Thus far, I haven’t bothered with ripping my DVD collection. My old external hard drive is too full to hold that many large files, and my ailing external DVD drive probably wouldn’t survive that much activity. Nevertheless, I recently made an exception for a few special projects.
Test Drive
My first objective was to rip the music video DVDs that came with my deluxe J-Pop album sets, which I mentioned in a previous post. I’ve just about reached the limit on the number of times I can play those Region 2 DVDs in my Region 1 external DVD player before it permanently locks. Since I don’t plan to buy any more of these expensive sets, it seemed like a good time to convert them into a digital format once and for all.
I ripped the first DVD using the program MakeMKV, which I learned about from a Make Use Of article about DVD ripping. The process worked well. MakeMKV overrode the disc’s Region 2 status and spit the 18 music videos out as individual files with no problems.
Unfortunately, I somehow missed the memo that the MKV format isn’t compatible with iTunes, where I had planned to stash the music videos alongside my others. I had to convert the files to the M4V format with the program Handbrake. Then I imported them into iTunes and properly updated their information. The whole process took me a couple of hours. From then on, I switched from MakeMKV to Handbrake.
I did the same thing with two more DVDs. One of them ripped without incident. The other one, on the other hand, ripped as one long file with chapter stops for each video. That made sense since it was originally supposed to be like a short movie or documentary. Having such a large file was not ideal for my purposes. I didn’t want to have to sift through the file to find a specific video every time. With some googling, I learned that Handbrake can split the file using the chapter stops. I put the DVD back in and queued up each video for a new rip. Worked like a charm!
My second objective was to salvage two of our malfunctioning DVDs. One disc starts skipping during the last 15 minutes, while the other refuses to play beyond the main menu. Even though I knew it was a long shot, I thought that MakeMKV or Handbrake might be able to read the discs enough to recover copies.
Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. Neither program could make sense of the messed up DVDs. The DVD drive was whirling and grinding like crazy while it was reading the discs. I expected to smell smoke at any moment. Eventually, it stopped altogether, like it was telling me, “Sorry, dude, I tried.” We’ll just have to re-buy those movies.
The Second Run
Once I got into the swing of things, I decided rip my meager anime collection (~30 discs total) too. I wanted to make sure that I have a copy of my favorite titles in case something happens to my discs or the series goes out of print.
My biggest worry was that I would have to rip each disc twice to get both the subtitled and dubbed versions of the show. I wasn’t looking forward to that. I was sitting there trying to decide which version(s) I wanted for each show to save time and space. Thankfully, I was very wrong. I was able to tell Handbrake to include both versions in a single file during one rip so I could switch between the language tracks! Of course, the file sizes turned out kind of big (150-250 MB per episode). I was cool with that.
I had a few more incidents where the episodes ripped as a single file. They were 600-800 MB per three– or four-episode disc and lacked clear chapter stops for each episode. This time, I let it go. It was definitely faster to set one rip job per disc than to put multiple rips into the queue.
By then, I just wanted the process over. The how-to articles all warned that ripping discs takes a while, but I had no idea. On my main laptop, Envy, I could rip a 20-minute episode or a two-hour movie in roughly the same amount of time as their respective durations. That wasn’t too bad.
On my first laptop, the Presario, that same episode took almost two hours to rip, while that movie took six hours! Overheating was a very real concern. Every so often, I would use a battery-powered handheld fan to cool down the hottest spots across the keyboard. I wouldn’t have bothered using the Presario at all, but 1) some discs that refused to load in my external DVD drive worked fine in its built-in DVD drive, and 2) having both of my computers simultaneously ripping things sped up the overall process.
Deciding how to organize the files after I finished ripping the discs was another thing I had to work through. Most of the time, Handbrake wanted to label them as [SHOW-NAME_Disc#-Episode#]. I didn’t object to that naming scheme. For some shows, I do think more in terms of an episode’s position on a disc instead of their actual episode number because of the amount of times I’ve watched them in that order. I only added the episode name to the description, [SHOW-NAME_Disc#-Episode#_Episode-Name], which is long but makes the episode clearer to me.
Ultimately, it took me about a month to rip my anime. The resulting files used about 23 GB of space on my external hard drive. And it turned out to be a wise decision. A couple of discs had already turned a weird foggy color. I’m guessing they won’t last much longer. I had to rub Vaseline on one of them to get it to play in the computer for the rip.
Lessons Learned
Ripping DVDs wasn’t all roses and chocolates.
I need to pay closer attention to file formats. That’s what always comes back to bite me. I ripped everything in the M4V format. That was fine for iTunes, but our digital converter box didn’t recognize the files when I plugged my flash drive into its USB port. From what I’ve seen while researching new TVs, none of them will recognize that format either. That’s a real bummer. I’d hoped to watch the files on TV. I’ll either have to find a workaround, rerip everything, or convert the files to a different. I don’t know which way I’ll go yet.
Ironically, I had problems watching the anime files on my iPad and phone too. I couldn’t get their preinstalled media players to show the English subtitles for the Japanese audio. The only subtitle I got was the chapter name. I switched to the VLC mobile app, which I also use on my computers, to fix the issue.
Despite it all, I was right that I would enjoy having my DVDs in digital form. I like firing up a file instead of putting in a disc. I would definitely like to rip the rest of my DVD collection in the future when I have the proper setup for it. Hopefully I’ll have the process down better by then.