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In your movie "processes" what software do you use?

DQ

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I thought it might be fun to start a chat to see what software everyone uses, especially those that you use to augment your main programs.

Here are mine:

AnyDVD
CloneBD
HandBrake
MediaInfo
Eric's Movie Database
AnyStream
Plex
Tautulli
 
AnyDVD
Anystream
DVDshrink --The most boss copying software ever.
ImgBurn
Clonedvd
Kodi
EMDB-- Because it generates one hell of a html page that I can use, when out on dvd hunts.
 
AnyDVD
CloneCD (still useful)
CloneDVD2
CloneBD
DVDShrink - still useful all these years
Virtual Clone Drive
ImgBurn
mkvtoolnix
AnyStream
Handbrake
VSO software - not as good as Redfox, but still useful.
BD-Rebuilder - I don't use it nearly as much since I got CloneBD, but it's still good.
MediaInfo - I'm still learning about this useful tool.

:)
 
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AnyDVD
CloneDVD
CloneBD
AnyStream
VCD
PDVD
JRiver
MediaInfo
sometimes My Movies for cover art
and scripts that I've setup to use...
LibreDrive
ImgBurn

Also my own homemade media inventory and distribution system (similar to Plex) :=)


T
 
AnyDVD
CloneDVD
CloneBD
AnyStream
VCD
PDVD
JRiver
MediaInfo
sometimes My Movies for cover art
and scripts that I've setup to use...
LibreDrive
ImgBurn

Also my own homemade media inventory and distribution system (similar to Plex) :=)


T

I forgot that I also have JRiver and LibreDrive as well!

:)
 
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I forgot that I also have JRiver and LibreDrive as well!

:)

LOL!

Yeah, I use both regularly.

Actually, I use LibreDrive via makeMKV, which I forgot to list.


I see you have CloneCD.

I do too but didn't include it because I rarely use it now.

I can use ImgBurn to make CD backups and AnyDVD handles DVD backups for me just fine (there was a time I used CloneCD for that too if I'm remembering correctly).

Does it have another use I'm missing out on?



T
 
EMDB-- Because it generates one hell of a html page that I can use, when out on dvd hunts.

Love me some EMDB! I actually donated to him given how useful and well supported that software is. And it's the only way I can know what's in my collection and what format I have it in.
 
Great info in this thread, this is what I was hoping to see ;)
 
LOL!

Yeah, I use both regularly.

Actually, I use LibreDrive via makeMKV, which I forgot to list.


I see you have CloneCD.

I do too but didn't include it because I rarely use it now.

I can use ImgBurn to make CD backups and AnyDVD handles DVD backups for me just fine (there was a time I used CloneCD for that too if I'm remembering correctly).

Does it have another use I'm missing out on?



T
You can sometimes use it to help copy a damaged unencrypted disc that AnyDVD would struggle with.
 
I'd like to know what everyone's best practices are for storage and quality. I was ripping all of my DVDs and BluRays to .iso for a long time. I now have everything in boxes in the garage and a lot of hard drives. I was using Power DVD for my mounted images, but they keep messing with the way the movies play, so I've been ripping to .mkv (MakeMKV) and playing with VLC Player, which works way better, but the files are almost as big as the .iso files. I've been doing some of my most watched movies as MP4 with Handbrake, but they take forever if you try to do anything high quality...some titles can take a few days. When I started consolidating my collection to watch from my computer, a lot of people were talking about ripping to .iso, then .mkv, and then Handbrake, which I have done, but I worry about converting, converting, converting and losing some of the quality. I just want to copy everything once and have a couple of hard drives that I can Plex or take with me. Also, similar topic...what does everyone like for CD's? I copied my whole collection years ago to iTunes as Apple Lossless, but they did a new version at one point, I directed it to the hard drive, and it consolidated the whole catalogue of maybe a thousand CD's to one giant album like taking 1000 playing card decks and shuffling them together. Months of work down the drain (this was when iTunes was relatively new, but still). So, I have Clone CD, but while I like having a pristine copy, the .iso files and artwork are relatively useless. I'll never do iTunes again. WinAmp and other programs are almost non-existant now. I'm getting tired of Amazon with my playlists full of mostly disappeared versions of albums that I like (and actually own on CD).
 
