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So I have a problem with storing my DVDs, I own a lot of them, A year ago I took them out of individual cases and put them into a larger case, but the case is never large enough and the pages fall out, and the binder rings break. I need a better solution, I welcome any and all ideas.
Once you rip them to hard drive you can put the discs in a closet somewhere.
Quote:
Originally Posted by scuba steve
This. It's the most convenient in the long run.
Coalman- there's still the storage factor.
And I also considered the hard drive but, it's not cost effective (at least for the average person/or untechnically saavy). If the average movie has 9GB you can rack up a lot of hard drive in a heart beat. A one TB hard drive will only hold about 113 movies. But there are problems. The larger capacity means that the disk geometry has to work harder for the same form factor. When you consider that neither the speed nor the buffer were increased expediently, it's easier to see why the performance is slightly less than the 500 GB model.
Ultimately, I think it might make sense to step down to the 500GB models. But then again we have a storage/operating problem. Unless you rack a bunch of 500GB's together. Anyway, if multiples of TB are needed for movie storage I probably look at the Studio or Professional versions in that capacity (lots of $$$).
Coalman- there's still the storage factor.
And I also considered the hard drive but, it's not cost effective (at least for the average person/or untechnically saavy). If the average movie has 9GB you can rack up a lot of hard drive in a heart beat. A one TB hard drive will only hold about 113 movies. But there are problems. The larger capacity means that the disk geometry has to work harder for the same form factor. When you consider that neither the speed nor the buffer were increased expediently, it's easier to see why the performance is slightly less than the 500 GB model.
Ultimately, I think it might make sense to step down to the 500GB models. But then again we have a storage/operating problem. Unless you rack a bunch of 500GB's together. Anyway, if multiples of TB are needed for movie storage I probably look at the Studio or Professional versions in that capacity (lots of $$$).
While the DVD itself may be 9GB, you can rip it to a smaller size with very little loss of quality. Admittedly, this needs to be done by someone who is technically savvy, or able to learn the ripping software fairly well. There are several out there that work quite well and are user friendly.
As for equipment, I turned an old desktop into a file server for a final cost of under $200. The desktop was free (from a customer that was downsizing), and I bought 2 x 2TB drives at CompUsa for about $80 apiece. I average about 2gb per movie, which means I can store around 2000 movies on the 2 drives before I have to add any more storage... I don't think I've ever seen 2000 movies, much less own that many.
Note: for a file server, you don't need to go buy an actual server. You can run one perfectly well off of any NT version of Windows (XP, Vista, 7), and older computers are pretty reasonable to purchase, if you don't have one floating around. At most, you may end up having to buy a SATA PCI card to hook up the newer drives for storage.
Coalman- there's still the storage factor.
And I also considered the hard drive but, it's not cost effective (at least for the average person/or untechnically saavy). If the average movie has 9GB you can rack up a lot of hard drive in a heart beat.
As already mentioned you can convert to other format, DVD uses MPEG2 which is not very efficient. WMV, Divx or other more modern codecs could easily cut it down to 1/3 the original size while maintaining most of the original quality. 1/4 the size is certainly not out of the question either especially with low action video.
It's not really rocket science either, just need to do some experimenting to find what is acceptable to you.
It's actually pretty easy to turn an unused desktop into a server and Tivo. I'm in the process of doing that with my Quad Core box. So far the cost has been minimal (already had the computer), and a 2TB drive was about $100 on a black friday sale at Fry's. I still need to get a dual tuner, Tivo software and remote though.
There are forums and a lot of information out there that'll help anyone along with doing this.
I'm sure we're probably completely over Rebecca's head (no offense) and in no means was there an attempt to hi-jack
What do you guys think of VC-1?
Building arches was bit overhead my head 6 months ago too. Now I'm "expert", you can certainly see the difference between first and last one. LOL I have a lot of experience with tools though so I'm not completely fish out of the water.
It's not rocket science, and if you do screw it up just start over. It's just a matter of finding the right process that works for you. For example if your devices support WMV you can drop the ripped video into Windows Movie maker and try some of the profiles they have set up already. Export a few samples using different profiles and view on your TV. The biggest obstacles with the DVD's is most are interlaced, you going to want to make sure you're not deinterlacing during the conversion.
As far as vc-1 goes I'm out of the loop for a few years now. Most of my video knowledge stops where HD starts but I have extensive background for SD, specifically analog capture. I just set up a network myself and I'll be looking into the options for the server.
If you need help with this or seek some opinions I'd suggest videohelp.com
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