Help with video Library best for MP (1 Viewer)

[SwiftShock]

Hello, I am still new to all of this. I'm using Media Portal mostly to access my ripped DVD library. I've been using DVD Shrink and any DVD to transfer just the movie from the DVD into .vob formats. I like the quality and I like the ability of keep chapters. Problem is, They take Between 3.5Gb to 6Gb uncompressed.

My question is: is there a way to have them take up less space, without sacrificing to much video quality, and keeping chapter skipping? I'm looking into this because I am days away from HD videos being added to my library and am a little concerned how much I will be able to fit.

 

[alank]

I'm sure there are DVD Shrink settings that will bring the size down, but of course at the expense of quality. I use DVD Shrink also to rip but make ISOs. IMO they are more manageable that way. But they still take up same amount of space. A better option may be to not fight the size and instead upgrade to a terabyte drive. They are getting cheaper by the day.

 

[photopeter]

AW: Help with video Library best for MP

Hi.
DVDs are compressed with the "old fashioned" Mpeg2 codec. You can reduce the size of the video stream to 1/3 without any visibly loss of quality using a "modern" codec as x264. Chapters, subtitles and audio (AC3/DTS) can be saved untouched to a MKV container. If you're able to loose the menu, there will be nothing you'll miss.
After ripping the DVD with DVDShrink (or Smart Ripper ore something like that) you can simply compress the main movie using something like xmediarecode. The chapters could be ripped with ChapterXtractor, for subtitles you can use VSRip. All this, x264 recoded video stream, untouched audio stream(s), subtitles and chapters, you can easily mux together with MKVMergeGUI. After that you'll get a single mkv- file with sizes about 1 to 2 GB witch can be played on nearly every PC and some stand-alone DVD player.

 

[dobyken]

There used to be a program called RatDVD that reduced a 6-7gig DVD to about 1-2 gigs while keeping all the features and maintaining close to the original quality. Development stopped on it about 5 years ago but you can still find versions floating around. I remember it taking hours to convert a DVD but that was years ago and most likely on a an Athlon 1800+ or something close. It also requires a proprietary codec for playback.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

RatDVD will not work, the plugin needed for WMP is obsolete, so photopeter's idea is good, also look at handbrake and xvid4psp, both do h.264 encoding and are free.