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<\/a><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nOver the last year or two, this has become practical. \u00a0The first enabler has been the drop in the cost of storage. \u00a0A name brand external two TB USB drive is around $100 and should hold the entire movie collection.<\/p>\n
The second enabler is DVD Decrypter<\/a>. \u00a0A free program for Windows, Mac, and Linux, DVD Decrypter does an excellent job of bypassing the various digital rights management locks on DVDs so you can make a digital copy. \u00a0Although the legal implications are murky, ripping personal DVDs for personal use is low risk. \u00a0It takes about 15-20 \u00a0minutes per disc (constraint is read-speed for the drive), so I just keep feeding them in while I’m doing something else on the computer.<\/p>\n DVD Decrypter makes an exact copy of the source MPEG-2 format, which means that the typical movie rip consumes about seven GB. \u00a0This is pretty large and the quality is already a compromise, having been compressed down from the original very high definition analog movie. \u00a0By using the third enabler, Handbrake<\/a>, we can convert the format to MPEG-4 (H.264 encoder), which takes up much less space (about one to three GB) with about the same quality and is supported by more devices. \u00a0The default settings for Handbrake work well, with some minor tweaks. \u00a0One was to increase the video quality setting RF to 19 from the default of 20. \u00a0Another was to add a second audio track to pass through the original AC3 surround sound audio. \u00a0By default Handbrake mixes down the audio to Dolby Pro Logic II. \u00a0The second audio track increases the size of the file but retains more of the source surround sound encoding for future developments in audio playback. \u00a0We end up with an .MP4 video container file. \u00a0One of the particularly nice features is that Handbrake has a command line and a batch mode processing, so doing high-volume conversions is a little easier. \u00a0It’s the type of thing you kick-off and run over-night, even with a fast, multi-core computer.\u00a0 (May 2014 update<\/strong>:\u00a0 I’ve upgraded from a 6 year old workstation to a new I7 quad core\/dual threaded machine.\u00a0 What used to take 90-120 minutes to encode now runs in under 10 minutes.\u00a0 Thanks, Gordon Moore.)<\/p>\n The fourth enabler is VLC<\/a>, another free program for Windows, Mac, Linux, and iOS device that will play just about any video format. \u00a0It does a wonderful job of playing the movies. \u00a0You probably already have this installed.<\/p>\n The final enabler is Serviio<\/a>, a free program for Windows, Mac, and Linux that acts as a media streamer, serving up audio, pictures, and video via Universal Plug and Play<\/a> (UPnP) protocol. \u00a0It will even act as an RSS redirector. \u00a0A lightweight utility, it runs in the background and makes it easy to browse and watch videos on a laptop, iDevice, or the TV via Linda’s PS3. \u00a0All three support UPnP. \u00a0I’ve found the clients to be more stable when you disable some of the “smart” features, such as trying to download meta-data about the media files you are serving.\u00a0 There are other popular media servers out there.\u00a0 I also experimented with Plex on a Windows platform (also available on Linux).\u00a0 I found it to be unstable and Googlish in that it wants to suck up your local media\/meta data\/usage information as a trade off for a fancier experience, something I don’t care about.\u00a0 XBMC is also popular, but I don’t have any personal experience with it.<\/p>\n May 2014\u00a0 update<\/strong>:\u00a0 I’ve spent the last several weeks working my way through our DVD and public domain<\/a> collection and have a few lessons learned.<\/p>\n I originally misunderstood some of the documentation in the Handbrake guide and had been creating MVK (Matroska) container files.\u00a0 These play fine on the computers and iDevices.\u00a0 But I discovered that the PS3 doesn’t like this format.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I discovered this after having gotten up to the “Ts” and creating more than 1,500 video files.\u00a0 There was no way I was going to rip and reconvert all of those discs again.\u00a0 Running them back through Handbrake was an option, but it had the disadvantages of re-encoding, causing loss of quality, extended processing times and the occasional glitches with copying the dual audio tracks.\u00a0 Both MKV and MP4 are container files, so all that is really needed is to recode or remux the existing video and audio streams into the new container.<\/p>\n I also have a handful of Blu-ray discs.\u00a0 DVD Decrypter doesn’t read Blu-ray, so I needed a different tool.<\/p>\n That’s what it takes for the new minimalism. \u00a0Getting rid of stuff is hard work.<\/p>\n<\/a>XMedia Recode<\/a> is a wonderful program for recoding video container files and has an easy to use batch mode.\u00a0 Just make sure on both the video and audio tabs that you select “copy” rather than “convert.”\u00a0 Each remux only takes a few minutes per file.\u00a0 Now the PS3 is happy as well.<\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0 MakeMKV<\/a> is free beta software\u00a0that rips Blu-ray discs, similar to DVD Decrypter.\u00a0 I’ve then been using Handbrake to convert to MP4 and resize the resolution from the native 1080p to 720p to reduce the size on disc.<\/p>\n