Ripping DVDs For HTPC Movie Jukebox

Back in the early days of MP3s, if you had a large CD collection, you found yourself debating whether it was worth it to buy one of those monster 40GB drives and ripping all of your music to it.

At the time, the appeal of just having all of your music in one place on your computer was really strong. No more digging through all of those discs, no changing them out and you could create playlists for whatever you wanted.

Over time, it pretty much became a no brainer and those 40GB drives are in the refurbished iPods and I carry a 60GB as my "sneakernet".

We're sitting on the edge of a similar threshold for movies. With a decent quality XVID or Divx weighing in between 750MB and 1.5GB, you can get 300+ movies onto a 500GB drive . . . which is exactly the project I started a couple of weeks ago.

I've got big, long shelves full of DVD's: just like I had with CD's in 1996. And, when I was laying on the couch after surgery, the benefit of not having to get up to change the DVD became abundantly clear. I had a few on the HTPC already, but discovered the bounds of that variety about a day into the ordeal.

Then came the email offering a 500GB drive for $125. I would have easily paid 3x that to have someone get up and swap movies, so I picked one up and added it to the 300GB I already had in there (for the few movies and TV shows I had on the machine).

I've been ripping my DVD's just like I did my CD's 10 years ago. Of course, just like those days, it's not yet entirely easy, but it's probably easier than you think.

As my HTPC is running Windows XP Pro, that's what I'm using to do the ripping and encoding.

First, I use DVDFabDecrypter to strip off all of the copy-protection crap and extract just the movie. Over the last couple of years, the original CSS encryption has become just one of the things that mess with the DVD's content.

They have been putting 99 "fake" tracks that look like the real movie, invalid DVD navigation and intentionally putting corrupted data on the disc just to mess with people who are doing exactly what I'm doing.

They say they're doing it to "prevent piracy". However, like all methods of fighting piracy, you usually inconvenience people who are not breaking the law rather than the "pirates". If you think that these mechanisms actually stop anyone who is serious about copying, you're dreadfully naive.

I want to make it clear that I am ripping DVD's that I *bought*. I own a copy of the disc and can make a backup copy of it (as has been established on the MP3 front for a long time). The MPAA likes to counter that argument by saying that I only bought a "license" to the content. If that's the case (meaning the disc was provided free when I bought the license), then I should be able to have the movie companies provide me with a replacement for a disc that gets scratched when I move a crappy laptop and the drive scrapes it beyond repair.

After all, just because the "included" disc was destroyed doesn't mean I don't still own the license, right MPAA? Since they can't have it both ways, I'm going to go ahead with this, 100% confident that I'm morally and legally in the right for doing so.

Fortunately, DVDFabDecrypter cleans that protection crap off and gives you a clean copy of the video data on the disc. It doesn't do any recompression or changing the movie, so you can end up with something like 6-7GB per movie, which I'm dumping onto the 300GB drive for the temporary time during the encoding.

I just pick "Main Movie" and clear out all but the main audio and video. Depending on the movie, I may grab the English subtitles, but it's pretty much stripped down.

I have been able to run through 5-6 discs in an evening (though not every night), ripping them to the temp space. I then queue them up for encoding overnight and while I'm at work. Again, just like the early MP3 days, encoding takes some time.

There are plenty of really complicated ways to completely control every possible setting when encoding movies. And, if you are looking for that, Google is your friend along with the 10,000 sites you're likely to find.

Personally, I've got other things I want to do. Enter Auto Gordian Knot. You just need to point it at the .IFO file, tell it where to put the output .avi and a couple of other simple settings and add the encoding job to the queue. I have been aiming for 75%-80% quality, rather than a specific size. That's because I'm not looking to put them on CD's or anything, just archiving them on my home theater PC. I'm also doing XVID as it's a bit more standardized.

When it's time to go to bed, I tell it to start processing and check in on it every once in a while until it's done. The output movies get dumped into a directory that my MediaPortal installation is mapped to pick up. I just use the remote to open the "Movies" directory and it has all of the movies sitting right there.

MediaPortal also has integration with IMDB, so I can have it look each movie up and grab all of the information about it, including the DVD cover. That particular feature makes it a win for Shelly. She usually wants more information about the movie than the title in order to choose. Now the HTPC has a nice virtual shelf of DVD's full of descriptive information.

With the current falling price of hard drives, by the time I fill this one up, another $100 will double the capacity or better, making this viable for the long term. Now I think it's time to watch Shaun of the Dead again.

You've got red on you.