Ask Engadget: What's the optimal DVD archival solution?
By Darren Murph 
posted July 10th 2008 9:00PM
posted July 10th 2008 9:00PM
This week's Ask Engadget question is a bit on the specific side, but it's one we've heard asked time and time again. Thus, we figured it was time to finally get it out in the open for you readers to debate."I have an extensive DVD library that I would like to archive on a network drive and be able to access via my PS3, menus and all. I am currently using TVersity to stream videos from my PC to the console. I've seen walk-throughs for archiving DVDs, but I haven't seen anything that will present these via a DLNA server (to my PS3) with their original menus intact so that you can access special features such as commentary tracks and featurettes. I am not even sure that it is possible to navigate the menus via the PS3 remote. Any recommended solutions out there?"
Can't you just hear the hopelessness in poor Ron's voice? Throw the guy a bone, will ya? And while you're at it, throw our highly sophisticated email sorter a question of your own at ask at engadget dawt com.
I like MKV files, which have complete menu, subtitle, alternate audio, and other stuff support. The problem with that is I don't know anything that can rip to MKVs.
My solution (assuming you have the space) --Puppy Linux has a built-in image creater, and I just store the entire ISO which I can either mount the ISO (again, Linux can do this, even over network, even installed on a PS3), or just open it in VLC (which runs in --you guessed it -- Linux). It takes the entire size of the DVD, but it also has complete use of the DVD.
...and I'll come back if I can find a MKV ripper.
The latest version of Total Video Converter can rip DVDs in MKV files.
wait a just a minute there buster how are you getting your mkv movies if you dot know how to rip dvds into mkv? Should we alert the mpaa here lol
If you want to use Matroska files, the best options are SUPER (http://www.erightsoft.biz/GetFile.php?SUPERsetup.exe) and HandBrake (http://handbrake.fr/).
SUPER is Windows only, HandBrake is for Mac, Linux and Windows. Both of them are free and HandBrake is Open Source (I recommend HandBrake)
One problem with handbrake is that the MKV files it creates have really slow seek rates. Hardly slower than real time, in fact. What I do is take the matroska files Handbrake pumps out and pass them through mkvmerge, and then they seek just as well as an avi.
Google "Dvd Ripper"
Awesome ripper that rips to many different formats, including an iso and individual files.
Fast, solid, and unblocks almost all DVD copyright protection. For legal backup use of course. The only problem is some newer Disney movies, which sometimes foul up the decoding process.
huh?
Currently I use MyMoives which is a sort of plugin/program. You can save your .vob files on a hard drive and stream them to an xbox 360. It will give you actor information and dvd covers as well, no menus though.
website:
http://www.mymovies.dk/
steps on how to use:
http://www.mymovies.dk/forum.aspx?g=posts&t=5000
I have a similar set up but I have a Windows Home Server set up to stream to the XBOX. The beauty of WHS is that you can keep adding drives and they just add to the storage cloud.
As an added bonus, with the right add-on, you can actually stream your DVD library to any connected laptop or cellphone anywhere.
I would recommend a NAS box such as the QNAP TS-109 Pro paired with a
1 terabyte heard drive. It's been proved to be totally compatible with TVersity, and you will have plenty of storage for your entire DVD collection.
The NAS box can stream to any computer or console on your network and
can be expanded to suit your needs.
Not to be sarcastic or anything....
Save the disks in .iso, and boot PS3 in Linux.
Linux DVD 9to5 will rip and compress DVDs into ISOs in a single step. Maybe you can remote-mount them from an HTPC.
Alternatively, you can simply rip them, uncompressed and setup VLC as a server, tell it where the VIDEO_TS folders are, and stream to your HTPC.
I have no idea how you'd do it for a PS3.
I'm already starting down this track using a free linux solution
Basically it is:
1.) RIP DVD to raw mpg format
2.) Run a batch job that converts them to a much more storage friendly size such as mpeg4 or divx using a tool like transcode
3.) Run a UPnP server. Perfect for this in Linux is MythTv (free!). I run it now and it's great with UPnP clients on consoles such as XBOX360 and PS3. Myth is also great for media management, although it is somewhat cumbersome to get set up.
