What format for DVD rips?

[Chewy]

Oh dear, my innocent request for information seems to have stirred up a hornet's nest :doh:

Don't worry Scene, there's no hornets nest, just a single individual on a particularly high horse!

I'm sorry my desire to help you and offer you some alternatives for your media centre has sparked someone to hijack the thread and start preaching to us all about copyright law. Obviously that wasn't my intention, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered posting.

 

[duaplex]

An interesting point.... We wrote to the house of commons (work matter) to ask about this and the law is that it's illegal to make copies of your media, we wanted clarification by an MP as to whether it was going to be revised, and they admitted that the law is dated and needs revision.

gdavies has also mentioned something that is useful to use, I will be having a look at media center later on.

 

[Chewy]

dear gdavies09031977

Owning the software to crack the encryption codes put in place to stop illegal copying, or discussing ways to use it, are in themselves not illegal, but using that software to actually perform the act of copyright theft is. Also if you read the What Hi-Fi reviews of media players, you'll find that they never include information as to how to 'rip' your DVDs or Blurays to these devices - they simply give information about what files the media players are capable of playing. And I'm sure all the files they use to test the quality of the media players output are all legally acquired and fully copyright cleared with their original owners - there is no way any professional media organisation would contemplate the use of any illegal files on their systems as the consequences of doing so are extremely severe.

And it wasn't intended to be a lecture, it was merely pointing out to you what the present state of the law is concerning copyright theft in regards to your 'accusation' response to bigboss's picture. As bigboss has also said, it's not a particularily good idea to go on a public forum and openly 'brag' about the quantity of material you have 'cracked' and then to further express a casual arrogant disrespect for both the law regarding that and by extension, the rights of the copyright owners, is also neither big nor clever. The law as it stands may be regarded by some as ridiculous, and there are indeed moves afoot to possibly change it sometime in the future, but however much you scoff at it and post pathetic and unnecessarily sarcastic replies, it is still the law and although you won't be spending the next 2 years in Wormwood Scrubs, what you have done is illegal.

My apologies Rob, you clearly have an axe to grind on this subject - my intention was not to enrage that. What's more I have no need or desire to 'brag', my intent was to demonstrate to Scene the sort of capacity he could achieve in building his own UnRaid based server - my only intention was to offer help.

You are ofcourse completely correct regarding the current position of the law - but we can all rue the day when movie studios or publishing houses start to legally persue those users who have purchased ligitimate copies of their movies or music who choose to place a copy of that media on their personal playback device, for their own convenience. Indeed I doubt we will ever see such a case go to court - virtually every iPod user in the county would find themselves in the dock (no pun intended!).

As an avid iTunes user yourself Rob, can I assume then that you have not ripped a single CD track to your iTunes system, and have instead purchased duplicate copies of your muic collection from the iTunes store to enable you to play them on your Mac or 'i' device?

 

[Clare Newsome]

The CD situation is very different to the DVD/Blu-ray one.

Re CDs, the legal bods at the IFPI (representing record companies) are on the record as saying that private individuals will NOT be prosecuted for making a copy of music they already own for personal use. It's when people start sharing files that they'll crack down. This is expected to be clarified in forthcoming legislation.

Re DVDs/Blu-rays - these discs contain copy protection systems. By ripping them, you are breaking both copyright law and (effectively) the computer misuse act - you're 'hacking' the security software.

Again, there's expected to be legal clarification concerning copying for personal use - as, indeed, as there has already been in the US - but until there is, it's considered illegal on several fronts. The fact that so much software exists to enable it just proves what a mess this all is.... Urgent action needed, govt types.

 

[duaplex]

If you delve deeper into it, we have all been breaching this law since the days we had cassette decks and pressed record when our favourite song came on the radio.

 

[duaplex]

The CD situation is very different to the DVD/Blu-ray one.

Re CDs, the legal bods at the IFPI (representing record companies) are on the record as saying that private individuals will NOT be prosecuted for making a copy of music they already own for personal use. It's when people start sharing files that they'll crack down. This is expected to be clarified in forthcoming legislation.

Re DVDs/Blu-rays - these discs contain copy protection systems. By ripping them, you are breaking both copyright law and (effectively) the computer misuse act - you're 'hacking' the security software.

Again, there's expected to be legal clarification concerning copying for personal use - as, indeed, as there has already been in the US - but until there is, it's considered illegal on several fronts. The fact that so much software exists to enable it just proves what a mess this all is.... Urgent action needed, govt types.

That is exactly what the house of commons has advised us of when we wrote to them.

 

[eggontoast]

This started out as a useful thread but has turned into dribble by the rantings of some do-gooder :roll:

 

[Clare Newsome]

I think that's an unnecessary attack - it's important people understand the legal position before deciding how they proceed. If people choose to explore the grey area of copying, that's up to them - we're all adults.

And here's the latest on the Govt's position, for those that are interested. I'm at a parliament/media shindig in a couple of weeks' time - i'm going to see if I can get an update on possible legislation.

