How does everyone handle dvds?

[keith2045]

I've got about 100 dvd movies, and about 5 different series of tv shows on dvd (well over 1000 eps). I've got all of those movies riped and encoded in about 1.7GB xvid files on a 600GB hdd. I'm working on getting all of my tv shows encoded, but that is taking forever. High audio and video quality are a must, and im pretty happy with the current quality of my compressed videos. It just takes way to long.

My question is what does everyone else do with their movie dvds? Do you compress them at all? What about tv shows? Does the new MP-Tvseries work with vobs? How big are the files?

I'm just curious on what everyone else does. Oh and my movie/tv show collection is going to get bigger, i'm always buying new dvds.

[guytpetj]

I convert and compress them to ISO files, with software freely available on the net. Then use daemon tools (nativly supprted by MP) to play. Manage to reduce the average DVD by 2 or 3 GB to something acceptable.

Still you are going to need a pretty big HDD if you wan't to store all your DVD's. I only store the DVD's which I play most.

[infinityloop]

i rip them to the HDD

-Archive
---Movies
-----Mission Impossible 3
-------all riped dvd files in here

[debaser_uk]

I personally leave dvds alone and play them when needed. I don't rewatch them that often and want the quality to be as good as it can be. Also, the time taken to rip them just puts me off. I do store tv series in xvid format, but then I have no choice as that is the format I get them in if you know what I mean! I never rewatch tv shows either tho and regularly trim them down to make room for new ones.

I've given up buying dvds, I have 500 or so, some are still shrink wrapped. I found that being a dad leaves NO time for things like movies. I'm too busy catching up with sleep nowadays. Plus I'm waiting now for HD to get cheaper.

[funkstar]

Originally Posted by keith2045

How does everyone handle dvds?

Usually by holding them at the edges and placing it on the DVD tray

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I had intended to build a rather large RAID-5 (or RAID-50) array to store ISO dumps of my DVD collection, but that will have to wait until i have somewhere to store the 8+ drives without annoying my with the noise. I've now got all the disks in large soft cover binders and all the boxes packed away out of sight. I think it's almost as quick to flick through them as it is to choose them in a menu.

[davej00]

Hi

I just use DVDshrink to extract the main feature. I don't transcode and I simply point My Videos to pick them up [directory per DVD, includes the audio_ts and video_ts as subdirectories]. Keeps the quality including [usually] surround sound. I have only copied the DVDs that tend to get watched most often as it is time consuming. So, it tends to be the kids personal favorites.

Enjoy !

- Dave

[keith2045]

Thanks guys. I think i'm going to rip them and not compress them. I really like being able to just select a movie via a menu without having to mess with the dvd. HDDs are very cheap these days, so space is not really a worry for me. Tigerdirect has a 750GB for $310 after rebates. I already have about 1200GBs, not really sure where i'm going to put those drives.

Say i have 2 NAS computers set up. Is it possible to have all movies shown on 1 screen rather than having to browse each directory on the 2 computers?

[keith2045]

Originally Posted by guytpetj

I convert and compress them to ISO files, with software freely available on the net. Then use daemon tools (nativly supprted by MP) to play. Manage to reduce the average DVD by 2 or 3 GB to something acceptable.

Still you are going to need a pretty big HDD if you wan't to store all your DVD's. I only store the DVD's which I play most.

What tools are you using?

[guytpetj]

The same program as davej00 is using. Works like a dream.

[keith2045]

How do you convert them to an iso? I cant find it in DVD Shrink
*edit* nevermind had an older version.

Also what daemon tools are you using? I ask because the one i found (daemon406-x86.exe) opens my default player, and doesn't play the file within mp. Is it possible to play it within mp?