Movie Collection Project

[TheCake]

I've been umming and arring over doing this for quite some time but with the advent of Windows Media Player 11/TVersity, Xbox 360, HD TV and a spare Windows PC being passed my way I'm thinking this is a reality!

I'm going to rip all of my current DVD collection to my spare machine which will act like a media server as such, sharing the files to the network. My DVDs can then be packed away out of site as I don't really need them anymore.

I've played with TVersity this evening and its now able to playback AVI's, WMVs, MPEG etc (with the exception of Divx annoyingly) as well WMP11 all configured and working to play back soley WMV's.

Question is, what format is the best to retain the quality of the DVD whilst also thinking about the file size? I did a lovely rip of the transporter in 1280x720 (720p quality effectively) but it was 9.2GB! How much! Whilst space isn't a massive issue I was hoping to keep a 1.5 hour film file size to around 1.5GB or so.

Anyone care to give any insight into best methods, ideas, software, settings etc. The end result I want to stream my whole movie collection on demand to my TV. I'm there now, but I don't really want the massive file size but I do want the quality.

Thanks

 

[BenWall]

Sorry, no. But I love what your doing, I'd love to be able to do that.

 

[TheCake]

Thanks dude, its appreciated.

 

[ollie]

Nice, I didn't even think of doing this but now i have the idea i might well have to look into it What kind of storage are you using? How big is it (oh err) and how much did it set you back. Also, the spec of the "server" doesnt have to be so great does it? What are you using?

Thanks.

 

[BenWall]

I'm guessing hes got a few TBs lol

 

[ollie]

lol, yeah maybe, but if hes after 1.5GB per movie, say like 600GB is gonna store a fair few movies :rasp:

 

[TheCake]

I only have a few movies ripped so far and I'm running on my laptop. I've acquired a 400GB Sata disk so will be adding a few of them and putting a system together in the next few weeks. We have to realistic though. Copying a DVD takes a s**t load of grunt and hours on a normal spec PC. I don't want to spend hours waiting for DVDs to rip so I'm going to run a half decent machine but for the time being I need to concentrate on actually getting the movie size down to something more managable.

Will run through how to set it all up etc once I have it all worked out.

 

[ollie]

Yeah i know, ive only ever ripped one DVD, altho it was on my old machine, and i ended up canceling it, it was taking that long. Should be 10x faster (i hope!) on my new comp, and then will send them over to the server via file sharing. I might be better off as well looking into faster networking equipment, as at the moment im on 100MB LAN. Will have to price up a 1000MB setup :0)

 

[TheCake]

100mb is fine Ollie. I managed to watch all of the Transporter streamed over my network at 100mb and the file is over 9GB.

 

[ollie]

I did used to do a fair bit of video editing, and to get the files smaller i used to open the final version of the video (in umcompressed format) in Videomach, and then set the codec i wanted to use in there (normally xVid, DivX, or Microsoft Windows Media Video 9 codec)

Although i havn't done that for a fair bit, and the kind of stuff i used to do were no where near as long or as big as a movie so i don't think that would be to usefull. Theres probs a ton of applications out there that will do it very easily, I would have a look but nets not liking bit torrent atm ;x

 

[ollie]

100mb is fine Ollie. I managed to watch all of the Transporter streamed over my network at 100mb and the file is over 9GB.

Yeah, although i was thinking about being able to do it so that 3 people can watch 3 different movies on 3 different comps at the same time for example.

 

[TheCake]

100mb is fine Ollie. I managed to watch all of the Transporter streamed over my network at 100mb and the file is over 9GB.

Yeah, although i was thinking about being able to do it so that 3 people can watch 3 different movies on 3 different comps at the same time for example.

Might be worthwhile upgrading to gigabit in that case.. lol. Don't forget to update the client PCs network kit as well.

 

[ollie]

Might be worthwhile upgrading to gigabit in that case.. lol.

True, ive just had a very quick look for prices, and a gigabit router comes to £102.21, and the network adapters come in at £16.39 a pop.

Don't forget to update the client PCs network kit as well.

lol, :rasp:

 

[f0xy]

use a program called 'dvd shrink 3.2' to rip the dvds and compress at the same time... i use it to rip them to hdd all the time. can change the compression level too, i never really notice a loss in quality either

 

[Ibanezman]

If you use a method like this mate, you'll lose all the menu functions, scene selections and most importantly chapter selections, I believe ? This would be pretty gash wouldn't it :dapprove: Plus with everything going HD, it all might end up looking a bit sketchy.

Great idea though, I keep wanting to do something similar myself, but can't think of a good substitute !

 

[f0xy]

^ dvd shrink keeps all menus intact etc, real good program, i ripped over 400 movies to my media centre with it

 

[Ibanezman]

^ dvd shrink keeps all menus intact etc, real good program, i ripped over 400 movies to my media centre with it

Yeah i've used DVD shrink mate, but just for ahem backing up originals hehe

How do you go about playing these over a network ?

 

[f0xy]

i have a 250mhz machine in my garage, with a couple of tb's storage, only ide though, im a cheapskate. running debian linux with 256mb ram.

i have a gigabit procurve switch and all gigabit cabling. running windows media center pcs in two rooms with a dvd plugin, that integrates well into the windows media center software itself, reads the vob's from the shared dir on the server in the garage, loads on demand etc...

freeview recievers in both, also have it setup if programs are recorded via this they go to the server etc

 

[Ibanezman]

Sounds interesting Yeah when a mate showed me his setup a while back he said they couldn't play DVD's, so it's a plugin you need to get then. I was putting some thought into that Vista Ultimate, maybe that could be interesting !

I've been struggling getting TVersity to work at the moment, just get errors, that my 360 can't play the fiiles. I'm sure I read that you can stream xvid\divx through that anyway.... perhaps thats where i'm going wrong

 

[f0xy]

yeah, windows decided not to include dvd playback from vob files you have to install powerdvd on and install the plugin, then its like a frontend for powerdvd to allow playback...

got the media pcs hooked upto the tv's so its all good, working well at the moment... until something dies or i run out of space that is lol

 

[TheCake]

f0xy, I'll pm you a bit later mate when I get home from work.

 

[f0xy]

f0xy, I'll pm you a bit later mate when I get home from work.

no probs!

 

[KDF]

encode your dvd's using X264 retain full HD and AC3 sound and keep the file sizes down to a resonalble size..

X264 is the future !

 

[f0xy]

interesting, might have to check that out

 

[TheCake]

KDF, talk to me about this X264 encoding. Anyone got a sample video encoded in it so I can test to see if it plays back properly?