Dvd rippingto macmini via handbrake? Best setup please?

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jakethesnake

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#64447 15-Jul-2010 19:14

Hi, I have about 200 dvds sitting on the shelf, and would like to copy them to the macmini. I have "handbrake" but what preset do I choose to simply copy the dvds? So many techo bits to go through I don't know where to start.
I wish to view these movies through either front row/itunes or plex so not sure what format to convert to. I am hooking up to nice big telly so quality is most important rather than file size. I guess if possible one can eliminate the extras like foreign languages /subtitles etc to make the/files smaller as long as the quality is HD or as best as can be converted.

Any help appreciated.

thanks

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#352059 15-Jul-2010 19:17

try using some of the presets if you're unsure of the techy stuff. do an encode using each of the presets and see which one is the best mix of quality/file size for you.

jakethesnake

12 posts

Geek

#352065 15-Jul-2010 19:30

Yeah, thought about that, but the fact it takes ages for each is a bit daunting, then to test and try each setting would be rather time consuming. You're right of course, but being human, i,e, lazy, :-) had hoped someone had already been through this process and may have experience to pass on. I wonder why the "presets" are so oddly named? I mean what the heck is Bedlam, Blind, Broke? or for that matter AppleTV. Is appleTv the best for only on an appletv device or a format that is high quality for all players? There is a preset called Film so I assume this is the one to use? but hey it may be erroneoulsy named....very confusing. God, all I wish to do is copy them direct and get them to paly in their highest quality possible. I would have thought there'd be a standard preset for that, e.g no-techotypes like me. And yes I do own them all but it would be cool to have them backed up ready to play on the one large drive.

thanks for your suggestions, not pooh poohing them, just hope an easier choice may be available. Sigh.....looks like a looong week or two ahead.....

Jaxson

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#352230 16-Jul-2010 10:33

I totally hear you about handbrake. Does a good job but is just so flippen slow!

I went through this trying to find some reasonable solution to transfer some of the kids DVD's to the PS3 which for whatever reason seems rediculously picky on what file types it will play. DVD's are MPEG2 and the general solution seemed to be to use handbrake to conver to an MPEG4 file?!

I started a thread on it ages ago to find out what other people were doing. I had hoped it would accept a straight rip or down conersion from my usual DVD copy program, or even to an ISO file etc, but no....

animebuster

86 posts

Master Geek

#352240 16-Jul-2010 10:47

For dvds I made my own preset. This is what I choose

Container: Mkv

Under the video category
Video codec: H.264
Framerate: same as source
2-pass encoding
Target size 1024

Under the audio category:
Under source choose Automatic

Change the target size to whatever size you want the output file. I always rip the dvd with MakeMkv and choose what audio and subtitle tracks I want to keep and then use handbreak with those settings to compress it.

EDIT: If you want to view it through Itunes, I'm not sure whether Itunes can play Mkv's and H.264 so you might want to choose:

Container MP4
Video codec: MPEG-4

buzzy

217 posts

Master Geek

#352256 16-Jul-2010 11:06

Helpfully, the presets are explained here: http://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/BuiltInPresets along with comparisons on display size, file size, etc.

Incidentally, if you've got the Bedlam preset it probably means you're using an old release of Handbrake. Bedlam was a "totally-over-the-top bat****-high-quality" preset. It was dropped after the 0.91 release (from memory) when they revamped the preset system to a more user friendly, helpful naming system.

As gehenna suggests, try ripping some using the different presets and watch them to see whether you can see differences. When you're doing this comparison, tell Handbrake to encode a single chapter from the movie (just Chapter 5, for example). That way, you'll get a short segment of the movie - say 5 to 20 minutes - to compare, as opposed to encoding the whole movie three or four times.

I've found taking an appropriate preset is a good start - maybe Apple Universal, in your case. I usually change the encoding to "constant quality" rather than bitrate or size. Someone wisely pointed out that constant bitrate limits you during complex scenes, and is wasted during simpler scenes. With "target size" you're specifying something that isn't of paramount importance; what you're after is a specified quality.

Start with 50%, 55%, 60%, and 65% quality settings. See whether you can really tell the difference, and pick the lowest quality that's acceptable to you. Don't pick 100% quality; the size will be a lot larger than the original movie due to the way "100% quality" is interpreted by the encoder.

Cheers,
Buzzy

ScottStevensNZ

245 posts

Master Geek

#352258 16-Jul-2010 11:12

Personally, I use mp4 rather than H264 as it is much faster. Average bit-rate of 1500 kbps. Not using the h.264 protocol does reduce the quality slightly but it is not noticeable when watching a movie from the couch on an LCD TV and takes half to a third of the time to rip.