4.) Enjoy all your movies from your console!
Cheeers!
The question specifically mentions that he wants to serve up these DVDs _with_ menus.
And, simply put, you can't do that with the PS3. You can hack up the 360 and Windows Vista Media Center to do it (google for the DVD Library extender hack, which is somewhat new), but it just isn't going to happen on the PS3 - none of the formats it supports can have menus in them, excepting DivX (possibly).
I probably should have read more carefully and noticed the importance of the menus. But the title led me to think that this was for ways to archive DVDs and serve them up to PS3s.
Alternatively, after googling around, this tool might help (not free though)
http://www.downloadatoz.com/dvd-to-ipod-video-converter/pq-dvd-to-ps3-converter.html
How about get off your lazy butt and switch the DVDs manually. Jeezus what a lazy pud...
The funny thing is, he'd put more work into creating the media "archive" then if he just got off his "lazy butt and switch[ed] the DVDs manually."
That means you have to have the DVDs on hand. It's like music collections. I don't want to keep dozens of albums nearby at all times, and it's the same with DVDs.
It's called backup for a reason...
John's on point. Someday you kiddies will grow up and might even move in with a girl. That girl might want her home to look all pretty and nice. She probably won't want your parents old 7 foot tall entertainment center complete with space for 400 DVD's cluttering up her living room. My DVD's are in the shed, I ripped them all with handbrake, imported to iTunes and watch them on my AppleTV. Everybody's happy.
you know you can buy a DJ case which holds 500+ dvds for like $20 and is the size of a large audio reciever. You can then easily store that in a closet or beside your equipment. Its what I do. Discs dont need to be a clutter and space taker. I have over 2500 discs and they are all stored in an area smaller then a a desk.
Not to mention with discs, you dont need to worry about backup as much because there are no hard drive failures, you can lend them to friends, they are portable and cheaper. So yeah.. Your already in the right spot by having disks.
I had this exact desire, and I couldn't find a solution for my PS3, so I decided to get a Mac Mini hooked up to my Home Theater via a DVI-HDMI/Optical Toslink cable and use FrontRow to access my DVD rips.
You'll need to use a Mac program such as MacTheRipper to save the DVD in folders, and then find the DVD cover art and save it in the root folder of the DVD as "Preview.jpg".
I keep all my files on a networked Drobo using Droboshare, and then put alias of each genre folder in the "Movies" folder on my Mac Mini. Then when I'm in Front Row, it shows the cover art, I then click play, and it launches as if I've got the DVD in the drive.
Since it's over a gigabit network (using Cat-5e cable) there is a slight delay, but once it starts playing, it's smoooooooth as butter.
Sadly, again, no PS3, but this will do exactly what you want.
Cheers!
1. MacTheRipper (To rip the encryption)
2. Handbrake (To encode it to mp4, m4v, etc)
3. MetaX (for meta tags and artwork)
4. Enjoy on AppleTV or XBOX 360 if you have connect 360 that is.
What he said, except I skip step 3. And for my kids' room, I only do step one and use DVDPedia to handle the library, which streams off of a 3-year-old 1.5TB Infrant NAS. It's so easy, my 3-year-old can access all the ripped movies in our collection.
...or get RipIt4Me, dvd decryptor, and dvd shrink. these get rid of the encryption, allow you to select which features to save, and save to iso
i thought divx 6 and above allowed for menu's within the divx file... so logic would tell me that as long as you encoded in divx 6+ you could get the menus... even though i have not tried it myself... can anyone out there confirm/deny this?
To keep menus and such, either mkv or mp4 can be used. PS3 fully supports mp4, not sure if it does mkv as well. Sourceforge will be a good bet to find programs that will do conversions for you, but do expect to violate every copyright law in the book. For that reason alone engadget is not the best place to come to for answers.
Not sure how this fits in with the PS3, but I rip them to ISO files using DVD Decrypter and then "play" the ISO files using VLC. Since it's an ISO file you get the whole disc, menus, navigation, everything just like the physical disc. Sure they are large, but storage is cheap and they look great.
