Best conversion for DVD's?

[Galactik]

I am running 2 Boxee Box's in my house, all streaming from a Windows Home Server box. I have been attempting to take my large collection of DVD's and put them on my server so I can eliminate the DVD players in my house.

So far I just ripped the DVD's using DVDFab and left the movies in the format it ripped them as, basically 2 folders name Video_TS and Audio_TS (I think I have that right)

Turns out Boxee Box can access these files, but I have been reading that converting them to mkv's would be the best choice. So I played around with Handbrake a little and followed the guide posted on these forums. I am not worried about file size, but I would like them to be in the best quality possible for mkv format.

Approx what size file should I be shooting for for a DVD converted to mkv? These will be streamed to 47" tv's.

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

[jmilum]

If you want to go the MKV route, then you should really be using MakeMKV rather than anything else.

[jmilum]

Oh, and to answer your original question, I think my files end up between 4-6Gb.

[Galactik]

Thanx for the reply. I will check out MakeMKV tonight. I did a conversion of 1 movie as a test on Handbrake and it turned my 5gig movie into a 700mb file and that was supposed to be high quality. It wasnt.

Excited to try MakeMKV. Thanx again.

Oh, and so the mkv should be about 4-6gig converted from a DVD? Thanx.

[jmilum]

Yeah, MakeMKV won't affect the quality as it does a straight rip rather than any kind of conversion.

[Prospero424]

MakeMKV will take the original audio and video streams from the DVD and simply remux them into a .mkv container. No compression/transcoding is done, but you're still stuck with close to the original size of the DVD, which will be anywhere from three to 8GB, and you lose menus and special features.

Handbrake is for compressing/transcoding. You'll lose a tiny bit of quality but (if you do it right) you almost certainly won't notice it. A reasonable size for a Handbrake encode of a DVD is about 1.5GB (a bit more if the movie is 120mins or longer) if you keep the original DD/AC3 or DTS audio rather than compressing that as well. 700MB with 5.1 audio will look pretty crummy 'cause the video bitrate will have to be too low in order to fit.

If you have plenty of space for 3-8GB per movie, then by all means, use either MakeMKV or AnyDVD/DVDFab, although I suggest ripping to a .iso instead of a Folder_TS structure in the latter case.

[Spodee]

Rip to ISO from Dvdfab and maintain MENU's and remove FBI warnings. I also remove foreign audio and subs. Or use DVD decrypter, or dvd43 or dvdfabpasskey or anydvd and IMGBURN.

[lombana]

I agree almost entirely with Spodee, I rip to ISO but only the main title, don't bother with menu structure and the like unless it's something very specific like a training video and the like.

I use FAB, select the main movie, main audio and drop everything else, file sizes are about 4g per movie with a hard limit of 4 so some get compressed but in the end the quality is the highest as it's a direct rip, the file size isn't that great but I'm sitting on about 10tb of storage right now and the 200 - 250 movies aren't making a dent.

Best of luck,

Miguel