I am using WinX DVD Ripper in Windows to RIP DVDs, so that I can play them directly from my HHDs.

I can of course choose to either move DVD content on my HDD, or to create an ISO on the HDD. My BD players will play both. In both cases region coding has been removed.

I can't decide which of the two makes more sense. ISO, or simply replicating the dbd directory structure on the HDD?

Any recommendation is welcome. Also, WinX DVD Ripper seems nice and has been working fine. Any other software recommendation also welcome however.

I don't have much recent experience with this, but I just came across this on the internets recently. This may be a little too basic for your needs, but you never know.

https://www.thurrott.com/music-videos/1025/rip-dvd-videos

Thank you!

That is interesting, but that would not create a full copy of the DVD on the hdd.

This region drcryption DLL, though, mentroned in the Paul Thurrott article, is really useful:

http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/1.2.12/win64/

Glad you found something of use in there! :-)

I'm not familiar with WinX but I was doing some DVD ripping a few years ago. My plan was to rip a ton of my DVDs and then either give them away or at least throw away the cases and store the discs in a binder that I'd throw in storage. Unfortunately I didn't get very far because everything was taking absurd amounts of space! Now that I have a Synology NAS I might start that project up again, although now I have a baby in the house so there isn't any time for ANY projects (and I have dozens on my to do list).

But ANYway, here's my two cents: ISO's just seem like they'd be easier to work with. I love the idea of having a single file to move around instead of a folder full of them. Seems like fewer points of failure to me and easier to manage.

I'm curious if WinX does what the beloved DVDShrink used to do. With that program I could specify portions of the DVD to leave out in order to save space. If I didn't want any of the foreign language tracks, I could simply uncheck them. If I didn't like the special features on this movie, I could just leave them out. And if I recall correctly, I could compress the video on any of the elements I wanted. So, for instance, if I was less interested in fantastic quality for the special features, I could re-encode those to 50% quality and leave the main movie alone. Cool software...

I'm going to try out WinX. Thanks for the tip! Again, my preference would be an ISO just for the sake of convenience. I'd compare it to the difference between the storage of content in Outlook Express vs Outlook. OE had files all over the place, and Outlook has a single PST. It's SOOO much easier to move that one file around.

BTW: I was just installing WinX and had to chuckle. It still surprises me how often an installer will ask if I want to add an icon to the "quick launch" bar. Is that just a requirement of the installers they're using, or are these developers still targeting their apps for XP users?

Probably the default behavior of the install packaging tool, finding where to change that, if possible, takes effort away from other tasks.

Yeah, that's what I was guessing. Still funny, though

Matt, as you may have seen youself by now, WinX lets you select which video track to rip from those available on the DVD, and it lets you choose among various types of further compression. There are some nice options but I have not explored them much, however I suspect it is not as flexible as DVDShrink, which I've heard so much about years ago but never tried.

The reason I did not dig much in the options available is that, because of my compulsive need to collect stuff, I simply hate the idea of leaving anything behind from my DVDs and so my goal was to create a complete copy of the DVD on HDD. You never know, you may need Japanese subtitles some day.

For your same reason (disk space) I never ripped my DVD collection and I am not sure I want to do so yet. I just had some DVDs from friends that I wanted to have, and decided to put those only on HDD, and with the occasion to start looking for proper tools and design my procedure to one day rip all my collection. I suspect that day is not far, but maybe not just yet.

Incidentally, my home server is running out of space. I just ordered two 4TB HDDs which I will use to replace my current 3TB mirror. That is of course not going to be enough for my entire DVD/BR collection, so...

I do have a Drobo, but I only use it for local backup.

Like all of you guys I remember the days when a CD or a 100MB Iomega Zip seemed huge, and today Sandisk presented a 200GB microSD card. Yet, storage space never seems to be enough.
Why don't we have 10TB HDD already?!

... I mean, I look at my signature and if I think of what a 100GB Empeg meant (means) for music storage, I feel we're so far from the future where a comparable storage for current video content is.

We're getting there. Western Digital Green drives are up to 6TB now, which would give me ~18TB on my Synology.

Part of me doesn't want to go to the trouble, though. Part of me just wants to take all my DVDs to Walmart and convert them to Ultraviolet for $300 (I count roughly 150 DVDs in my collection). Then again, that's more than the cost of a 6TB drive, though it doesn't count the time it would take me to do all the ripping...

BTW, personally I'm not going to do ISO rips because Plex doesn't play them.

Seagate has 8TB external USB3 on market now.

Nice! I'll buy four of them, take them out of the external enclosures, and pop them into my NAS. All I need is $1200

I'm not discouraged, I figure it's a matter of about 3 years before those drives are $100 each.

Exactly. A while ago, I was ripping all my DVD's with AnyDVD+ CloneDVD into ISO files... Only to find Plex doesn't play them, and so also can't transcode them to an AppleTV. Which is the main reason I'm still using XBMC (now Kodi).

It's indeed very tedious work, which is probably why I' now made it about halfway and the whole project has been sitting there since the last few months. I really should start at it again, but there are so much more interesting things to do and easier ways of watching mobies nowadays (and in better quality), it's hard to find the courage to start. On the bright side : I could probably fit all my DVD's one one 6TB drive though.

I can't seem find anything >6TB anywhere on line here though (including Amazon).

Also, 6TB WD Red is still a bit too expensive (300 Euros here).

Newegg was first out of the gate with them in Canada/USA:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178682

No idea if the drive inside the enclosure is native USB3, or native SATA.

There are native USB3 drives?

Seagate 8tb
http://www.seagate.com/products/enterprise-servers-storage/nearline-storage/archive-hdd/

Of course, if you're buying a drive for a NAS you'll want to make sure it supports the size. I was fortunate. I bought my Synology when only 4TB drives were common. Then 5 and 6TB models came out and soon Synology updated their devices to support the new size. I don't know if they officially support 8TB yet...

I also don't know if it's a technical limitation or what.

Some of the WD USB2 external drives were native USB2 (I have verified this by disassembly), so I assume this has continued with USB3.

Never heard of a native USB drive, I always assumed there was a USB to IDE/SATA bridging chip. Off to get learned on this.

Yes, I was quite surprised and disappointed to find out about native USB2 drives myself, as I decided to open an external drive to use the HDD inside in a PC.

I wouldn't be surprised to see this still being the case, with the bridge chip being moved directly onto the hard drive PCB instead of a converter PCB in the drive enclosure.

Most of the first fibre channel drives I worked with did similar. The connector on the drive hooked it directly into the FC network of the multi drive enclosure. The enclosure then was 100% pure FC connections. The drive was doing the FC to SCSI conversion onboard it's own drive controller.