I use HandBrake and place the files on a Terrabyte server running FreeNAS on an old 1GHz AMD motherboard with a built-in RAID controller. I used to copy folder.jpg of the cover art, but now I just let boxee.tv handle all of the meta data automatically for me. A Mac Mini in the living room running boxee streams the content from the server and the 10-foot UI of lets me see the images, review and even trailers for some of the movies (in case I forget why I ripped them) and music...
To Rip, I use AnyDVD / CloneDVD from SlySoft.
To Store, I use a 4TB LaCie NAS appliance with (2) additional 4TB Bigger Disk Extreme external drives attached for a total of 12TB.
To Stream, I use Wizd Media Server for Syabas based players.
To Play, I use Helios Labs X5000 Network Media Player.
Best setup ever:
-XBMC linux box
-Drobo media storage
-Big ass TV.
XBMC seriously is the best media center ever. Everyone should use it.
http://www.xbmc.org
I agree, we've been using it for 4 years all over the house. Newer formats lag out the Xbox1 now and I haven't been keeping up with the PC or Linux ports of XBMC, is it up to par?
I hear nothing but great things about XBMC, but I read somewhere that it doesn't support HD video. Is that true? To me that would essentially render it completely useless as a media streamer, I have a hard time believing that all these people who adore XBMC never have any need to watch HD video.
@chefgon_ign
you're right. XBMC cannot stream HD because it runs on a 1.0 Xbox, which only has SD output. If you could get XBMC on a 360, then you could do it, but that seems like a waste of a perfectly good 360.
@ chefgon_ign
XBMC was originally made as a media player for a modded Xbox 1. It did, and still does, work better than most media centers. But as you mentioned, it does not support HD video because the Xbox 1 was not powerful enough to do so. Fortunately enough tho, the amazing team behind XBMC is now working on porting it to Linux, Windows, and OSX.
@neofolklore
The linux port is the farthest along in development it seems. You can even test it out easily by installing one of the beta releases to a thumb-drive and setting your computer to boot from USB. You can find the thumb-drive release here:
http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=32853
Hey 'Ron',
Coming from the next-gen iteration of the 'Greatest Generation' these are my observations about your poignant quest:
1) Vinyl LPs promised endless replay till needles (and the imperfect humans who placed them on track 4 over and over) scratched and destroyed my data storage medium.
2) Cassette Technology and my Sony Walkman conspired to file off the iron oxides (playing track 4 over and over) till my tape medium aged, stretched, and crashed as a playback paradigm.
3) The pitted grooves of my mass-produced, laser etched CD music - they still load up great, except for the songs scratched by endlessly inserting and exiting the CD tray. (track 4 maybe?)
4) DVD's - ditto
5) Hard Drives...mmmmnnn.....I've never had a hard drive last longer than 6-7 years.
I haven't ever seen a storage medium that can outlast memory and the need to preserve it. Good luck in your terrabyte search;)
Professor Doom
I use SageTV (www.sagetv.com). They have hardware HD extenders, etc. Have most of my DVDs archived to 2TB hard drive. Oh yes, it's a great home theatre system too. I have 6 tuners (4 HD QAM) on the system.
Wow. Great ideas guys... expect for the whole "with menus", "PS3", "DLNA server", "PS3 remote", etc...
But, you know, thanks for trying.
This is worse than Slashdot. People here can't even read past the title!
Why do you want to watch video via a PS3?
Because there aren't any games to play on it... Burn! J/K
It seems I'm like many people here. My solution doesn't include keeping the entire DVD (with menus) in tact. I've just decided to keep the DVDs for the movies that have extra content I care about and rip the rest...
These tips work, allegedly, although they are probably not making the MPAA happy. An old, but still worthwhile and free app is DVDShrink (note: NOT dvdshrink2008). There are many free DVD decryption apps to choose from. Set it to rip to ISO (you can also compress them to burn them onto a single layer DVD, remove audio tracks and chapters, etc.). Using Toast or IMGBurn or most other burning programs, you can also then burn a copy of the DVD with working menus. For the Mac, Handbrake should do the trick.
