[the swede]

So.. i hate hate hate those darn DVD's...
have done some research and thinking and i just cant decide on wich route to go.

My choices are these:

1: Rip the discs to iMac, run them through Handbrake and put them in iTunes. This seems like an popular thing to
do and it allows me to play them on the Apple TV2 and plasma TV. And it saves space.
This seems to degrade the video quality though. Im not sure how much. But im afraid i will regret this choice in a year or two when drives are even cheaper than now....

2: Rip the discs to iMac and let them stay in this shape as original DVD copys. Jailbreake my Apple Tv 2 wich allows me to play them. This however results in larger file sizes but no quality loss.


So... i guess it all boils down to "my choice" but i just wanted to "breathe it out" with someone.

What would you do? And Why?

And, does Handbrake encoding degrade the DVD's much or not?

[demp10]

If you were using a PC system, I would reccommend to rip them as .iso images and then use MyMovies software to manage the collection and play them under Media Center. That way you have an exact copy of the DVD, in its original quality with menus.

[paulh]

If you were using a PC system, I would reccommend to rip them as .iso images and then use MyMovies software to manage the collection and play them under Media Center. That way you have an exact copy of the DVD, in its original quality with menus.

You could also rip them to fit on standard 4.7 gb DVDs (some quality loss, retain menus). Rip them to .iso, that way you can either play them on VLC (open source player that will play nearly any media format, including .iso), or burn them back to dvd if the need arises.

[séamuis]

unless your hard drive in that mac is rather small, I don't think ripping DVD's would actually take up that much space. if you remove all the extras anyway, and just retain the movie for digital viewing. you can rip a DVD in excellent quality with a file size of around 700-800 MB. upwards of 1 gig depending on the length of the movie. a DVDs standard resolution is pretty low compared to most modern computer monitors. DVD's are usually what 720 pixels wide? you ae already dealing with a compressed format anyway, so I don't see how any slight compression upon ripping will have any real impact on quality. they don't actually take up much space when ripped. my macbook pro has two hard drives (I replaced the optical drive with a second hard drive). a 1 TB secondary and a 256GB SSD main. I use an external optical drive mostly for the occasional movie or music disc rip. I have several hundred movies on my mac, a number of them 4-8GB Blu-ray rips and I still have plenty of space left. if you are planning on watching these mostly through iTunes on your mac and your apple TV, I don't imagine you are as concerned with the extras as you are having the convince of digital storage and playback of the movies yes? I have one DVD ripped with menus and extras etc. in the standard apple .DVD format. its file size is 6 GB for just a DVD and I can't see any difference in image quality between it and a rip to .mp4 of just the movie file, when viewing on my mac. even with my extra space, thats just not worth it, when the movie is the main focus anyway. I say leave the extras and menus for the disc, and enjoy the digital movies for their convenience and the movie itself. which is much easier when they are stored on your mac as opposed to a disc on a shelf. if you really like movies and watch a lot of them frequently, then upgrading your hard drive capacity shouldn't really be a topic of discussion honestly.

[the swede]

Thanks for the input

Im kinda leaning on the nr2 route now. Watched some Handbrake rips i made, and on my 42" Panasonic plasma (a few years old) i can see alot of artifacts and other thingys going on. Im kinda sensitive to these things so im going to go the full DVD image way without any encoding at all. And yes, i know how Handbrake works and how to make the most of it.

Why? Well... in a year maybe i will buy a new TV wich will likely be a tad bigger and better, so preserving the original quality of DVD's will matter more than drive space.

I defentively can see the benefits in doing Handbrake files, the mp4 format seems great with litle quality loss and yet narrows down file size. But i think its more for people wathcing movies on their smaller devices (iPod's, iPad's, MacBook's and so on).
But for me, i rather keep the DVD's on the harddrive for streaming to Apple TV, then maybe "handbrake" one or another if i feel the need to watch them on my iphone.

[tuco]

Are you talking about encrypted DVDs protected by countries honoring the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that the MPAA says your ripping software has to have a license to circumvent their oh-so-strong, super-duper encryption scheme?

[séamuis]

Im kinda leaning on the nr2 route now. Watched some Handbrake rips i made, and on my 42" Panasonic plasma (a few years old) i can see alot of artifacts and other thingys going on. Im kinda sensitive to these things so im going to go the full DVD image way without any encoding at all. And yes, i know how Handbrake works and how to make the most of it.

I don't own a TV at all, much less a large screen plasma, so I guess my needs are a bit different. all I know is that per my own use, both DVD's and blu-ray rips look great watching on my macs monitor. but I suppose I'm just clueless and don't pay attention to the little details. a file would have to have a lot of artifacts or the movie just plain boring for me to take notice of such things when watching.

[tuco]

I don't own a TV at all, much less a large screen plasma, so I guess my needs are a bit different. all I know is that per my own use, both DVD's and blu-ray rips look great watching on my macs monitor. but I suppose I'm just clueless and don't pay attention to the little details. a file would have to have a lot of artifacts or the movie just plain boring for me to take notice of such things when watching.

It's like looking at a JPEG that is compressed more than another even though the pixel resolution is the same. A dual layer DVD that is compressed further to fit on a single layer DVD will have a quality difference. But just like a JPEG, it depends on how much it is compressed before you really start noticing. And that goes even more for a Blu-ray which has even higher resolution and higher bitrate orginally. You have a Blu-ray for your Mac?

[the swede]

I don't own a TV at all, much less a large screen plasma, so I guess my needs are a bit different. all I know is that per my own use, both DVD's and blu-ray rips look great watching on my macs monitor. but I suppose I'm just clueless and don't pay attention to the little details. a file would have to have a lot of artifacts or the movie just plain boring for me to take notice of such things when watching.

yes... well i like big screens, thats my cup'o't

[séamuis]

It's like looking at a JPEG that is compressed more than another even though the pixel resolution is the same. A dual layer DVD that is compressed further to fit on a single layer DVD will have a quality difference. But just like a JPEG, it depends on how much it is compressed before you really start noticing. And that goes even more for a Blu-ray which has even higher resolution and higher bitrate orginally. You have a Blu-ray for your Mac?

no, I have an external optical drive that reads blu-ray, and I use that to rip the movie. as I stated above, I replaced the 'super-drive' on my mac with a secondary hard drive. I'm not a movie buff, so I don't have a huge collection (not tv to even watch them) but I do have a number of movies that are really favorites, so I purchase them on blu-ray if available. mostly a small collection of foreign and Criterion collection films.