Love me some EMDB! I actually donated to him given how useful and well supported that software is. And it's the only way I can know what's in my collection and what format I have it in.
In the past couple of months he has taken the software to whole other level. At this point, to me it rivals kodi. The weakness was always the scraper, when adding large amounts of new material. Now that thing is sweet. I am pretty sure this app is on the verge of going subscription.
 
AnyDVD: Best ripper every
AnyStream: downloading shows/movies not available on disc (bonus points for actually downloading and not doing screen capture).
HandBrake: My main transcoder
ffmpeg: for transcoding jobs Handbrake can't handle (like fixing the 4% speed up on a PAL releases)
MakeMKV: for extracting titles Handbrake can't (like multiple videos packed in the same DVD title).
DvdShrink: for accessing titles and videos that no other tools can't see (like videos embedded in DVD menus).
CloneDVD2: for fixing really badly authored DVD that other tools can't understand
MediaInfo: for inspecting media files
mkvmerge: many jobs (extracting, adding tracks, remuxing).
My MP4Box: extracting timed text from MP4 files.
DVDSubEdit: finding forced subtitles on DVDs
BDtoAVCHD: finding forced subtitles on Blu-rays.
DVD Audio Extractor: extracting audio only tracks from discs.
Media.exe: my own tool that does most of the heavy lifting. It executes scripts written is a language I wrote specifically for processing media, parsing discs, and outputs queue files.
Media Transcoder: my own gui tool to run the queue files generated by Media. Makes it easy to see whats going, juggle jobs around, pausing, change cpu utilization, affinity, etc.
 
Where do i start

AnyDVD
AnyStream
CloneBD
CloneDVD2
CloneDVD Mobile (rarely)
Handbrake if the above fails)
BD-Rebuilder for the now very rare BD3D (apparently those won't be manufactured much longer, even 3DTV's are hard to find nowadays)
MediaInfo
MKVToolnixGUI
Plex
MovieCollector (by clz.com)
Virtual Clone Drive
IMGBurn (i do ALL my burning with IMGBurn, no exceptions other than CloneDVD2 after shrinking)
PowerDVD pretty much just to test if any rip behaves as it should, prior to cloning. Again to check after cloning (and prior to burning for BD's)
 
I'd like to know what everyone's best practices are for storage and quality. I was ripping all of my DVDs and BluRays to .iso for a long time. I now have everything in boxes in the garage and a lot of hard drives. I was using Power DVD for my mounted images, but they keep messing with the way the movies play, so I've been ripping to .mkv (MakeMKV) and playing with VLC Player, which works way better, but the files are almost as big as the .iso files. I've been doing some of my most watched movies as MP4 with Handbrake, but they take forever if you try to do anything high quality...some titles can take a few days. When I started consolidating my collection to watch from my computer, a lot of people were talking about ripping to .iso, then .mkv, and then Handbrake, which I have done, but I worry about converting, converting, converting and losing some of the quality. I just want to copy everything once and have a couple of hard drives that I can Plex or take with me. Also, similar topic...what does everyone like for CD's? I copied my whole collection years ago to iTunes as Apple Lossless, but they did a new version at one point, I directed it to the hard drive, and it consolidated the whole catalogue of maybe a thousand CD's to one giant album like taking 1000 playing card decks and shuffling them together. Months of work down the drain (this was when iTunes was relatively new, but still). So, I have Clone CD, but while I like having a pristine copy, the .iso files and artwork are relatively useless. I'll never do iTunes again. WinAmp and other programs are almost non-existant now. I'm getting tired of Amazon with my playlists full of mostly disappeared versions of albums that I like (and actually own on CD).

I keep all the transcoded stuff on my NAS for direct access. This is backed up to external drives. I keep another set of external backups for all my untouched DVD/Blu-ray rips (some things are double backed up because they are very expensive, out-of-print, MOD, difficult to rip, etc).
 
