Hi, I have been using Plex for about a year and I love it. Can't beat the price either !
My question is, what is the best format for ripping video content from DVD's. I have a large DVD collection and I have been using MakeMkv to save them as .mkv files. I have about 200 saved so far and I just don't think .mkv is the best format for me. I am not a big quality freak, I mean I don't care if everything is blu-ray quality or 1280p. I just want decent quality but a smaller size, maybe less than 2GB per movie. Mkv ranges anywhere from 4GB to 7GB which is a bit extreme. I have 2 1TB drives almost full. I have tried Handbrake a while back and I don't remember how that worked out, I do remember it took long per movie. That's one great thing about Makemkv, it only takes about 10 minutes to save it to disk.
I know this is a question and topic with many opinions, and it's hard to get a straight answer, but I am interested in others opinions and suggestions.
Hi, I have been using Plex for about a year and I love it. Can't beat the price either !
My question is, what is the best format for ripping video content from DVD's. I have a large DVD collection and I have been using MakeMkv to save them as .mkv files. I have about 200 saved so far and I just don't think .mkv is the best format for me. I am not a big quality freak, I mean I don't care if everything is blu-ray quality or 1280p. I just want decent quality but a smaller size, maybe less than 2GB per movie. Mkv ranges anywhere from 4GB to 7GB which is a bit extreme. I have 2 1TB drives almost full. I have tried Handbrake a while back and I don't remember how that worked out, I do remember it took long per movie. That's one great thing about Makemkv, it only takes about 10 minutes to save it to disk.
I know this is a question and topic with many opinions, and it's hard to get a straight answer, but I am interested in others opinions and suggestions.
Thanks for your help !
Mark
MakeMKV is just extracting the audio and video codec's and leaving them "as is" which is why it is fast, and also why the files are large (this has nothing to do with them being in an .mkv container)
Handbrake actually converts the video and/or audio codecs into more efficient codecs, which is why it produces much smaller files and also why it takes longer. (it'll still produce .mkv's, just much smaller ones due to the more modern codec's used within them)
Personally, I run all my DVD's through handbrake, I just schedule up a bunch of conversions and leave them overnight.
There is no right answer here, there are only opinions - your best bet is to try both methods and see what works for you.
I have Freemake video converter, I use it to convert videos for my android phone. Do you convert the DVD to .avi with it ? I wonder if it is faster to save the DVD to hard drive as mkv first then use either handbrake or freemake ?
Handbrake likes CPUs. The more cores the better. I can rip a 2 hour movie to H.264 with fairly high settings in about 35 minutes with my AMD FX8350. I can do it in 15 minutes or less using the standard High preset that comes with Handbrake.
Another thing you can try to increase the speed is get the Handbrake preview version that uses your GPU.
I attached my presets if you want to try them. The DVD - High creates about a 1 GB file for a 2 hour movie.
I dump everything to my hand drive with AnyDVD and AnyDVD Ripper. I then us Handbrake to rip down to M4V with dual audio tracks. I like MKV better, but I use iPads and other devices which play MP$ natively so this is easier.
The Rokoding site (http://roku.yt1300.com/) has a great rundown for Handbrake settings that work great with Plex and Roku. I was using just High Profile with Constant Framerate and Constant Quality at 18. It looked great, I tried the Rokoding settings last week and I've been just as happy with a slightly smaller file.
I dump everything to my hand drive with AnyDVD and AnyDVD Ripper. I then us Handbrake to rip down to M4V with dual audio tracks. I like MKV better, but I use iPads and other devices which play MP$ natively so this is easier.
The Rokoding site (http://roku.yt1300.com/) has a great rundown for Handbrake settings that work great with Plex and Roku. I was using just High Profile with Constant Framerate and Constant Quality at 18. It looked great, I tried the Rokoding settings last week and I've been just as happy with a slightly smaller file.
Curious, why not use CloneDVD Mobile? I've had it for about 6-7 years and I always go back and try Handbrake only to discover it's much slower than CloneDVD Mobile. Heck, that software feels way too slow for me at 20-25 minutes to rip a DVD to MP4. An hour with Handbrake, to me, is just too darn long.
Curious, why not use CloneDVD Mobile? I've had it for about 6-7 years and I always go back and try Handbrake only to discover it's much slower than CloneDVD Mobile. Heck, that software feels way too slow for me at 20-25 minutes to rip a DVD to MP4. An hour with Handbrake, to me, is just too darn long.
Both apps use FFMPEG. If the setting are identical, they should both perform the same. It is very difficult to get the correct settings in CloneDVD Mobile for anything other than a mobile display. As it is named, it is made to convert for the very small screen. If you plug the same parameters in Handbrake, you should get the same speed.
My goal is quality. If I can't play the end result in my home theater, then it is pointless for me to convert from the original. As a result I need a fast processor for the conversion. There are no shortcuts.
FWIW, I love Slysoft. I own many of their productions including CloneDVD, AnyDVD, and CloneCD (all with lifetime upgrades). I did try CloneDVD Mobile and found it was not for me.
This is quite an old post so apologies for opening thread again :) I am interested by the comments about Freemake Video Convertor. I have used DVD Shrink for years because of the ability to only rip the main movie leaving out subtitles and extras, however it is limited to MPG output only cannot rip DVDs and is out of support. Can you select only the main movie in Freemake and how do you identify this from the DVD file structure?
This is quite an old post so apologies for opening thread again :) I am interested by the comments about Freemake Video Convertor. I have used DVD Shrink for years because of the ability to only rip the main movie leaving out subtitles and extras, however it is limited to MPG output only cannot rip DVDs and is out of support. Can you select only the main movie in Freemake and how do you identify this from the DVD file structure?
Fozzie
Don't know about freemake as I've never used it, but you can select just the main movie fine in MakeMkv (and handbrake for that matter). I'm sure Freemake gives you a list of the titles as well so would probably do the same thing. Pretty much all modern rippers will do this.
Personally, I just leave them in MKV. It's simpler and I've never quite figured out handbrake. MakeMKV get it all straight and all I need is the storage space. I would personally rather spend a tad more on the storage and keep it simple than go through the mess of handbrake.
You can output mkv files from handbrake as well you realize (which is what I do)? I use handbrake to get a more efficient video codec (h264). I generally keep the audio track the way it is.
Of course you can just use the MakeMKV output. The Universal preset in Handbrake is pretty good for reducing the file size without reducing quality. If you want to reduce further, you could use h265 instead of h264. If instead you want faster encoding, you can use H.264 (Intel QSV) instead of just H.264. All of these options will produce a video of about equal quality. The difference will be how long it takes to convert, and the final final size. If you are using the 10.3 version of Handbrake you can reduce the size further with HE-AAC instead of AAC (avcodec). This was dropped from later versions. You could also not include the AC3 passthru. I personally include the passthru, as I like a small file size, but I also like the option to reprocess the audio later without further reduction in quality.
Handbrake was working pretty well for me for a while, but now I’m getting DRM protection error messages. So as a de-crypting device, handbrake is not so good.