Now, back to talking about software and methods, in a rhetorical sense, obviously

 

[chebby]

I'd better sell my Humax before the Rozzers find out what I do with it!

 

[kevinJ]

The easiest way to start a mediacenter: get a Mede8er 500X2, put a harddisc in it, rip your films with dvdfabdecrypter (you can use the free version), let jamj analyse the movies, and copy the whole bunch to the mede8er's hd, or put it on a nas or whatever you like. You don't need to recompress any movie to a different format, the mede8er simply plays everything.

And then you get this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08TYQ-kXWLE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBvJFSixuaE

 

[scene]

I think that's an unnecessary attack - it's important people understand the legal position before deciding how they proceed. If people choose to explore the grey area of copying, that's up to them - we're all adults.

Thanks Clare for re-grounding this thread!

And here's the latest on the Govt's position, for those that are interested. I'm at a parliament/media shindig in a couple of weeks' time - i'm going to see if I can get an update on possible legislation.

Yes, the current situation is a proverbial dog's dinner, and an update would be good.

Now, back to talking about software and methods, in a rhetorical sense, obviously

Exactly, I'd like to know how I can do it for un-protected DVDs, legally acquired digital copies (as provide by Warner) and prepare for a possible future where "own use" might be allowed.

 

[duaplex]

Scene, you have enough info on how to start, why not give it a crack and report back . Once you have your NAS drive or storage medium setup its relaly quite nice.

 

[scene]

Scene, you have enough info on how to start, why not give it a crack and report back . Once you have your NAS drive or storage medium setup its relaly quite nice.

You're right of course.
- I've got a few different approaches to consider and what would be the best approach.
- I'll need to re-evaluate XBMC in light of its recent enhancements
- look at the ripping options

As I've got a 2TB NAS for back up and CD storage, I'll hold fire on NAS options for the moment until I've done the above and decided which way to go...

 

[nads]

Scene, you have enough info on how to start, why not give it a crack and report back . Once you have your NAS drive or storage medium setup its relaly quite nice.

You're right of course.
- I've got a few different approaches to consider and what would be the best approach.
- I'll need to re-evaluate XBMC in light of its recent enhancements
- look at the ripping options

As I've got a 2TB NAS for back up and CD storage, I'll hold fire on NAS options for the moment until I've done the above and decided which way to go...

re the digital copies that the movie makers allow us to use. you may only be able to move them once from where you download them to.

after having downloaded my free copies i then moved them to an external hard drive. fine. I then moved them to a NAS not not i have moved them to many times.

they have since been replaced with better versions.

 

[bigboss]

my intent was to demonstrate to Scene the sort of capacity he could achieve in building his own UnRaid based server - my only intention was to offer help.

I won't say I'm not impressed with what you've achieved there......this is probably the best suggestion of media centre I've come across. I'll investigate this for my own needs. What's the maximum storage capacity you can achieve?

By the way, I wasn't accusing you of anything, just to highlight that others who try to imitate you may not source the movies legally. Good to see that the thread is now balanced making readers aware of legal issues surrounding it.

 

[Chewy]

Thank you BigBoss

When I built my server the limit was 20TB I believe, but that may have increased with the advent of the 3TB drives which UnRaid now supports I think.

They are very easy to set-up and if you want to experiement without committing any cash you can download the software for free which supports up to three drives (one being the parity drive that maintains single drive redundancy).

The two great things about it for me were a) as Linux system it requires very little processing power or memory to operate (the software runs off a USB stick) so you can use virtually any old PC you have lying around (even the drives dont have to be the same size) and b) it offers redundancy from a single parity drive (instead of 1/2 of total capacity as with mirrored RAID), so in the event of a single drive crash, you don't lose any data, but don't sacrifice any capacity for the privilege.

 

[scene]

I'm with BigBoss - UnRaid sounds very interesting

I remember looking at FreeNAS a while back - which is BSD based - do you know how UnRaid compares to it? Can it be accessed by Windows, Linux and Macs?

 

[Chewy]

As far as I can remember its multiplatform - definitely Windows, and presumably Linux (as its built on Linux) - I don't remember any mention on the forums of it not working on Macs.

Im not overly familiar with FreeNAS, but I think UnRaid is unique in its use of a single parity disk for data protection (whereas FreeNAS uses standard RAID options (0,1,5 etc). For example RAID 1 requires a 50/50 split of data and parity drives, and even RAID 5 require 1/3 of the disks for redundancy (don't quote me on that figure). I believe all discs have to be the same size too.

UnRaid on the other hand uses a single disk for parity, so if you have 10 disks, 9 of them will be data disks. What's more, all the disks can be different sizes (as long as the parity disk is the same size or larger than the largest data disk). Which is great as you can use whatever old disks you have lying around.

