Hello all.
I have a good collection of DVDs, but they take too much room up in my house. Is it possible to make backup copies of all my DVDs on an external hard drive and then also make them playable from the hard drive? I have AnyDVD and CloneDVD. If it is possible, is there a sticky or could I be ran through the process? Also what is better at watching play backs vs. ie: realplayer, windows media player or nero.
Thanks in advance to any and all those who can help me out.
Depending how sophisticated you would like to get I use VLC from the VideoLAN Team in conjunction with MPC, and PowerDVD 10. Winamp 5.x is also an idea but I feel it is better suited for MP3s and other audio formats. All the players have remote control possibilities / capabilities. (PowerDVD is the only one I mentioned that is
not free.) The VLC and MPC (Media Player Classic) both can be controlled via WiFi or BT (Bluetooth), with the help of a sweet little application for the Android called Unified Remote (which allows for 128-bit encryption). The program might also be available for " i " products as well (iPhone, etc). PowerDVD can be controlled via the same application but you need to know the keyboard shortcut keys to create a custom remote platform for the program.
I agree about utilizing a batch program for overnight processing. I do not use one as of yet maybe i7win7 could provide us with some names of the programs he utilizes.
However, I do use AVS4YOU.com's software suite of about 15 or so programs that allow for a most versatile way to convert your movies into any format you choose (FLV, MPEG, DiVX, H264, etc), by way of its Video Converter. What is nice is that you can by a key for all the programs for only $59 bucks (US) or so and get a lifetime (limited offer, at least for now anyway) key to unlock all programs. These programs offer great support and easy to use. PowerDVD I like to use for my movie playback because it has a better interface and you can have more control over the video output, IMO.
Like i7win7 stated I would
always rip your movies using AnyDVD/HD's rip to ISO so that then all you need to do is backup the ISO image to the hard drive. I like to keep a clean copy (unedited or altered) of my movie on my 1.5TB GoFlex Seagate drive and
then use CloneDVD2 or CloneDVD Mobile to omit what I do not want in the DVD. Sometimes a
DVD9 movie can fit onto a DVD5 disc once the extraneous trailers and commercials are omitted.
Granted H264 will fit more movies on a hard drive but I feel that keeping a clean copy of a movie is better because you can go back to it and retrieve something on the disc that you omitted when you shrunk the movie.
Also keep in mind that you can compress the movies that you do not watch all that often using a utility called PowerArchiver this is a very highly rated compression program.
The bottom line is I like to first like to use AnyDVD/HD to rip my movies to an ISO (some of the other members think that this option is meant only for Blueray ripping, I disagree, I have used it time and time again for DVDs as well without hesitation and issues) image because I will never have to wonder if I copied or transferred the whole movie to another drive. With just copying the files is just as good, you can always mount your ISO image utilizing Virtual CloneDrive and copy the files to another directory of your choosing.
Next, I use CloneDVD, CloneDVD2 to omit parts of the disc that I do not want in my final output (like the trailers or the foreign audio tracks which take up valuable space). These programs are on the same principle as Nero's Recode program. I like them better because they are simpler to use and provide a better output.
Third, I will use a program like AVS4YOU.com's Video Converter to create a copy of the movie to the desired codec output (FLV, MPEG, SWF, M2TS, MKV, etc). Also you could choose to use ImgBurn (this is a highly rated and
free CD/DVD/Blueray burning program, I like it better than Nero) to repackage your movie after using CloneDVD2 to an ISO file and use ImgBurn to burn the ISO to a DVD or Blueray disc or simply store on an external hard drive (I use a pair of Seagate GoFlex 1.5 TiB external hard drives).
Eventually you will figure out your own way to backup your movies and it will thus become second nature to you.
Keep in mind that just because you want to digitize your movies it is always best to keep the hard copies in a cool place in case you loose your hard drive or it crashes on your.
I hope this helps.
Cheers! :rock:
