There is always a certain loss of quality when transcoding.
But ripping becomes interesting if you care about the usability, quality and disk space. An xvid with srt is alot easier and faster to use than a DVD. Dvd's tend to come with (for me useless) menus and other gadgets... I just want my movie, not everything else and especially no commercials that I cannot skip (my no. 1 irritation). MPEG2 isn't quite the -best- compression format, it wastes alot of space. One can create h264 vids or xvids which take up to 2G for an entire movie (with AC3) and the source dvd about 5 or 6G. This is all done with a nearly equal quality. I even think the quality of the xvid/h264's would be better if it could be encoded from the raw sources rather dan an existing dvd. Agreed, part of all this lies in the history of dvd (it dates back to 1995...and processing power wasn't all that great back then). But at the moment, it is wasting space since nearly any new hardware player can now play xvids as well (h264 is only a matter of time now). Another interesting issue is storage, harddisks come quite cheap these days. What's the fastest: a never ending search through a pile of dvd boxes for a movie or a simple alphabetic catalog on screen to choose the movie you'd like to see (like with mythtv and some Kiss players). Having said all this, I fear some bashing from dvd-minded people ;-) I 'm not saying dvd is bad, it is a great standard which does play everywhere. It's a choice you'd have to make for yourself what is most appealing to you. On 6/13/06, Hank Barta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi, I've been searching through the archives with interest regarding quality of results. I have in mind to rip DVDs to hard drive and watch them from there. It seems like there is no magic formula for transcoding this material and getting good results. Material ranges, for example, stuff like Shrek and Finding Nemo - which are perfect - to older movies like Blade Runner or even older TV shows such as Fawlty Towers. Blade runner had a dark and gritty appearance to begin with and the transfer to DVD may not have been the best. And Fawlty Towers has color imperfections that make it look like VHS tapes. It seems generally understood that any transcoding will detract from overall quality. On the other hand, some things that are poor quality perhaps won't lose much but could save a lot of space. I intend to watch these on an HD TV, so the quality does matter. Also I don't really care about all of the "extra value" add-ons on the DVDs like trailers for anything else the studio is working on. I just want to capture the movie itself. So the trade off would be disk space vs. quality of the results, right? I guess if I use dvd::rip for ripping, I should save my projects so that I can come back and transcode when I start running short of disk space. ;) So... Am I missing anything? Don't hesitate to point out any fallacies in my arguments. thanks, hank -- Beautiful Sunny Winfield, Illinois