I was ripping all of my DVDs and BluRays to .iso for a long time. I now have everything in boxes in the garage and a lot of hard drives.

LOL!

Sounds exactly like me. :=)


Years ago I did a major move and decided to chuck all my physical media, confident in the digital collection I had amassed.

Didn't realize external USB Hard drives have a shelf life, but found out the hard way when several died without warning (around the ten-year mark).

I lost a lot of irreplaceable video and audio content!

So now I not only keep all my physical media packed away, but also make digital backups on at least two separate Hard Drives. Sheeesh!

Ok, that may be overkill... :)


I'd like to know what everyone's best practices are for storage and quality.

I'm a stickler for having the best quality video possible, so .iso's of my discs are what works for me.

I take the hit in needing more and more storage capacity, but to get the best quality - and retain all disc extras - it's worth it for me.


... what does everyone like for CD's?

I'm even more adamant about the highest audio quality than I am about video.

So for me at this point there are only two music solutions.

I create .iso's for all my CD's.

But that's the lowest quality audio I retain. If I can find a high-definition equivalent online, from somewhere like HDTracks, I purchase and download those.

They're usually 96kHz/24-bit flac files -- or better.


Oh, I forgot...for portable audio, like for the phone, I use those high rez files -- and lossless flac files ripped from the CD's.


I'll never do iTunes again.

I tossed the one and only Ipod I ever bought the minute I found I had to load my collection into iTunes.

Never looked back.




T
 
So now I not only keep all my physical media packed away, but also make digital backups on at least two separate Hard Drives. Sheeesh!

Ok, that may be overkill... :)

I don't think that's overkill at all. Having only one backup is a single point of failure when you actually need it.

DrX
 
I guess to clarify, what do people like for every day viewing? MP4 files are nice because it can play on a computer, or I can plug my HD into a Roku and plug that into a TV when I'm traveling (I do that at hotels a lot or at my in-laws cabin). I'm right now ripping Time Bandits from a BluRay .iso to a MP4 at SuperHQ 1080p30 Surround on Handbrake and it's going to take 1day:19Hours:12Minutes:20Seconds. I know that's pretty much overkill, but I wanted to see how it would turn out. I recently started to rip my BluRay of Titanic, and let it go for a couple of hours to see how it would look, and I personally think it looked significantly better than the BluRay through a Sony BluRay player and I think it looked better than an MKV through VLC Player. I'm not planning on getting rid of anything I have now, but I have a lot of duplicates...I like having a physical disk, a .iso backup in case, and my every day streaming drives (MKV and MP4). I love just clicking a movie and having it play. I'm mostly wondering what format everyone likes the best for good quality sound and video vs file size, compatibility across hardware platforms.
 
I guess to clarify, what do people like for every day viewing? MP4 files are nice because it can play on a computer, or I can plug my HD into a Roku and plug that into a TV when I'm traveling (I do that at hotels a lot or at my in-laws cabin). I'm right now ripping Time Bandits from a BluRay .iso to a MP4 at SuperHQ 1080p30 Surround on Handbrake and it's going to take 1day:19Hours:12Minutes:20Seconds. I know that's pretty much overkill, but I wanted to see how it would turn out. I recently started to rip my BluRay of Titanic, and let it go for a couple of hours to see how it would look, and I personally think it looked significantly better than the BluRay through a Sony BluRay player and I think it looked better than an MKV through VLC Player. I'm not planning on getting rid of anything I have now, but I have a lot of duplicates...I like having a physical disk, a .iso backup in case, and my every day streaming drives (MKV and MP4). I love just clicking a movie and having it play. I'm mostly wondering what format everyone likes the best for good quality sound and video vs file size, compatibility across hardware platforms.

Quality is irrelevant for choosing MP4 or MKV. They are container formats and can contain the exact same tracks. Plus, the are about the same size. Some people here like MP4 for compatibly. Others like MKV for it versatility (unlike MP4, it can contain practically anything). There are a lot of amazing, free tools out there for both formats.
 
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