[mythtv-users] Ripping DVD's

[Yan Seiner]

Bruce Nordstrand wrote:
> I started ripping my collection of DVD's to hard drive today but space 
> is being eaten at a phenomenal rate.
>
> Can anyone tell me what the difference would be in both size/quality 
> would be with ripping a DVD with Perfect, Medium or Good?
>
> For example I have been ripping at Perfect and "Lord of the Rings - The 
> Two Towers", for instance, is 7.0Gb. As you can see, my ripping is 
> filling up my 80Gb drive quite quickly. I know I am going to need more 
> eventually but I didn't think so few DVD's would take up so much space...
>   
I tried scrimping on size early on - back in the days when I had an old, 
cheap, beat-to-snot 27" CRT tv.  I could get a DVD down to about 600MB, 
and it looked OK on that TV.

Now, on a 37" LCD, I cringe and shudder when one of those early rips 
plays.... It's just awful.

I use mencoder (not myth) to rip DVDs, and I get a full-length DVD into 
about 900 MB - 1.4 GB.  Cartoons take a lot more space than live action.

I do two-pass encoding, and a single DVD takes about 3-6 hours to 
complete both passes.

You might get better compression for the same quality if you use 
mencoder; I really don't know.  mencoder gives you about 10,000 options 
and the learning curve is steep.