Help and suggestions for putting DVD library on Channels DVR

#1

I have a pretty large DVD collection. I would love to move all my movies onto Channels DVR. Presently, I do not have any ripping software and I suppose I will have to deal with DRM protections.

I would like suggestion on the best way to achieve this. Software suggestions - nothing so technical one has to be a digital engineer to understand.

I would also like straight-forward advice on the best way to name the files to work with Channels and any advice over and above what is available in the "how to" section on Channels for storing and pulling the movies into Channels.

All help and suggestions would be appreciated!

#2

Are you planning to do this in a PC or Mac?

#3

A PC - Windows 11.

#4

I like MakeMKV for Windows and Linux. It makes perfect copies and fast. Large files but worth it. And Channels plays MKV's well. As for naming, what seems to work best is name the file as close to the actual title as possible for movies. TV's shows need to indicate season and episode in the title like: Downton Abbey - s1e1.mkv

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#5

Potentially a lot of work for some low resolution results - you’re talking 480p max (often less with wide aspect ratio content - even when the source used anamorphic encoding).

Upside is with hevc/h.265 those encodes will be tiny and take up very little space.

I have not done dvd ripping in over a decade but I’m sure there are still great feee / open source tools out there someone else will have to recommend though. Look for one that supports hevc for the encodes and don’t worry about drm issues DVD drm was defeated very early on.

Good luck.

#6

In my personal experience with DVD rips, H.265/HEVC files are either the same size or slightly larger than H.264/AVC. (In fact, that holds true all the way up to 720-1080P content.) H.265/HEVC is best suited to 1080P and higher resolution content; stick to H.264/AVC for lower resolution content. (Of course, this is just my personal experience; yours may differ.)

As far which program? Personally I tend to use Handbrake, as it's easy enough to setup a couple of presets—I usually have different presets for regular, animated, and foreign content—so I don't have to muck about with different quality/compression settings, or different audio/subtitle configurations.

#7

I stand corrected - I haven’t encoded at dvd res in a while and assumed the size reduction would carry downward. Definitely ignore my advice!

I used to use handbrake also - so ++ on that.

#8

Thanks for the help and advise. Playing around with some software. Recorded a movie. Picture quality was OK, but when viewed on TV through Channels, there was blank space on all sides of the movie. I have lots of recording choices - most of which I don't have a clue about.

One is the Encoder. My choices are Smart Fit, AVC1, H264, H265 and VP9. I left the choice as Smart Fit as that was the default. Any advise?

I re-recorded the same movie only used MKV instead of MP4 to see if that makes a difference.

Thanks again to all those that answered!

#9

Yep MakeMKV the best Original Video Quality and Sound plus you can add subtitles. Plus it is fast.

#10

I looked up MakeMKV and seems it was been removed from the internet and is no longer available accept a Russian version. I purchased some software titled Wonderfox DVD Ripper Pro, but so far I am not impressed.

I purchased a 3 PC license. Wouldn't work at all on my laptop running Windows 10. I have tried every formula possible. With the finished product, I either have sound with no picture, picture with no sound or I get both picture and sound, but the video has blank space on all four sides. Tired MKV, MP4 and MPG.

After hours of work, I finally did get two DVD's to rip properly!

I'm running Windows 11 and maybe that's the problem. I see a request for a refund in my future!

I thought this was going to be easy. Thanks for the help!

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#11

what? https://www.makemkv.com/

#12

??

https://www.makemkv.com/download/

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#13

Thanks, I'll check it out!