Ripping DVD's to .Avi for ease of viewing - How?

[SidewinderINC]

Hi all,

I've got loads of TV shows (namely Scrubs and House) on DVD up to a point, and then the rest on the computer. I am looking at ripping all of my DVD episodes onto the computer/NAS box so that I don't have to faff around with DVD's etc.

Obviously I know it's possible, but there are so many ways of doing it I don't know which is the easiest/best results etc. etc.

Somebody (I can't remember who I'm afraid :o, might be Dym) said Mr. Feek might be the best person to ask - but I thought rather than PM'ing him I'd ask everyone :D

I keep watching Season 5,6&7 of scrubs becuase I can't be bothered to get a DVD and then put it back after lol.

Oh, and I'm on a Mac - that'll probably affect what software I can use ;D


Thankee

Matt


EDIT - Might be better in computers section? I'm not sure :p

[SidewinderINC]

Cheers Kitten, just got hold of that - will give it a whirl :)


And thanks Mr.Admin Person - Much love!

[SidewinderINC]

Right, got Handbrake working all good and well but I've no idea on good settings haha.

I know most of the episodes of scrubs I have are 175mb but I assume that's so that it's easier to download etc.

as I'm ripping straight from the DVD I can keep the video at full size rather than shrinking it to 512x384, will I need to increase the filesize (I'm using the filesize option to keep them at 175mb) to keep the quality? or should I use the Average bitrate or constant quality settings instead?

Never done this before lol.

[leowyatt]

well if you set it to produce a file of a certain size it'll work out the bitrate for you :) it should keep the same resolution of the video file regardless

[SidewinderINC]

I know it'll work the bitrate out for me, I just wasn't sure whether it was best to choose the video resolution and bitrate and then the filesize is determined from that or set a filesize and resolution and have the bitrate worked out from that.

[Del Lardo]

You best bet is to keep the resolution as standard and choose the file size you want. It's certainly tempting to encode at 175mb for Scrubs and 350mb for House but given that HDD space costs bugger all nowadays I've gone for 350mb and 700mb as there is a very visible quality difference.