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timbosan

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#352282 16-Jul-2010 12:07

I am actually doing this right now! I am going through all my DVD's and have Handbrake on my Macbook Pro, and needed a format that could fill the following requirements:

Work on my PS3
Not take a lot of tweaks to setup a good profile
Still look good on a 52" TV (so that means a larger file size, but that's OK)
Work in VLC (but doesn't EVERYTHING play in VLC!!!)
Potentially work on Apple TV

So, to make it easy, I tested a few with the default Apple TV profile, and it works great! Files play on the PS3 just fine, file sizes range from 1GB to 2GB, and it doesn't take too long, about 1 to 3 hours per disk, depending on what else I am doing, the length of the movie, and free memory.

It also means if I do end up getting an Apple TV they will play on there too.

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ScottStevensNZ

245 posts

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#352284 16-Jul-2010 12:15

What CPU are you running in the MBP? 1-3 hours per disc seems a little high even with H.264...

gehenna

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#352288 16-Jul-2010 12:20

ScottStevensNZ: What CPU are you running in the MBP? 1-3 hours per disc seems a little high even with H.264...

Depending on whether you do a double pass encode or not, it can easily take 3+ hours to encode h.264 on a 2.26ish GHz processor with 4GB RAM. Some of the ones I was doing on my Mini earlier this year were taking 2hrs per pass, so 4hrs all up.

ScottStevensNZ

245 posts

Master Geek

#352289 16-Jul-2010 12:23

d'oh! Yes you're quite right...usually I only do single pass hence my momentary caffeine addled confusion

timbosan

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#352306 16-Jul-2010 13:05

I thought it would ALWAYS take more time to process a disc than the movies run time, because it is both extracting and encoding the data, although it does seem to go faster when less apps are running, i.e. more free memory available.

The Apple TV profile is only a single pass, do you think there could be something wrong here?

For reference, when I use DVD Extractor (under Windows, using Boot Camp) it is REALLY fast, but all that's doing is reading the disk and dumping it to a file, there is no transcoding going one.

And Macbook is late 2009 - 2GB RAM and 2.16Ghz CPU. Would be nice to have a Core i5 model, THAT would be faster!

Madmax77

152 posts

Master Geek

#352309 16-Jul-2010 13:11

I rip DVD content fairly regularly...and in the past did use Handbrake, however, I did find it very slow and the outputted files were very slow when ingested into Final Cut.
I now use MPEG Streamclip which is much better, you can set in/out points and output to pretty much whatever format you please.

http://www.squared5.com/

Cheers
Matt

ScottStevensNZ

245 posts

Master Geek

#352311 16-Jul-2010 13:17

Typically my mini will be able to rip a 45 minute TV show in 15-20 minutes. It usually averages about 50 frames per second - but I am not using H.264 which will tend to rip the content in near 'real time' per pass. I also use 'Average bit-rate' and set it to 1000-1500KB/Sec. A full feature film will take about half the time to rip as the films length, sometimes less. If the disc is dirty it may take more time. Typically I don't have any other apps open when ripping though I can watch a movie off of disk at the same time.

buzzy

217 posts

Master Geek

#352326 16-Jul-2010 14:11

timbosan: I thought it would ALWAYS take more time to process a disc than the movies run time, because it is both extracting and encoding the data

Nope. Extraction of the data is usually limited by device I/O speeds: how fast the DVD or Blu-Ray drive can read, or how fast the hard drive can write. The encoding process is almost always CPU limited as opposed to I/O limited.

The same thing's true with audio encoding. It used to take two or three hours to create an MP3 of a whole CD on a 100MHz Pentium. Now, it's done in sub-five minutes because modern CPUs are much faster.

The Apple TV profile is only a single pass, do you think there could be something wrong here

Unlikley. The Handbrake team probably didn't select two-pass encoding for the Apple TV preset because they've found it makes no difference at the bitrate or file size that's specified.

timbosan

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#352329 16-Jul-2010 14:28

ScottStevensNZ: Typically my mini will be able to rip a 45 minute TV show in 15-20 minutes. It usually averages about 50 frames per second - but I am not using H.264 which will tend to rip the content in near 'real time' per pass. I also use 'Average bit-rate' and set it to 1000-1500KB/Sec. A full feature film will take about half the time to rip as the films length, sometimes less. If the disc is dirty it may take more time. Typically I don't have any other apps open when ripping though I can watch a movie off of disk at the same time.

Ah ha, I think the Apple TV profile has 'constant bit rate' of about 2000kb, and uses H.264, so it will be slower. Wish I had it in front of me to check, but I think the options the profile uses just makes it slower. I will try on a movie with different options and see.

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