DVD ripping & Streaming

Introduction

The purpose of this thread is to describe and share my experiences in ripping and streaming DVDs. In doing so I believe that most people will be interested in the technical, rather than any thoughts I have on the why, so I have pushed that to the end of the post. Following this introduction I will cover:

The fixed points;
Services/Daemons;
Clients;
Ripping formats;
How to rip;
Why Rip; and
Support.

Hope this proves of interest.

The Fixed Points
We will all probably have these, that is we are constrained, to some extent, by historic decisions and purchases.

In my case I wired my house with CAT5 ten years ago, and have since upgraded, or extended, as required.

I am currently running two 10/100 switches which sit behind an old Pentium 4 PC running IPCOP, a GPL Linux Firewall - based on Smoothwall.

I used to have a collection of servers in the same rack, but these have now gone, due to the wonderful world of virtualisation, so I now just run an old DELL laptop, to which I have attached a couple of USB HDDs, running Windows XP SP3.

I want to stream to two BluRay players, a Sony (playroom) and an Oppo (living room). Both of these are already attached to my home LAN.


Services/Daemons
If you rip your DVDs you need to make them available to be consumed, serve them up to the LAN.

DLNA, my understanding is that this is an industry body that is pushing a subset of upnp with attempts at added controls. There are a number of different 'DLNA Servers' available, both free and paid for, and for a variety of Operating Systems (OS). The ones I have loaded and played with include: miniDLNA, MediaTomb, fupple, TvMobili, oShare on both Windows and Linux.

I won't describe these pieces of software in any detail, but it is important to note that they offer different services, or may require other pieces of software to be fully functional. For instance TRANSCODING, that is the ability to transform a file from a given format to another on the fly, so that it can be consumed and rendered by a software client. Not all DLNA servers offer this, those that do can rely on other software, such as ffmpeg, and their efficiency will depend on the power of the PC hosting the DLNA server.

In my case my old DELL desktop, that I have been using as a NAS for the last couple of years, died two weeks ago, and so I grabbed my old DELL laptop - which I set up to rip my DVD-A, and so runs Windows XP - and set this up as my replacement NAS. On this laptop I have loaded two DLNA servers:

TvMobili
This is the server I have essentially been using for the last couple of years. I have found it to be reliable, and serves up content to both the Sony & Oppo. However, the more recent updates require you to pay if you stream more than 10GB per month. I have decided to pay, as I have found Nathan to be very responsive, and the software IS being actively developed.

oShare
I loaded this up, as it was developed with input from Oppo. It is pretty basic, and my Sony BluRay doesn't see it at all. It does work well with the Oppo - but will be uninstalled in the near future.


Clients
I am hamstrung here, it will be what is installed on my BluRay players. Although I do have XMBC on my laptop, and so can have greater flexibility & usability here.

I did think briefly about using either a DUNE or building a HTPC ...BUT, I don't want a PC anywhere near my HiFi (OK, I know the NS01 is a modded PC, but trust Naim to have handled the PSUs appropriately).

Why? Well the interface presented by the BluRay players is very basic, there is no search facility, and there is only an Icon - no picture (see below). This means that using the BR players gives me a truncated user experience.


Ripping formats
The wonderful complicated world of video files. Before doing a shallow dive into this world I would say their are two broad approaches:

1. Don't rip, get the source.
Grab an ISO of the source DVD; Use the DVD file structure, just copy it; Or, just grab the DVD VOB files.

2. Convert the DVD to file.

In my case (1) was not possible, neither of the DLNA servers stream ISO files, and TvMobili tried with VOBs, but stuttered badly. Additionally, do I really want all the content? Frankly while I do watch the extras, I only do so once - with the exception of the commentary on Apollo 13, for obvious reasons.

Ripping to file allows me to reduce the space used, and does so with excellent quality ...musn't skip to the conclusion!


A ripped movie has three components: A container; A video stream; and an audio stream.

For instance, mkv is a container, it can contain an MPEG-2 video stream plus DD 5.1 audio.

MPG is a container, and a video format.

If you want to get into this more then have a play with Handbrake.


In my case I have ended up ripping to mkv for reasons I'll now explain.


How to rip
Or, more particularly, how I ripped. My initial intention had been to use Handbrake, I used this last year to rip some DVDs to MP4, for playing on an ASUS EEE that I borrowed.

However, I then read a couple of commentaries which stated that you can't use Handbrake in pass-through mode for video. It will process the video, and degrade the output. Didn't matter for MP4, does matter for this.

Two bits of software that do allow pass-through are VLC and MakeMKV.

As I use VLC I thought I'd try this first.

The GUI is a pig, and there is a dearth of decent documentation, so I ran home to momma, and tried using it from the command line. This worked first time, producing a good quality MPG file and 5.1 DD audio track.

The issue with VLC is identifying which is the Title to rip, and I believe that DVD authoring can trip it up, as I started having issues, and was getting a one in four hit rate.

At this point I downloaded and compiled MakeMKV, available for Linux, Windows & Mac.

What a brilliant bit of software. Free if you just want to rip DVDs, need to pay if you want to rip Blue Ray, and want to continue after a month.

It initially tries to traverse the files and directory structure. If it hits issues it automatically goes into 'direct mode'. This meant that I was able to rip DVDs that the OS failed to mount, presumably by seeing it as a black device.

It then presents you with a list of the content, for you to select what you want to rip.

I have now ripped 40 odd DVDs with a hitch - very impressed. Approx 30 minutes per disk. The files range between 3 and 6GB in size.


Why Rip
If you've read this you probably already know you want to, and want to see if any of the pratfalls I have made can save you time! Hope so.

I have been toying with ripping DVDs for the last three years, and until recently was convinced it would be to ISO. What pushed me over the edge?

I am getting sick and tired of being the eternal nagger to 'put the DVDs away', followed by 'file them in the right place'.

By ripping the disks they WILL be filed where I want them, their quality will be protected, and I will regain a couple of cupboards in the living room.

Two weeks ago the PC I was using as my home NAS died. This didn't matter as all the source files are on two external HDDs, but I decided that rather than have burgeoning numbers of external HDDs time had come to get something bigger and better, and this has given me the space to rip my DVDs.


Support
One aside. I have been trying to get some functionality working on TvMobili, that is displaying a JPG instead of a standard icon for each mkv file. I have been very impressed with the speed and good natured responses that I have had from Nathan.

Conclusion

MakeMKV is first rate, and I am piling through my DVDs. The quality of the streamed result, through the Oppo into my Phillips 21:9 screen is fabulous, and may be better than the disk - need to do some tests.

M