Advice On Things To Consider When Ripping Dvds

[Monow7691]

Can anyone give advice on what format and size (to quality) I should rip my DVD films for use on the Pandora. In the past, when I did a DVD film rip using Fair Use, I used the default settings to create a film file that was 700mb in size and saved in XviD format. Which I guess was OK, but now I'm wondering what size and format I should consider for the best possible display on the Pandora screen.

The films tended to be the standard 90 minute length films. So I would like to know what size (in mb) to minute running time, I should consider. This would allow me to judge the file size of say a 25 minute episode or even 2 1/2 hour film.

So any experienced people who could give me any advice on all possible setting I should consider when ripping a film to get the best size to picture quality, I would be very grateful.

Thanks

 

[Aninhumer]

You're probably better looking around somewhere like Doom9 for encoding info.
(Although make sure you've had a good look around before asking any questions )

Anyway, disclaimer: I haven't actually done any video encoding in a long time, but I read a lot about it so here goes...

Almost certainly you want to use x264 to encode the video, there is nothing better at the moment.
There are various frontends, and their defaults tend to be reasonable if you want an easy life.
Ogg Vorbis is probably your best bet for audio. AAC can be better, but there aren't any good open source encoders IIRC.
For simple stuff .mp4 is a decent container, but you should probably be aware of Matroska for more complex stuff.

If you're flexible about size, you're probably better using constant quality than targeting a bitrate/filesize.
As I said though, I haven't done any myself, so I don't really know what the best setting would be, although it's likely to be subjective anyway.
Probably just try one movie at a few different quality settings, and see which one you think is good enough.
(I think some frontends have a preview which might help)

 

[Prometheus]

I can't really give any advice on MB-to-minute approximations, but I've had excellent results simply using HandBrake to create MP4 or M4V rips, with ffmpeg-encoded MPEG4 video, and faac-encoded AAC audio. I just keep them close to the resolution of the source.

 

[HackModford]

I"ve been using handbrake and using the iphone/ipod touch default settings (because I have those devices) and they look good on the pandora too.

 

[Spirit]

For audio Ogg Vorbis seems to require lower cpu at the moment. Source for that is my bum (just tried a couple of random files).


I'd use XviD for video for the time being as it is quick to encode and low on the cpu when playing.

H264 would be much superior of course but a) encode is hell and B) the Pandora does not like it at the moment. I am sure it will be hardward-accelerated some day.

 

[cbox]

I wouldn't recommend x264 for watching on the Pandora yet, I've heard it's very processor intensive so might not be the best choice until we get some DSP code in place.

I'd recommend XVID encoded video for now, with mp3 audio.

 

[Aninhumer]

I wouldn't recommend x264 for watching on the Pandora yet, I've heard it's very processor intensive so might not be the best choice until we get some DSP code in place.

I believe it's fine at DVD resolutions, but I haven't tested.
And it really is quite a bit better than XviD.

 

[paulguy]

I know you likely know, but for anyone who may happen upon this thread, the screen is adequate for DVD resolution video (at least NTSC DVDs, are PAL larger than 480i?), so no scaling should be needed, and even better, the pixels should have a 1:1 relationship, apart from the interlacing (You should perform deint in the encoding step for most DVDs, though I have seen some that could probably be described as 480p 30FPS which would be destroyed by deinterlacing.). As for quality and codecs, most decent mpeg4 encoders look pretty good if you shoot for about a GB for a 2 hour movie, but I wouldn't try to shoot for a specific size. Most codecs allow you to specify a quality factor, and you can mess with that until it looks good and is a decent size, as such modes usually give the best results (even with the same output size.), and you don't really have any specific target size, just a loose range. Do some experimenting yourself, and use variable bitrate (2-pass) modes!

 

[Monow7691]

Thanks for all the feedback guys

Aninhumer thanks, I will check out the doom9 site for more in-depth information on DVD ripping advice etc

I haven’t used Handbrake to rip with, so I will give that a go, so thanks for the heads up Prometheus, HackModford on that one.

Spirit & cbox thanks for the heads up on the use of DivX over H264 and H264 at this stage.

And finally, thanks paulguy for the thoughts on NTSC and PAL possible source influences on a final output file. I have more PAL DVDs but I do have a few NTSC, so I will try different regions to see how they will look.

So I will try a few rips on different settings and output formats and see what I can produce. I will get back with how I get on.

 

[Spirit]

XviD, not DivX. They are different encoders for the same format.