www.makemkv.com

Hi everyone, I shouldn't say I am new to ripping, as at one time I had a couple hundred gigs of movies ripped via Makemkv. Not a hole lot, but it was my first run and I was using an external hard drive. Now I am in the process of building a NAS. The last part (2 tb hard drive) arrives tomorrow. So I wanted to get started on ripping some dvds, once I purchase a blu ray drive I will rip some blu rays. So I have a couple of questions. The first time I did this i remember reading a tutorial on how to rip efficiently. Such as not ripping all the content like the extra features. How do I know what the extra features are? Also is there an easy way to rip to a specific drive? I have my laptop on the same network on my pc. Once my NAS is done it will be on the same network as well. Today I ripped one dvd using the pc to the drive I want to temporarily store them on until my nas is done. That worked great, then I tried to rip with my laptop to that same drive and it wouldn't let me. So I ripped it to the hard drive on the lap top. Is there something I am missing? I am testing this out now, so when my nas is done I have an efficient system. Thanks in advance for any help.

Quick note - it's a lot easier to read messages if you insert line breaks every once in a while... It's the visual equivalent of taking a breath while talking.

"What is feature and what is extra?" Varies with the disk. I tell MakeMKV to rip everything over 30 seconds long, and sort it out later, in post processing. Almost nothing goes on my NAS without post processing; even with 21TB online, it's far too easy to fill it up. The important part at this first stage is making sure things get named properly, so you know what you have later.

Usually anything under the length of the main feature is an extra. Some extras are longer than the feature, though. Some are worth having on their own merits (rare). You can make that decision after they're off the disk.

Set aside space on your NAS for the raw files. Ripping across the network is not significantly slower than to a local hard drive, and sometimes (laptops) faster.

Hopefully, you have a machine with a high-spec processor and good cooling for post processing. Tools like handbrake (handbrake.fr) will run your CPU at 100% for long periods of time, but will reduce the space needed on your NAS by 20-80%, depending upon the content. After ripping to files, you can queue video up for compression when you have time, and let that run in the background.

And post processing is where you take into account your playback capabilities. If you do not have a sound system capable of 7.1 audio, it is not a necessity to hang on to 7.1 audio tracks.