Also with the more traditional RAID systems I believe, if you have two drives go bad you lose the entire system, total data loss. In UnRaid, you have protection for one disks loss (the parity disk will rebuild it when you replace the busted drive with a new one), but if you are unlucky enough to have two drives go at once, you only lose the data on those two disks. So in a 10 drive system for example, if you lose two data disks, you still retain valid whole data on the remaining 7 disks, rather than losing the whole lot.

Like FreeNAS, UnRaid is fairly open source, you can add to it with additional code where you want to. Don't be put off by that either, I had never touched Linux before using it, I just copy and pasted code from the Forum or Wikipedia guide for the functions I wanted to add. For example I wanted 'Wake On LAN', so that the server can go into sleep mode when not in use, but I can send a 'Wake on Lan, packet from my iPhone over the network to wake the server up again when I want to use my Sonos system or whatever. You can also set it up on a timed start, so that it comes out of sleep mode at a set time, eg 5pm ready for you arriving home when you might want it ready for use - that's what I am going to have a go at implementing next.

There are many many more things you can get it to do.

You're best off checking out the UnRaid website (Lime Technology is the company name - though I think the company is just one or two guys), which also houses the very friendly and useful forum, and also the extensive UnRaid articles and documentation on Wikipedia.

 

[bigboss]

There's an interesting comparison table here:
snapraid.sourceforge.net/compare.html

 

[scene]

There's an interesting comparison table here: snapraid.sourceforge.net/compare.html

Interesting link. I must admit I'm a huge zfs fan, been using it at work for a few years and implemented it on a huge Solaris system with the help of some of the Sun guys who helped develop it, but I digress. One of the Sun people used it wih an opensolaris based nas so he could use the snap and clone functions to give multiple views of the same iTunes library for different family members.

 

[Chewy]

:O

There's an interesting comparison table here: snapraid.sourceforge.net/compare.html

Interesting link. I must admit I'm a huge zfs fan, been using it at work for a few years and implemented it on a huge Solaris system with the help of some of the Sun guys who helped develop it, but I digress. One of the Sun people used it wih an opensolaris based nas so he could use the snap and clone functions to give multiple views of the same iTunes library for different family members.

:O :O :O

I don't think you need any helps from us then Scene - I think you slot comfortably into the category of "Advanced User"!!

 

[scene]

:O

There's an interesting comparison table here: snapraid.sourceforge.net/compare.html

Interesting link. I must admit I'm a huge zfs fan, been using it at work for a few years and implemented it on a huge Solaris system with the help of some of the Sun guys who helped develop it, but I digress. One of the Sun people used it wih an opensolaris based nas so he could use the snap and clone functions to give multiple views of the same iTunes library for different family members.

:O :O :O

I don't think you need any helps from us then Scene - I think you slot comfortably into the category of "Advanced User"!!

:$ I sort of know what I'm doing with unix systems and fs, not so hot on Linux and all those different raid versions for nas. As for ripping DVDs, completely flummoxed on the best way to go, hence the thread. All the input s really helping!

 

[Anonymous]

I used in the past DVD Decryptor and DVD Shrink to copy to vob and then use handbrake to convert to MP4...always MP4 for me for the most user friendlyness with my WDlive drive...although it takes an age to work through a decent sized collection.

But with being older softwares ie Decryptor and Shrink they both normally come up against stumbling blocks for the latest releases and copy protection....theres loads of software to get around the latests copyright....dvdfab is a goody, as too is win x and the make mkv to is another sound choice...but as i do with so much in my life, i outsourced the job LOL...EDITED BY MODS

 

[Anonymous]

UNPUBLISHED BY MODS

 

[kinda]

For the DVDs if you have enough disk space and quality is the primary concern, it's best to try not to re-encode the video. If you re-encode it will take much longer than just ripping, and unless you compromise a bit on quality or deeply understand all the settings of the tool you use you're unlikely to get much space saving.

If you want all the disk menus and stuff then you need to do an ISO rip, but you'll need a player that supports ISO which are less common.

If you just want the film, or other video, you can rip just the relevant VOB files into one big VOB. Longer video like the film qill be in multiple VOBS, but a ripping tool like DVDDecryptor will concatenate them or you can concatenate them after - joining the VOBs tohgether produces one big valid VOB.

The video in the VOBs is encoded as MPEG2. Most players will decode this. If they have issues playing a VOB type file, the VOB can be renamed as MPG, which most will play, (a VOB file is always a valid MPG file).

The VOB, (or MPG), or ISO ripped will be exactly the video that a DVD player would get if you put the disk in it.

I klike the idea of having my DVDs on a drive and clearing the shelves, but then disk space and the trouble of ripping puts me off. However, every so often I have a go. My Samsung BluRay will play MPG across network but ignores the DVD anamorphic flags so they're squashed, my Humax box plays them properly, but won't rewind and stuff very well, and the RaspberryPi, (about £30), with XBMC (free) on is great, but has no hardware acceleration for MPEG2 so doesn't work either, (hopefully a software codec will appear). So I've given up again for a bit.

Hope this helps and your project goes well.