making my dvd files smaller

[jac24855]

OK. so i have a pretty massive collection of dvd's i'm tired of burning them all to discs. So, I am starting to put them on my hard drive. But, i'm using dvd shrink and each folder is like 3 or 4 gbs and there are like 20 different .vob files and .bup files i just want to combine them all together or make them smaller somehow for storage. My friend say's his folder's are only about 1 gb and that's what i am trying to accomplish.... any ideas... better software, or any will be appreciated.

 

[mbreslin1954]

Use something like SlySoft's AnyDVD to rip them (not free, there are free ones out there). Then, once they're ripped to your hard drive as .VOB files in a VIDEO_TS folder, use the free HandBrake software to encode them with H.264. It will make them about one fifth the size, and put them into just one file, typically a .m4v file. The only drawback is that you don't get the DVD menus, or at least I haven't bothered to figure out how to keep the menus, I just want a freakin' file of the movie.

In my experience, a 4.3 GB movie DVD will encode down into 800 MB or so. A 7.4 GB movie DVD will come in at 1.3 GB.

HandBrake will turn a 32 GB .mts blu-ray movie into a 3.3 GB file.

 

[getochkn]

depends on how high of quality you want for the movie. If you friend is shrinking down to 640x480, then 1gb is obtainable. if you want 1080i rips, 1gb isn't going to look as good. You can take a bluray and rip it and have a ~45gb movie, or compress it down to a 200mb 320x240 movie, your choice. All comes down to quality.

 

[USAFRet]

Same length + full screen + smaller file size = less resolution.

Any of the various applications can squeeze it down to the file size you want. How much resolution do you want to give up?

Handbrake will do what you need. Try a couple and see if the drop in resolution is acceptable.

 

[mbreslin1954]

Guys, I hate to break it to you, but DVDs do not use H.264 encoding, which, from frame-to-frame, only encodes the changes between each frame. I understand H.264 is part of the Blue-ray standard, but for some reason they don't seem to make much use of it in Blu-rays either.

I just encoded the main .mts file ripped from "The Host" Blu-ray last night. The main .mts file was ripped at 1080p with DTS audio, and from a 32 GB .mts file was encoded down to 3.3 GB (90 minutes with my i7-4770k). Now, having said that, I will admit that in a few scenes where the background was very stationary, 1 hour 23 minutes at one point, 1 hr. 48 minutes at another, the stationary background got a little fuzzy because it was essentially frozen (nothing was changing in the background between frames).

So I re-encoded it with HandBrake again, this time increasing the quality level and slowing the speed of the encode (also increases the quality). It took almost five hours with all eight logical cores running 100%, and it came out at 7.7 GB in size, but the quality of the encode was completely indistinguishable from the original 32 GB file. I kid you not. When I encode a DVD movie at 480 at normal HandBrake settings, the resulting file is 20% the size and no difference in quality.

I believe H.264 is patent-protected and costs a royalty to use, but HandBrake, like VLC Media Player, is an open-source French application, and the French are well-known for not enforcing all video patents. That's why VLC will play DVDs, and HandBrake can use H.264 for video encoding.

 

[mbreslin1954]

If the original poster will download HandBrake and try it, he will be amazed at the space savings and the quality of the encodes.

http/handbrake.fr/

 

[jac24855]

no i already had handbrake....it does work.... but it changes the resolution to widescreen and that sucks! Not to mention the quality is like vhs.. Any way to keep the resolution and MOST of the quality while reducing file size?

 

[jac24855]

also dvd shrink is free and faster than any slysoft program ive ever used...

 

[USAFRet]

also dvd shrink is free and faster than any slysoft program ive ever used...

I've not used DVDShrink in quite a while, but IIRC it gives the option of final output size.

 

[jac24855]

sort of, Its lets you control what is being copied, enabling you to leave only the main movie, which is usually round 3 gb or 4,000 mb

 

[jac24855]

oh, and it take about 10 minutes

 

[mbreslin1954]

What settings do you use when encoding DVD VOB files with HandBrake? Do you set it to "High profile"? I watch mine on a 94 inch screen with a 1920x1080 projector and I cannot see any difference in quality between the original DVD in my DVD player and the HandBrake encoded file.

But I have no magic solution for you, if HandBrake isn't doing it then I don't know what to offer you. It's all I know 'cause it meets my needs.

 

[hang-the-9]

OK. so i have a pretty massive collection of dvd's i'm tired of burning them all to discs. So, I am starting to put them on my hard drive. But, i'm using dvd shrink and each folder is like 3 or 4 gbs and there are like 20 different .vob files and .bup files i just want to combine them all together or make them smaller somehow for storage. My friend say's his folder's are only about 1 gb and that's what i am trying to accomplish.... any ideas... better software, or any will be appreciated.

DVD shrink has options to create one VOB file, as well as compress it to make a smaller file. You can't just look at the smaller file size, you need to find out what format you want to save the files in. A 1gb movie file is small but will not give you very good quality. To get something that looks almost like a regular DVD you are looking at about a 2 gig file size when using DIVX or XVID.