Mods feel free to split this if it's too threadjacky, but OP could benefit from this discussion if he wants to convert his .ifos
Well, I'll start here since we're having a good discussion. I'm interested in high quality. Space matters, but I'm going to ignore that for now since space keeps getting cheaper and cheaper.
My big thing is, DVD menus. I pretty much hate them. I actually consider the DVD as a whole to be an art form. The menus and layers, transitions, flow and everything associated... it's art. Not high art, but still art. Even so, I HATE navigating DVD menus. When I want to watch a movie, I don't want to wait 2 minutes, or select, or hit buttons for 30 to 60 seconds. I want the movie to start right away.
Makemkv will solve your DVD menu problem (about like your current solution).
With that in mind, M4V files are just about perfect. The only problems are:
1. Not full quality. Maybe there's a codec or setting I'm missing which would give me full quality rips.
If you're using handbrake there is no way to get lossless quality, and because it transcodes/remuxes everything it takes a million years and CPU cycles. By contrast, makemkv just moves over what's already there losslessly, and because it doesn't transcode it takes much less time and many fewer CPU cycles. It can compress lossless audio tracks to FLAC (optionally) which will provide some space savings (meaingingful amounts, but not game-changing amounts).
2. No special features. On a VERY few DVDs I seek out the special features and rip them as separate videos. That's quite rare and it's very time consuming.
Makemkv will show you all the titles along with their lengths and some other details. I've found that it's relatively easy to some specific special features/featurettes by looking at their running time (there might only be one or two half-hour features). But it's not automated and if you're looking for a 5 minute special feature in a sea of 5-minute features, it's easiest just to pull them all and sort through later.
3. Audio tracks and subtitles. I've gotten pretty good at figuring out which ones to include, but it's still time consuming.
Makemkv allows you to specify using rules which tracks you want to include; so, for example, if you want only the main multitrack English audio and only the various English subtitles, you can set it up so those (and nothing else) are already pre-selected each time.
4. Multi-episode DVDs like TV series. Very time consuming to ID the DVD title that contains each episode, name it, set the audio options, and queue it up. I've gotten much faster at this, but it's still a pain.
This is tough. 95% of the time Makemkv pulls the titles in the same order they are on the DVD label/packaging. So I always start with the assumption that that will be the case. That 5%, though, are a pain.
Naming them with episode names isn't necessary and will waste a lot of typing, you just need the series name, season number and episode number for MC to generate all necessary info (including the episode name). So your filename for the first episode will be something like "Series Name S1E1". You can set up Makemkv to iteratively number (I think), but I mostly just copy, paste, change the single digit that needs to be changed, press the down key on the keyboard, and repeat. As noted, the audio track selection can be pre-configured. Usually takes me about 60 seconds worth of data entry per disc.
Once you get things setup you can ingest things pretty quickly, which I always found to be a pain with handbrake (even after setting things up).
I probably want something that doesn't exist. I'm asking because people here are bound to know more than I do about this subject.
I was recently researching digital downloads of movies instead of ripping DVD or BDs. They seem to be largely confined to mobile devices and locked up in some way. I.E., streaming only, or only playable on a certain app on a certain device, etc. My idea was an easier path to obtaining (legally) the movies I want to watch. Digital downloads don't seem to be there yet, so I'm back to ripping optical (DVD and BD) discs.
Other folks will certainly have other more automated methods. Mine is relatively manual, but fast enough for my needs.
