[PatrickVogeli]

Hi there,

Since I've seen how easy and fast it is to convert a DVD (already stored in my HD) into a single mkv file, I've thought about converting all my dvd's into mkv's. Since I don't have many dvd's, it will be easy and should be done in a couple of hours.

I don't like the menus and trailers and stuff a DVD has, I prefer getting directly to the movie.

Quality wise, it's the same. It's just a container change, from several vobs into one single mkv file.

Also, I don't plan to burn any of those movies onto a disc to play in a standard DVD player.

All I see are pros, do you see any cons??

Thanks!

[RandomNinjaAtk]

If you only want the feature film, then go for it! This is what I do with makemkv. But if you want menus, all the dvd extras and etc, then this is not gonna work for that and you should look at making images (ISO), or ripping to folder structure..

[ubuntuf4n]

If you don't care about menus, specials, etc. converting the container to mkv could be a good way to go.
However, a very good pro would be, if you want to save some space by getting rid of extra audio-tracks (language or dts etc.).
If you don't want to get rid of extra audio-tracks, then it's just your personal-preference.

The XBMC-Compatibility with MKV seems to be better than with Video-TS-Folders, for some people.

You may use MakeMKV for converting the container.

Cheers

[MidnightWatcher]

If you don't care about menus, specials, etc. converting the container to mkv could be a good way to go.
However, a very good pro would be, if you want to save some space by getting rid of extra audio-tracks (language or dts etc.).
If you don't want to get rid of extra audio-tracks, then it's just your personal-preference.

The XBMC-Compatibility with MKV seems to be better than with Video-TS-Folders, for some people.

You may use MakeMKV for converting the container.

Cheers

I do this for all of my DVDs and Blu-rays.

[IsleOfMan]

With a DVD collection of roughly 1000, I ended up converting around ~300 discs to MKV in h.264. I used Handbrake with a video R value of around 22 and audio pass-through of the main DD or DTS track. This yielded files roughly 800mb - 1.5gb, with most average length movies with DD 5.1 coming in pretty close to 1gb. I could have got down to 600-700mb files by going with an R of 25 and transcoding the audio, but since the bulk of playback happens on a 100" screen at a seating distance of 15', I decided to stay as close to the original video and audio quality with a file size target of 1gb each. I also experimented with setting a target file size with inconsistent results. The only way I could get consistent results without major video bugs or broken playback was using 2-pass encoding which also roughly doubled the time required per disc.

The ripping/transcoding/compressing took roughly 1 hour per disc on an Athlon X2 215 Regor with 4gb DDR2-800. Doing 3-4 discs per night most nights, and 4-5 on most weekend days it took me around 3 months.

I had already gotten out of the habit of buying DVDs before I found XBMC, instead relying on Netflix disc rentals. The WDTV and, later, WDTV Live really killed my desire to continue purchasing discs and getting into XBMC was the final nail in the coffin. I had been coveting the Kaleidoscape system and the WDTVs and then XBMC really proved to be the poor-man's equivalent, especially if he didn't mind ripping his discs on a PC instead of a CE device.

In terms of number of films, my DVD rips equate to about 1/2 of my library in XBMC. In terms of storage space they equate to about 1/4 of my library. Since I'm not actively ripping any more discs both of those fractions will continue to decrease over time, though streaming sources like IceFilms are starting to eat into my downloading, especially for movies I don't think I'll ever watch more than once.

[PatrickVogeli]

Thanks for all your answers. After reading them I decided to start converting my collection of DVDs.. as I said, since I didn't have many DVDs, it didn't took that long.

The result is the same as the DVD withouth all the trailers, menus and stuff. I mean, ideally, a DVD should boot straight into the menu and from there if you select to play the movie, start it without further delay, but in most DVD's I have it doesn't work this way: trailers, warnings and other stuff. Now they are gone and without quality loose.

Also, as ubuntuf4n said, I have removed subtitles and languages I didn't want, so at the end I have the movie in the same quality but a bit smaller sized.

IsleOfMan: I wasn't looking to reencode the movies.. Since I don't have that many DVDs I can live with the extra space the mpeg2 streams take comparing to h264. Also, I don't have a fast machine to do that, only my atom htpc and my SU4100 subnotebook. If I ever get my desired Macbook Pro that should change

[super_sobbie]

I usually remove most of the extra stuff with DVDFab or DVD Shrink. and leave them as an ISO file. I have ripped some TV Shows to mkv containers using DVDFab and setting it keep the same audio and video. But I found that my seagate theater+ could not read them. they played the DVD fine but could not play the same video in an MKV which is strange because the seagate plays the 1080p movies I have in MKV fine but it could not play a 800mb mkv of a DVD episode.

Basically make sure that all your systems play the ripped movie if you do not do encoding (which is what I did and if failed ). I was soo happy that I could rip 4 episodes of a TV show from a DVD in just about 5 minutes. but if I encode it take well over 5 hours.

Anyway, good luck and have a great day.

SoBBie

[bluray]

Hi there,

Since I've seen how easy and fast it is to convert a DVD (already stored in my HD) into a single mkv file, I've thought about converting all my dvd's into mkv's. Since I don't have many dvd's, it will be easy and should be done in a couple of hours.

I don't like the menus and trailers and stuff a DVD has, I prefer getting directly to the movie.

Quality wise, it's the same. It's just a container change, from several vobs into one single mkv file.

Also, I don't plan to burn any of those movies onto a disc to play in a standard DVD player.

All I see are pros, do you see any cons??

Thanks!

If you ask me what is the best way, fastest way and easiest way to rip DVD, I have to say converting it to iso with AnyDVD. If you want to re-encode it to smaller mkv file, DVDFab is the friendliest and fastest video converter on the market.

The easiest and quickest way to extract just the main video and audio codecs, using TSMuxer to convert it to m2ts file.

Here is a simple guide for TSMuxer. You can use it to extract the main movie and audio only. For a DVD movie, it'll take roughly 6 minutes to extract it.

Here is a short instruction:
1. Insert DVD in DVD-ROM
2. Launch TSmuxer
3. Click "add" to add DVD file from DVD-ROM
4. Select VTS_01_1 file
5. Select MPEG-2 for video codec and the first AC3 for audio code, and you can un-select the rest of audio codecs
6. Select m2ts muxing for output
7. Select output folder
8. Click "start muxing"
9. 6 minute later you're done.

It's quick and free!

[spacebrew]

I think I found an even faster way of ripping and encoding to MKV. I have around 300 DVDs I needed to rip and encode, and didn't want to sit there putting discs in every 75 minutes for Handbrake. So I booted into Windows and used DVD shrink to rip the main title into VOB files, which took around 4-5 minutes per disc. So I would spend one hour a night ripping, which would get me around 10-12 movies, then I'd boot into my Linux partition and queue them all up in Handbrake. Then I'd let it run all night, or while I was at work. Made it a lot faster and easier to handle a large collection.

[PetSue]

and queue them all up in Handbrake. Then I'd let it run all night, or while I was at work. Made it a lot faster and easier to handle a large collection.

You could use HandBrake Batch which is a lot easier to use than queing.

[PatrickVogeli]

The problem with iso's is that's it's still the full dvd.. I just wanted the movie, nothing more. Since I already had most of my dvds in VIDEO_TS folder, the process was as easy as adding the desired vob files into mkvmerge gui, remove unwanted languages and start muxing.

At the end, it took less than 10 minutos per dvd, which was fine for me and I simple got a mkv file with ONLY the movie and the same quality as the original dvd. Just what I wanted.