Why bother with converting DVDs to a HDD? Why not just have a system that you can store more than 100 DVDs in one unit accessible over the network. Something like this (although this is only USB accessible): http://www.toadmode.com/powerdrive.htm
If properly implemented this could act as a SMB share with each DVD represented as a seperate folder. I'm sure that would suffice as a DVD archival solution with the least amount of effort. Not sure if it would be the cheapest tho...
Seems to me that most of the answers didn't really answer the original question, i.e. how do you archive DVDs so that you can view them on your TV with cover art, chapters, special features, etc.
There have been various answers on how to rip DVDs, how to customize the results so they are playable with cover art, but it seems like they all ignore some of the above. Also, all of the solutions are labor intensive. Rip the DVD to an ISO (come back in a half hour), transcode the chapters you want one by one (a queueing function helps here, but why do I have to queue them individually), edit the metadata manually with another program (long delays with each step), etc.
Lets say we broaden this beyond the PS3. I'd like a program which will rip my DVDs to SOME format (mp4, divx, whatever) that I can save them in which will playback just like the original DVDs via some STB that can live next to my TV. If DivX Encoder Pro can do this (in one step), and there is a STB that supports that format, including the menus and everything, great.
I don't really care if it takes all night to do the encoding, I just want to minimize the amount of time I have to sit in front of the computer.
And yes I'm willing to pay for the software. It just has to be a step up from handling only small parts of the problem.
It has been mentioned already, but I will refer to it anyways. Windows Media Center with the my movies plugin does just that. You can rip to ISO format in any program you choose, and then it allows you to access all your movies (also indexes them by genre, actors, etc) in a Kaleidescape-like interface. By sticking with ISO format, you keep everything that was on the original disc. Additionally, you can rip the movies straight from the interface by simply sticking it in the dvd drive. It has the ability to handle multi-disc collections intelligently (e.g. TV Show seasons on DVD) it retrieves all sorts of cool meta info automatically through the web. And best of all, the plugin itself is free. As in beer.
Yes, it requires a HTPC, but it is so very worth it once you get it set up. Couple that with the other things you can do with MCE (it's functionality as a music server is totally bitchin') and it is a winner.
OK, first of all, thanks for your comments. Yes, I really do want to stream the DVDs from my network to my PS3. Why do I not want to attach a Mac mini/media extender/HTPC/etc instead? Put simply, because I already have enough stuff hooked up to my TV and I am trying to simplify, not complicate the mess. Add to that the fact that I currently enjoy being able to stream DL'd TV shows through my PS3, I would like to extend that functionality to DVDs as well, to have a one-stop shop, as it were, for my video viewing enjoyment.
That said, it is sounding like there is no simple solution for viewing ISOs or another more compressed format that contains all the stuff on the DVD, via my PS3. And no, I do not want to boot the PS3 into Linux. I would like to be able to switch between games and movies at will, without the intermediate hassle. I guess that if I need to go with ripping the DVDs into individual separate files, what is the best 'one-button solution' out there to allow me to select what I want to rip off the DVD, and to be able to organize it (along with artwork and descriptions would be a great bonus!) quickly. I have a ton of old DVDs that I would like to do this to, so having to jump through a bunch of hoops for each DVD would add up to a significant time sink.
Again, thanks for all your help.
Just use DVD Fab Platinum!!
It works amazing and you can rip straight to a ps3 compatible mpeg4/h.264 file right from the menu. Seriously, I tried all the other rippers and this is DEFINITELY the easiest one button program. And if you actually buy the program, you get updates which allow you to rip all the new movies with new encryptions that keep coming out.
Okay, I just looked at the web site for DVD Fab Platinum, and while it seems to be a very nice ripping program, and can queue up multiple encode jobs simultaneously for all the different video segments on a DVD, I don't see any mention either in the Platinum or Mobile descriptions or tutorial wrt keeping titles and so forth, let alone cover art and so forth.
Are you sure DVD Fab Platinum can output files for Apple TV, PS3 or anything else that include titles/art etc?
Sounds like what you really want is a 360.
Oh, and seeing Fanfoot's post, that is pretty much what I am looking for too, albeit a solution specific to the PS3.