DVD Back-up Tools

[308Mike]

For a long time, I used the SlySoft products to rip and shrink (by conversion) my collection.

AnyDVD would break the encryption and allow the extraneous crap to be skipped (FBI warnings, trailers, overly-long intros, studio vanity banners, etc).

CloneDVD 2 could strip out just the movie from the disc and put it on the hard drive.

CloneDVD Mobile could take that stripped movie and convert it to a wide range of smaller file formats and user-selected resolutions.

To be honest, though, with storage getting so cheap these days (Seagate 4TB external USB 3.0 drive for $149 at Costco?), and with the more advanced copy protection schemes that prevent some DVDs from being ripped by CloneDVD 2, I'm just using the built-in DVD copier from AnyDVD to duplicate the whole disc's file system to a directory on my hard drive. The whole thing behaves just like a DVD when I use VLC Media Player to open the VIDEO_TS file.

Supposedly, I can rip BluRay discs, too...but I don't have a BluRay drive. And compressing a BluRay movie would cause a loss of detail, which would make BluRay pointless.

THANKS for all your info, and I also agree compressing, and or enduring a loss of video/audio would compromise the integrity of the movie of a Blu-Ray movie, but discussion of which REALLY belongs in another thread, which either I will make relatively soon or someone else will. After all, it IS an issue. How do you back-up a Blu-Ray DVD???? What's the best method for doing so WITHOUT losing data or fidelity??

Blu-Ray disks NEED their own thread for discussion. You're more than welcome to start a new thread or someone else will in the near future, but it DOES NEED to be addressed - especially for those moving all their data to a "Media Drive" for ease of back-up and/or transportation. WHY should you risk losing your ENTIRE Blu-Ray movie collection simply because you don't have a tool to back them all up to a drive you can shove into a DATA fire-rated safe????

[mekender]

For a long time, I used the SlySoft products to rip and shrink (by conversion) my collection.

AnyDVD would break the encryption and allow the extraneous crap to be skipped (FBI warnings, trailers, overly-long intros, studio vanity banners, etc).

CloneDVD 2 could strip out just the movie from the disc and put it on the hard drive.

CloneDVD Mobile could take that stripped movie and convert it to a wide range of smaller file formats and user-selected resolutions.

To be honest, though, with storage getting so cheap these days (Seagate 4TB external USB 3.0 drive for $149 at Costco?), and with the more advanced copy protection schemes that prevent some DVDs from being ripped by CloneDVD 2, I'm just using the built-in DVD copier from AnyDVD to duplicate the whole disc's file system to a directory on my hard drive. The whole thing behaves just like a DVD when I use VLC Media Player to open the VIDEO_TS file.

Supposedly, I can rip BluRay discs, too...but I don't have a BluRay drive. And compressing a BluRay movie would cause a loss of detail, which would make BluRay pointless.

THANKS for all your info, and I also agree compressing, and or enduring a loss of video/audio would compromise the integrity of the movie of a Blu-Ray movie, but discussion of which REALLY belongs in another thread, which either I will make relatively soon or someone else will. After all, it IS an issue. How do you back-up a Blu-Ray DVD???? What's the best method for doing so WITHOUT losing data or fidelity??

Blu-Ray disks NEED their own thread for discussion. You're more than welcome to start a new thread or someone else will in the near future, but it DOES NEED to be addressed - especially for those moving all their data to a "Media Drive" for ease of back-up and/or transportation. WHY should you risk losing your ENTIRE Blu-Ray movie collection simply because you don't have a tool to back them all up to a drive you can shove into a DATA fire-rated safe????

The discussion becomes, what is "good enough"

For me, who watches most of his video on the top-right 1/3rd of a 24" monitor, DIVX or h.264 encoded video where a 42min show = ~320mb of video file is great... I have watched that same video quality, stretched to a 55" rear projection TV and it looks no worse than a old analog cable TV broadcast...

BUT, DVD is usually a 720 × 480 video and my monitor runs at 1920 x 1080 (same as 1080p). Where the real space savings comes in from taking a blu-ray to DIVX is the compression of the audio, stripping away the alternate audio streams, the surround sound, the director's commentary, the extras, etc... That can shave 15gb or more off right there.