Honestly DVD Shrink is all in one step & pretty easy.
But I'm wondering how much quality loss happens when doing the suggested method that Frostmourne mentioned about reecode the files to matroska and x264/aac? The films will be tiny - 300mb+.
Obviously saving space would be nice along with getting a single file, but at what kind of quality loss?
Any time recode a video theres ALWAYS quality loss. No way around it.
x264 is by far the best compression codec.
If you want to compress them, How much quality loss depends on bitrate/settings/file size.
x264 compresses by basically throwing away bits of information the human eye generally can not detect.
Therefore, if set properly, & high enough bit rates the quality loss will seem transparent.
Too low of settings, and this becomes apparent as you will see it..
MKV with AAC/AC3 or MP4 with AAC are both good choices.
If you are taking a DVD movie @ say 1hr45min, & keeping the 720x480 resolution,
300MB will be too small, and will show artifacting.
Will take some experimenting to find where it looks and sounds good to you.
For example, a 1hr45min film :
@ 1500 video bitrate and AAC stereo 192bitrate (around 1.2GB)
@ 1750 video bitrate and AAC 5.1 384bitrate (around 1.5GB)
VS 4-7GB original
Again this all depends greatly on a few factors.
Orginal Source
(some DVD/Bluray compress better than others,,depending how compressed it already is. Results will vary)
what the target resolution is
stereo or surround sound
Target Size
I recommend MeGUI. Also based on the x264 codec.
Ehh I'll think about trying it, it sounds like a little project just to figure out how to do it with all the tweaking etc. I've got the room, I'll just keep ripping them like normal for now.
But would I be better off using Magic Ripper & getting an easy single .avi file to click on? (which to me seems easier than a bunch of .vob files, but will it play in Media Center?)
Is that a smaller file over all than what DVdshrink would give me?
I just dont understand why DvdShrink isnt pulling the pictures/posters etc?
That will work sure.
But if its using the Xvid codec, it will be, ... blurred so to speak or softer VS the x264 codec, which some actually prefer.
But in the end, if you like the results, then thats all that matters.
Any "one-click" software that just does everything for you will not be as good as a good encoder can do.regardless what codec you choose.
They just require some manualy configuring.
If you want to try MeGUI Id be happy to give you a quick tutorial to get you started for DVD encoding
Completely up to you.
Either way, you may need something like Sharks codec package, and enable ffdshow codec in direct show players.
Youll get better encode results regardless which program you choose.
So how do I tell if DVDShrink is using the Xvid codec and is going to give me blurring?
But would I be better off using Magic Ripper & getting an easy single .avi file to click on? (which to me seems easier than a bunch of .vob files, but will it play in Media Center?)
Is that a smaller file over all than what DVdshrink would give me?
I just dont understand why DvdShrink isnt pulling the pictures/posters etc?
[QUOTE=JohnnyScience;569105]That's not part of it's functionality , never has been!
I think your worrying too much about nothing in particular .. you copy your DVD to your hard drive with DVDShrink .. you store away the master DVD for safe keeping!
It doesn't get much easier than that ...
[QUOTE=JohnnyScience;569143]I think you want something like this mikinhosoft: Yammm - Yet Another Media Meta Manager This isn't the updated version but it still works.
Here is a good tutorial to help you get it up and running,
Media Center- Setup Movie Library
This is what I use, every time I add a movie to my collection, YAMMM automatically adds the artwork and metadata. Don't forget to add the file2folder.bat in with your movies folder and use the recommended YAMMM settings in the tutorial and your library can look like this.
Along with what derekimo has suggested theres a few others that good as well for managing your library in WMC.
myMovies is a automated one (not particularly fond of this one personally)
theres also MetaBrowser which will fetch all the artwork, actors etc and can be used alongside MediaBrowser.
Lots of info on all of these in the Media Center Setion of these forums.
Although all a bit different, they do the exact same thing, depending on which one suits your needs/preferences the best.
No copying/encoding software can pull the movie artwork. Either you have to install a media manager in your media center (as wishmaster suggested), or you may download them manually (what I do).
I obtain the movie posters from google search, and place them in a folder where the movie is located, rename the poster as Folder.jpg, and thats all.
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