Compressing or Converting Files Ripped From DVDs

[EkaCoralian]

So, currently I am using DVDFab as my DVD Ripping tool (which is great, because the output quality is just so nice) but I'm having a bit of trouble with the size of the files themselves. Since they're .VOBs, they're nearly 1 Gig in size, which is a bit much considering the amount of episodes and movies I wish to have on my computer.
One 50-episode long series can't even fit in the D Drive, and I've cleared out about as much stuff as I can.
So my question is, what converter/compressing software would you recommend? I'd like to retain its quality at least a little, but I'd prefer if the files sizes were smaller.

[Kariudo]

you can have quality, or low filesize...not both.
Hard drives are cheap, it might be time to get a bigger drive.

Barring that, you can pre-process with avisynth (IVTC and stuff) and compress with xvid (constant quantizer 2) for storage and then use those to make lag/huffy clips for editing. Using x.264 with constant quantizer 18 or less (x.264 Q=18 is equivalent to xvid Q=2) would work too. You might be able to go as high as 26. You will lose quality with this method, but it shouldn't be too visible.

as for the program, vdub for xvid and meGUI for x.264 (meGUI can also encode with xvid.)

[mirkosp]

Anything lossless would be bigger than the dvds since DVDs are lossy compressed. That said, you might want to try an x264 with constant quality 10 and all keyframes... it's so close to being lossless that perhaps the SSIM might actually return you 1 (if you disable the psy visual optimizations). It should weight about one tenth of what a yv12 lagarith potentially would, which should be good enough. Like I said, though, it's not actually lossless, so perhaps it's not what you're looking for, but perhaps it's good enough. Just... in the zarxgui, set constant quality to 10, then in the advanced tab set the check to 'Only use keyframes' and in the Command Line tab add

Code: Select all

--no-psy

to the Custom x264 commands.
It should be fine...

[Enigma]

Get a 1tb external(80 dollars from what Pwolf told me), Problem solved.

[Qyot27]

meGUI for x.264 (meGUI can also encode with xvid.)

Only if it's Zathor's patched build. The 'standard' MeGUI is horrendously outdated and broken regarding x264, because the update servers broke or have gone otherwise unmaintained.