www.makemkv.com

Certainly a very impressive amount of data, but can you give me an example what to do with it?

The people using MakeMKV might be very diverse.

I am just an ordinary ripper with a large dvd collection that got tired of those cumbersome discs, prone to scratches and with a limited life span (as they say). I just want the videos online on my hard drives as quickly as possible so I can zap through them and watch and switch whatever and whenever I want without getting up from my chair. My main problem is how to rip them all in a limited time while maintaining their quality and storing them in such a way that I am able to find them afterwards. Sometimes, after a rip, when I am not satisfied by the result, I might try to improve the video with some form of tooling, but I’d rather not because it takes additional time. So, for me, tooling should be an exception.

I am not a digital video editor or video hobbyist that possesses a full range of tooling to improve a video and its quality and wants to have each video 100% perfect and is willing to spend the time to achieve that result. I understand the fascination of that hobby, but I just don’t have the time for that. My focus is on quantity, not quality.

I would never tell anyone not to use VLC; it is a fine program. I just find it slow and cumbersome. I use mediainfo from the command line to verify that the tracks I think are in a file are in indeed in the file. I also use it to verify that my .mkv files are titled, labeled, and flagged as I desire. If they're not, I use the command line version of mkvpropedit update the necessary information and then verify it with mediainfo.

I have a 'scratch space' that's a dedicated set of SSDs where I do the ripping, manipulating, and what-have-you. Once I get a title to where I want it, off it goes to storage on my network and it is deleted from my scratch space.

I make decrypted backups of discs and store them in my scratch space until I process them. The ebb and flow of that process means sometimes I end up with dozens of disc backups waiting to be processed. This usually happens if I buy a TV show on disc; the discs get backed up all at once and then get processed as I get around to it.

I've long since given up to notion that I'll ever be done with this process. Since I've embarked on this process of digitizing my movie collection, I've started buying discs again. I'm on a journey with no destination in sight. And having grown accustomed to the process of watching content from my Plex server, I find the occasional pre-roll add in front of episodes of The Acolyte on Disney+ to be quite annoying. I'd rather give Disney money by buying blu-rays than paying for Disney+, but that isn't necessarily the world we live in today.

Everyone has different ways they process discs with MakeMKV and different goals. It is fascinating to learn how other people do it.

Everybody thanks for sharing your thoughts.