Windows 7: A little help appreciated with DVD ripping please

Hi folks,

I've been reading around this quite confusing topic for a while now and whilst I have a plan (below) I would appreciate advice as to whether it's good and the answers to some queries:

I own a synology 4 bay NAS. Currently it has 4.5 TB of available storage. I also have a load of DVDs my wife wants to 'loose' from the lounge. So the plan is to rip them all to the NAS and then use the synology media server to serve them to the 50" tv I'll be buying soon. The tv will be network ready.

I've selected dvdfab (the free version) to do the ripping and handbrake to do the encoding

1) are these two bits of software recommended?



2) I have lots of space on the NAS and about 150 DVDs. I want to store them on the NAS in the highest quality I can. Is there a recommended format? Bear in mind they will be viewed on a 50" HDTV how is best to go about ensuring I don't lose any quality? I don't care about compressing really

3) is there a recognised best format used for streaming from a NAS to a tv?

Thanks guys
Matt

Those are the 2 tools that i use to rip down movies and put them on my tablet for my kids.

I don't think you would even need to use handbrake if you don't intend on compressing the videos at all and making them smaller. Just get a TV which can stream the .VOB files that DVD Fab pumps out and you should be done. Each DVD movie would take approx 4-7GB of space, based on what I have seen.

Interesting, so if I'm not looking to compress I only need dvdfab. Cool.

Another question then: when you rip a DVD you get multiple .vob files. Especially if it's a series.

Is there a way to merge all the vob files together to mean I have one file in one directory named for example 'stargate' ?

I'm really new to this as you can probably tell, but appreciate the help

You would want to leave them in multiples files. No reason to try and do anything with them.

How are you going to display them on your TV? That's the main question, as that will determine format. I use Handbrake 0.9.3 with the Xbox360 profile. My files sit on a WHS 2011 box and can be streamed to my Xbox 360 or my Blu-Ray player and shown on the TV.

Hey Deacon - you get around the forums dont ya.

You ask a question that my knowledge of the subject sorely lacks. Im not even sure how to answer you.

I have a Synology DS411j NAS. Part of the very good software on it is a media server.

The other half of the equation is a new TV (which I havent yet bought) which will have a network port and be DLNA compatible. it will be around the 50" mark and be a 1080p panel.

i have a friend who has a similar setup (their NAS is not a synology) and he just browses his NAS from the TV and launches the .vob file directly and the TV just plays it.

Where I get annoyed though is that he has to keep launching each new .vob file when it reaches its end, and so for Terminator Salvation for example he had to launch 4 seperate .Vob files to make it through to the end of the movie.

On top of this is the issue of upscaling. His media server sends a signal to the TV which seems to be interpereted by the TV as 'already HD', so even though the TV can upscale, it dosnt seem to try to. hence he has pretty blocky movies becasue nothing is upscaling his .vob files to the 1080p of his panel. It looks MUCH better if he just puts the DVD in his player and lets either the TV or the DVD player upscale for him on the fly.

This is pretty important to me and I guess i need to somehow pre-upscale whatever Im ripping so that its ready to be transmitted to a 1080p TV? Or is there now some way to get a TV to upscale .vob output from a media server on the fly like it would with a DVD from a DVD player?

thanks for any help

Icarus

First, I wouldn't use .vob files for streaming. I convert everything I have to a single .mp4 file using Handbrake. The version I mentioned has profiles built-in. The Xbox360 profile I use, I believe, has the same resolution as a standard DVD. It sounds more like he has network issues or rips his files using a poor piece of software.

The bottom line is, there are so many variables, so you have to do some playing around to find what works for you. My TV is a 42" full HD, but I don't need to worry about upscaling. My ripped files look as good as the original DVD. You can't add data to a digital file to make it bigger or better, so upscaling is something I have no interest in worrying about. The only alteration I do to the Handbrake profile is to change to use full surround.

My typical movie files end up around 1.5 to 2 GB each. My 360 can play them, and my new Samsung Blu-Ray player can play them from my server, and both look just as good as the original DVDs.

Where does one find this "handbrake"? I have tried copying my dvd's over to another dvd so I can save my original, (my children love to destroy disks) - but everytime I try, either the file has shrunk to a third of its size (using generic dvd rip through dvdfab) or the audio is out of sync using vob (I think for that one) now when ever I try, it doesn't want to co-operate. I also tried dvd copy but that wouldn't work at all.

Handbrake won't help for what you want to do. If you simple want to make an archival copy of your DVDs, DVDfab will do it. It sounds like you aren't using the right options. Go through it again, and choose the main move part. Choose the appropriate chapter/file in the middle pane, and then set the bottom options to the size of your output, probably the 5GB option for normal DVDs, and then you're done.

I agree.. it's pointless to have 4-7 gig for each dvd. Compress with H.264 !! Better for streaming, smaller size, and best of all there's not much quality loss if at all if you use the right compression settings.

Thanks I will give that a try, I tried another one last night, which was similar to you have described only I didn't change the option to 5G, when I played it back it was a bit jumpy... is that something the 5G setting might fix?