best way to get small high quality rips?

[startreksuite]

Hello everyone!
I have ripped DVDs in the past, before streaming became the cool way to see movies. I was using Magic DVD ripper, as well as trying Handbrake with DVD43. I am using a laptop, which with some encoding almost melted it. I now use Kodi and media playback, and since I noticed it has dynamic range compression, decided to rip more of my DVDs. I wanted to make sure I had near perfect video quality from the originals, but since I have a 2.1 setup, audio isn't important.
What would my best bet be to get a small video in the highest quality?
Thanks in advance!

[Woodstock]

The highest quality you are going to get from a DVD is the raw MKV file you get from MakeMKV. Any post-processing to make the file smaller is going to give up more "quality", although converting from MPEG2 compression to h.264 is a LOT more efficient. Handbrake with one of their "480p HQ" presets will be pretty good.

If you want BETTER quality, you need to start with better quality, i.e., BD rips. You can retain more of that quality during the re-encoding, but you cannot gain back what was lost prior to your source.

[startreksuite]

Thanks for your reply.
I guess what I am looking for is a decent file size for storing on my hard drive. I understand if I shrink the file size too low it's going to be poor quality. I am looking for a way to shrink the size, possibly by half. So how can I convert/recode/encode it so the quality doesn't suffer much, but the filesize is smaller?

[Woodstock]

How far you can shrink things depends on what you're willing to sacrifice. For animated stuff, I see a 70-90% reduction in size at a quality I can tolerate. But, I'm not the sort to climb up close to the TV and look for errant pixels in the "black" areas of the screen. Action movies, 40-60% reduction isn't unusual.

The more movement and detail a video has, the less you can sacrifice and have it look good. DVD sources have the handicap of being interlaced, which means some detail is going to be lost just in getting it converted to progressive scan.

The thing to do is to play, er, experiment with different settings. The presets in handbrake are pretty good. Pick a chapter that has a fair amount of detail and movement, encode it, and watch the results. Try a different preset, compare. Ultimately, it's YOUR aesthetics that determine what is "best".

[startreksuite]

Thanks, I currently am trying Vidcoder, which has similar presets to Handbrake. I may download Handbrake later and see if that would be a better option. I am not a quality snob, but would like to see Avatar and I am Legend close to visual quality I can get from a DVD.

[Woodstock]

Vidcoder is a "friendlier front end" to handbrake; if you're using that, you're using handbrake indirectly. So, have fun playing!

It's like an adventure game. You have a goal (defeat the anti-quality demon lord) with powerful weapons you have never seen before, but you don't lose just because you didn't get it this time.

[startreksuite]

I just finished an conversion/encode with vidcoder, using a android 720p 30 preset, profile on automatic constant quality set to 21. The video shrunk from 6.9 gb to 2.1 gb! Pretty good quality according to my laptop. I may yet challenge it and try a 480p hq setting and see if it makes a difference with video quality. Thanks for your help and support! I forgot how fun it is!

[startreksuite]

I just watched the movie yesterday! It played back great on Kodi, no pixelation. It was close to Dvd quality. My new issue that drove me nuts is a lot of my DVD rips were 16:9 in Make MKV, but changed to 2.35.1 once converted in vidcoder and handbrake. I guess it will be okay, since it is roughly the same resolution. Now I have to decide if I want to denoise my older DVDs, such as Logan's Run and Star Trek 4 the Voyage Home.

[Woodstock]

Logan's Run (the original movie) is long out of print, but the Star Trek movies often show up in the Walmart bargain bin on Bluray. I eventually upgraded all the movies to BD copies.

If you go shopping, just "remember where you parked."

[Grauhaar]

My new issue that drove me nuts is a lot of my DVD rips were 6:9 in Make MKV, but changed to 2.35.1 once converted in vidcoder and handbrake.

VideoCoder does not change an can not the Aspect Ratio. What happens if you view the file with VLC? Did you still see the black filling bars on top and button to adapt the movie aspect radio to the 16:9 base ratio? Maybe the preset has been set to automaticaly crop (remove) the black bars and the resolution is now the real movie. Presets are nice but can be set/reset a lot of strange things.

[startreksuite]

Wow! I never thought of that! I will have to check the settings, but it may be cropping them. VLC is displaying the bars until I change the aspect ratio and make it full screen.

[startreksuite]

My new issue that drove me nuts is a lot of my DVD rips were 6:9 in Make MKV, but changed to 2.35.1 once converted in vidcoder and handbrake.

VideoCoder does not change an can not the Aspect Ratio. What happens if you view the file with VLC? Did you still see the black filling bars on top and button to adapt the movie aspect radio to the 16:9 base ratio? Maybe the preset has been set to automaticaly crop (remove) the black bars and the resolution is now the real movie. Presets are nice but can be set/reset a lot of strange things.

You were correct! I just noticed the option to set cropping to none, and sure enough, 16:9 stayed in the clip I converted.

[startreksuite]

Logan's Run (the original movie) is long out of print, but the Star Trek movies often show up in the Walmart bargain bin on Bluray. I eventually upgraded all the movies to BD copies.

If you go shopping, just "remember where you parked."

Is there a noticeable difference in the Bluray version of Star Trek? My wife may appreciate it!

[Woodstock]

The main thing is that the BD isn't interlaced... Removing interlacing is something that works OK sometimes, other times, the video gets muddy. You also start with a better video transfer, so even if you shrink it down to "old TV size" (720x480) it looks smoother.

BTW, I found Logan's Run with a BD transfer, done in 2013, for $6 on Amazon today. The DVD version was MUCH more expensive. I was going to buy it as part of a "triple feature" with Omega Man and Soylent Green for $25, but it would be 2 months for delivery.

[startreksuite]

Sorry I just looked today woodstock. Thanks for letting me know about the Logan's Run BluRay Disc. I found the whole Star Trek Movie collection for about $25 on Amazon as well. Crazy! I just tried another ripping tool that claimed to upscale the resolution to the dvd. I'm not buying it, since so far it looking at it looks the same as the original dvd. I guess from here on out I will have to get BluRays, a new ripper, etc.