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Peer Benchmarking

Sw0rdf1sh

Sw0rdf1sh

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I would like to conduct peer benchmarking of the community to see if any trends emerge and discover new ways of doing things - if anyone is interested in sharing. How do you do what you do from start to finish?
  • Format/settings: Do you prefer 1:1 .iso files or have you developed the perfect .mkv rendering settings to balance size without losing quality?
  • Hardware/software/player: HTPC, Mac, Apple TV? PowerDVD, VLC, Windows Media Center? Plugins like MyMovies or Plex?
  • Pros and Cons: What are the pros and cons of doing it your way?
 
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What is the advantage of burning to discs in addition to having the originals? Are some kept offsite for backups or do you sometimes play physical media?
 
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Simple in my case. You can scratch the backups all you want. If at some point it becomes unreadable, you simply make a new one from the original that's safely stored away.
 
Sw0rdf1sh said:
I would like to conduct peer benchmarking of the community to see if any trends emerge and discover new ways of doing things - if anyone is interested in sharing. How do you do what you do from start to finish?
  • Format/settings: Do you prefer 1:1 .iso files or have you developed the perfect .mkv rendering settings to balance size without losing quality?
  • Hardware/software/player: HTPC, Mac, Apple TV? PowerDVD, VLC, Windows Media Center? Plugins like MyMovies or Plex?
  • Pros and Cons: What are the pros and cons of doing it your way?
Click to expand...

Not sure, you can really ask those questions and get a useful or concise set of replies.
I for myself do all different types of conversions (apart from doing a lot of testing for Elby).

MKV conversions for smartphones, so the kids can watch during extended road trips - downconvert to a sensible size and resolution that makes sense on the respective device.
Backups of the more valuable Blu-rays to ISO without recompression, the less valuable ones with compression, to save space.
MKVs with high resolution and no compression for some children's movies, sitting on a server for easy access (and out of reach from little ones, who are easily inspired to use those flat round things as a frisbee).

Blu-ray discs are by far more resistant to scratching than DVDs. But they also are far less forgiving.
And a certain percentage simply dies away without any physical damage. From my personal collection, a number of discs just stopped working without visible damage - among the ones I know of "Prometheus", "Edge of Tomorrow", "Mockingjay 2" and "Gone Girl" (many more may be sitting in their shelves non-functional without me ever finding out).
"Gone Girl" is one I neglected to make a backup for - which irks me, that's one of those, I'd like to watch some time again.

Disclaimer: don't do all those things I wrote above, you're hurting the movie industry, yes there will be tears, if you don't re-buy your discs for 20$ a piece when they go bad. Also, it's illegal.
 
I like to do 1:1 backup to disc. Somehow I feel that the quality of the original is better preserved in a 1:1 backup and haven't had any playback problems yet other than those I created. Discs are my preference because I use Cinavia-free stand-alone players with my HT systems for most of my video watching and I have a recreational residence apart from home so I can transport the backup of a given movie without fear of damaging the original (plus I can leave it there if I think I might want to watch it again in the future at that location). No cons from my perspective other than the cost of writable discs.

I just use a two step process - rip to ISO and burn w verify. That's simple for me.

If I want to view a disc on my computer (laptop in most cases), AnyDVD coupled with MPC HC player works for that and even lets me view 3D features in 2D. It's a bare bones player but works for me. The cons are that it can't play ISOs on its own (though there's a RedFox solution to that also).

Addenda: Something else I found out recently - AnyDVD may not be able to work on some newly released discs without an internet connection. I sometimes travel and throw in a few discs to watch on my laptop with its MPC HC player. If I don't have an internet connection, this could be iffy with an original disc, but with a backup copy in hand (and again, this is good for traveling where an original might get damaged or lost), the backup has already been successfully processed and will play without that connection. Of course, if ripped to the hard drive that wouldn't apply, but I like to preserve HD space, and I may not know until the last minute, what movies I want to take along. With a physical disc backup, it's quick & easy to pull it and throw it in at that point.
 
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I got CloneBD and I'm considering backing up to disc now too. I'm guessing disc wallets are too small. What is the best for physical storage of hundreds to thousands of discs?
 
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