? That's suspiciously low, something doesn't add up there. Usually you get that kind of size in a medium-quality 480 divx encoded video. As well, you have to be careful with resolutions, because it's easy to cheat. Even Apple has been known to cheat a little with it's iTunes HD content. Many times, it's just regular standard def video that's been quickly or poorly up-converted to 720 or 1080. Just because it's "720", doesn't mean it's terribly good quality. A properly encoded video in 480 will look as good or better than a poorly encoded 720 or even 1080 video. And remember, usually people are encoding these from DVD's, which are inherently 720x480 to begin with. If you keep that resolution and encode it well, there isn't really much of a need to go to 720 or 1080. I've done of ton of experimentation with various DVDs, and quite frankly forget 720 or higher (unless you're ripping actual Blu Ray discs which are inherently encoded in high res). Very good to high quality video in H.264 at 480 is going to cost about 1GB/hour, give or take. Most of my 2 hour DVDs are about 2GB each. This is pretty good considering it's as good quality as the original disc which is 6-8GB in size. Encoding as come a long way since DVD's first came about. DVDs are effectively using 15 year old Mpeg2 encoding.

Now, all of that being said, onto your iPod nano. Since the screen is so small, you can compress/encode content down to pretty small file sizes without noticing virtually any degradation. The problem is, later down the road, those tiny files likely wont look very good on a TV/HTPC setup, so you have to make some decisions. If you only want to encode/convert things once, you'd obviously want to err on the side of quality, so things will look good on your high def TVs down the road. The only downside is filesize, but at least it will still look good on a TV. These are decisions/compromises you have to make. Personally, I have an iPhone 8GB, so I've decided to live with the fact that I either encode twice (smaller file sizes for the iphone), or live with the fact that I'm limited to the amount of video on the device. This is why handbrake created a 'Universal Apple' preset - it looks good on Ipods and Apple TV, and is a reasonable file size.

Phew, that's over.

 

[the taker]

Okay, so I guess I haven't done my homework on this...I'm pretty good with OS and networking, and even starting my MCITP certification to further my career, but I'm not well versed in digital a/v. Let me see if I can start sounding a little more intelligent here.

I looked at the file itself, and it is a DVIX file that I decode using FFDshow. The resolution of 1 file that I looked at is 624x352...looks like a 16:9 ratio for the file, but see that it's maybe 1/2 the resolution of 720p. The files look very good, pretty much DVD quality despite the smaller size, and I have no problem watching them fullscreen on my laptop or desktop LCD in 100% size or full-screen, since I watch them from a few feet away. I'm pretty much just trying to catch up on weekly TV shows in my spare time, not so much worried about high-def right now.

Sticking with digital files, but looking at handbrake for video encoding settings, I see h264 and MPEG-4 encoding. I'm wondering which would be smaller file size. I see that the containers available are avi, mp4, m4v, etc.

I think I had a "help myself" moment, and decided to look further at the settings that I was using to convert. I had a different aspect ratio than the original file and a different video size.

I'm using the program called WinFF, and I think maybe i'll try a few more experimentations with conversion. if I get a good encode in h264 that actually works in itunes/ipod, I might stick with that, otherwise i'll experiment further with the mpeg-4 encoding options. i'll see if I can come up with either a better conversion, or a better explanation if it doesn't work right.

 

[scotty]

I actually just started getting into a bit of a/v and encoding about a year ago, it can be confusing to start.

That resolution you mention is actually pretty common, it means that whatever encoded it automatically removed the black bars, using various anamorphic settings. It's very common to get funky resolutions like that. For further info, look at Handbrake's explanation of anamorphic settings.

For a smaller file size, the container itself wont matter much. But some containers have different options for audio, so handbrake might be compressing the audio, which can make a difference. I'm not expert on codecs, but I believe mpeg4 is slightly lower size, and H.264/AVC is slightly larger size, but better quality. Mpeg-4 in an MP4 container is pretty safe.

I use Handbrake's generic film setting with some minor tweaks, and it look good on any device I play it. You might also want to look into de-interlacing. It will increase the time it takes to convert, but will pay big dividends when you play it on TV's or computers. Non-interlaced content looks horrible, even with other settings cranked.