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Encoding black bars should take a negligible bandwidth, so I doubt you'd see any reduction in file size from recompressing after cropping.

TLDR. It seems unnecessary, unless you need to generate fake high-res files for some reason. The scaling on smart TVs and media players is generally very very good. I've played an anamorphic widescreen DVD mkv on a 55" 4K TV and it looks like film. Soft, but no annoying scan lines or stair-step...

Get yourself a Live Plus, if you don't have that model already. It adds support for Dolby Digital Plus (hence the name); i got mine from a local used site. It's a crying shame that Western Digital discontinued these. Don't bother with the "Live Streaming" version. Otherwise... demux the au...

Is it reasonable to just rip to a disc image (iso) or VIDEO_TS folder? Some players will read the DVD structure; my WDTV Live Plus is good that way. It's a lot easier than trying to identify the episodes and extras.

It generally works OK. Watch out for file system compatibility when you format the thumbdrive: FAT32 can't handle files bigger than 4 gigs. exFAT and NTFS formatted drives don't have that limit, but not all TVs and media players can read them. If you're traveling, you can use an OTG cable to copy do...

There are a very few weirdly authored discs that break makemkv. I resorted to ripping one with DVD Decrypter, then converting to mkv somehow.

Another vote for trying a different drive; one of mine turned out to be "hero" that can get clean reads off discs that fail in other drives. I ripped hundreds of library and rental discs, and bare discs from the recycle yard with only a handful of failures, usually due to serious physical ...

Another really late reply; yes, I'd look at the issue of those discs not being "closed". They could have been created using a standalone DVD recorder, where you can add videos until the disc is full then finalize it. Some place like Videohelp should have advice on that. Or this page sugges...

Try every other DVD reader at your disposal. That includes the junk computers in the basement or closet, and the stack of old drives under the kitchen table (everyone has that, right?). Maybe it's just a compatibility issue with the drive on the laptop, or you'll find that one drive is a bit more gi...

I don't know. Some drives may be artificially limited by the firmware, perhaps to keep the drive quieter during DVD playback, or to make life more difficult for pirates. At least, that was the case with DVD drives. Check out MediaCodeSpeedEdit, and maybe you can speed up your current drive: http://a...