I am a US resident and we are just completing our total living room redo - the center of which is an LG OLED77c9 with an Amazon Fire Cube, new 4K Blu Ray, and 7.1 surround sound connected to a Yamaha receiver - all connected via Ethernet. We have a decent size (500?) DVD collection that we are hoping not to pile back in the room in order to leave the cabinet space for Blu Rays and (now) 4K movies.
My husband is willing to put the DVDs in deep storage (or maybe Goodwill) if I can rip them, so I have installed the Plex server on our desktop computer. (I was going to use our Synology but found the DS413 is not supported.) we do not plan on streaming the movies to iPads or phones - just the Living Room (or later Rec Room) systems.
When I rip I am more interested in quality then reduced storage - both video and audio. I would like to keep the extras - such as deleted scenes or âhow the movie was madeâ documentary. but donât care about subtitles - except for those that are part of the base movie (i.e. a few lines by a foreign character.)
I have tried to read a lot over the past few days, but am hoping for a bit of guidance to reduce the inevitable learning curve.
Any pros / cons of using the TV client vs Fire Cube vs Blu Ray Player (vs Xbox in rec room)?
I purchased WinX DVD Ripper Platinum - but after more reading it appears MakeMVK may be used by more. Should I reconsider which program I use?
If I rip to an MKV container do all the extras go into the one file? Is this an advantage over ripping to mp4?
I am a bit overwhelmed on specs such as frame rate, video codec / audio codec / bitrates, etc. Can anyone point me to a good source to read more. Ideal would be some suggested settings for WinX DVD (or maybe MakeMVK).
One of the trial rips I did (Highlander movie) resulted in black bars at the top/bottom and sides. I reripped a couple times with different settings, but same results. Any suggestions of what I am ding wrong.
My trial rips (about 10) appear to be losing surround sound resulting in stereo instead. I have used mostly default settings. What should I be looking for?
THank you for helping a newbie. I feel like I did 20+ years ago when I was investing jpg vs tiff and other photo issues. That sure seems like childâs play compared to this.
for dvd rips, no probably not - edit: actually due to dvd native codec of mpeg2, not all plex clients can directly play that, and as such it will be converted on demand by plex server. To avoid server load, you can use plex clients that do support mpeg2 (like perhaps roku/shield and maybe appletv?) alternatively this is where converting/re-compressing the video to another codec such as x264 or x265 (both of which have their own inherent plus/minusâs) as you go, might be helpful (but also adds a lot more time and effort).
not familiar with winx, but Iâm sure it does both ripping and converting (to smaller files). Makemkv does only rip and placing the source content into a mkv container (does not convert or make the content smaller)
no, extras will all need to be separate files. the same for mp4 or any other file type (other than the ripping the whole disk to ISO which is not supported by plex)
makemkv does not modify the original content, and there are a ton of different things that are all a bit to complex to talk about here. I would suggest google, which should lead to probably thousands of guides on the minutia of dvd ripping and converting.
if your dvds are old, there are probably a lot of 4:3 content (pre-widescreen) which will be displayed on a wide screen tv with black side bars. generally, you would want to use any âautoâ or âsame as sourceâ settings for aspect ratio/framerate/audio. The player/device is normally responsible for upscaling or filling the screen, as long as the file wasnât encoded with actual black bars/borders.
you should look for some setting that does âaudio pass throughâ of existing audio streams. dvd/blurays often have multiple audio streams, you should make sure you select/unselect the ones you do/donât want to keep.
Long story short, if you have plenty of disk space, I would use makemkv to rip, then you rename the files according to plex naming standards, and store them on your nas.
If/when storage space becomes a problem/concern, then you may want to look at compressing the source files, to x264 or x265.
Compressing/converting is always a balance between quality and size, and once past the basics comes down to personal prefernce. Media conversion is like a whole art unto itself.
Hope that all that provides more answers than it does cause more questions.
streaming devices tend to be more powerful â e.g. if youâre looking at a Nvidia Shield, an Apple TV or Amazon Fire Cube (not necessarily talking about a Chromecast or Fire TV Stick)⊠also, itâll be significantly cheaper to replace a 100-200 $ set-top-box vs. your entire TV if that platform isnât supported.
MakeMKV will keep the source material as-is while other apps usually transcode the media â the output of MakeMKV tends to be bigger, giving you the original quality while the transcoded files could be significantly smaller but will usually also be more compatible (e.g. not requiring your Plex Media Server to transcode it, because your client cannot deal with the DVDâs MPEG2 format.
Long story short⊠it depends on what youâre aiming for
Personally I prefer the MakeMKV output as it gives me more flexibility in the long run (or so I believe) See: Converting ISO, Video_TS, and Other Disk Image Formats | Plex Support
MakeMKV will extract individual video files of all titles stored on that disc. This could be the feature, behind-the-scenes, deleted scenes and all kind of other extras (sometimes also tons of individual scenes you end up throwing away). Itâs not creating a one-by-one copy of the entire disc (with menu and all) as a so called ISO image.
The benefit⊠you can pick the feature and extras you want and Plex will allow you to store the extras alongside the movie (see Local Files for Trailers and Extras | Plex Support)
Iâm not familiar with WinX DVD⊠I usually use Handbrake which is free and has a great set of âPresetsâ for various qualities and target devices.
With MakeMKV you donât deal with those levers⊠the video remains âas-isâ â all you configure is which audio/subtitle tracks the app should keep (e.g. if you donât care about French subtitles⊠no offense to anyone in Canada/France)
MakeMKV will keep the file as-is â including the âbuilt-inâ black bars. Thatâs because the disc specification requires a certain picture aspect ratio (e.g. full HD 1080x1920 is 16:9), while most movies are wider (e.g. 21:9).
Other apps which will transcode your video tend to cut those black bars away when re-encoding the video. If your TV is in 16:9, the TV will add those black bars back to the video when you play it
âŠ
Too slow.
beyond what I wrote above⊠âwhat TeknoJunky saidâ
Thank you both very much for the help. Bit by bit I am learning. At the moment I am stuck with the Plex Server (on my Windows 10 PC) freezing on the splash screen. Looks like some troubleshooting is in order tonight. Then I can get back to trying more rips. MKV appears to be the correct route for me for the moment - will test playback speed when I can get the Plex server going again.
I use both the programs so I would like to add something as supplementary to the answers above :
2. MakeMKV is free while WinX DVD is not. MakeMKV is very popular as it rips Blurays, while Winx wonât. MakeMKV rips DVD/Bluray into MKV only, but you can transcode using Handbrake into MP4. Winx offers more options, as a paid program.
3 and 4. Makemkv wonât change anything so you donât have to worry about the settings. Winx can extract the original data into ISO, just like what MakeMKV does. It also has other options like MPEG, MP4, MOV, etc. But most of the time, you donât need to deal with the specs. As you said quality is what you care most, then both MKV and ISO image are better than MP4.
