Ive just built my HTPC and started backing up my DVD library and im finding it to be very very painstaking and a long process.

I use dvd decrypter and autogk

 I thought of using only dvd decrypter and keeping the VIDEO_TS files because it has many many advantages like menus, cover art, and its very quick (~10min). BUT it takes up wayy to much space! 1 DVD is around 5 gigs while my second season of life is upwards near 40 gigs for 5 discs.

 So i figured i would convert them to avi to save space and using autogk it just takes soo long.  it was over an hour for one movie, and i have over 200. then i have to go back and delete the old files to clean up everything.  Then you lose menus and cover art in MC. 

 The thing is though, on my mac i could do all this in handbrake with the click of a button, even tv series were cake but not on Windows.

 Sorry for the vent but i thought this would be easier lol, but what im asking is... is there an easier way to do this without taking up so much space??

 

Not meaning to be flippant, but if you already know how to do it "with the click of a button" on a Mac, why don't you do it there and point media center to the saved share?

HDD space is so cheap these days that i've just backed up the dvd main movie files without compression - mostly so i have a back up and because it is quick and easy. Sorry that I'm of no help, but when I looked into 4 years ago, that was my solution.

archie

Does the MAC version of Handbrake differ that much from the windows version.

I use handbrake on my win 7 workstation and convert my kids DVD's to Xvid avi's in about 20 minutes. usualy just set it for a max size of 800 MB and let it fly

I'd recommend keeping the full DVD as well, the "ideal" format changes too often and having the original is worth the extra cost of a larger hard drive in my opinion. Also, if you are used to Front Brake, you do know is a cross platform application? Early betas had issues in Windows but it works just as well under Windows as OSX.

as far as using my mac, i do not want to go this route because its a three year old macbook that i use mainly for school.  I do not have sufficient HDD space nor do i want to run my laptop under those conditions constantly.  plus i like being mobile with my laptop and its not always on to share. 

 Second I would love to do it all compression free but i guess at that point i should just get a different case and add a few hard drives :/ which sets me back more money.  But it would make life so much easier.  If i was to add hard drives im assuming i would benefit from reformatting them is some sort of raid solution?

as far as a difference between windows handbrake and mac, i dont know the differences personaly except for i cannot get one dvd to convert on my PC.  I tried LIFE season 2 but it hangs at scanning the source when reading from disc, and when i rip the VIDEO_TS files it will not start because it says no source or destination selected.  Then i popped the disc in my mac and threw all four episodes from disc one in a queue and i was good to go.

mikinho

I'd recommend keeping the full DVD as well, the "ideal" format changes too often and having the original is worth the extra cost of a larger hard drive in my opinion. Also, if you are used to Front Brake, you do know is a cross platform application? Early betas had issues in Windows but it works just as well under Windows as OSX.

I prefer to just have the main movie, so when I select the movie, it plays and not have to go through menus to setup audio, etc (am I that lasy to dump in the DVD if I want to see all the extras ?). I use DVDFAB, drop DVD in select main movie with 5.1 audio, it rips the VOB files off in under 3 min. Drop in my MC DVD folder and setup art/DVDID, and it's done...

The extra is I can fit more movies in the same space and I do not lose any quality of the audio or video by converting it to a different format.

At least I know VOB will be supported in most DVD programs, I was thinking about AVI or MKV but, then I lose the chapter search/jump. Blu-ray/HD-DVD is a different story, I normally rip those to MKV.....