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[benn600]

I'm finding that ripping entire DVDs is really eating up my space.  The problem is that I have about 100 normal DVD movies, 100 TV DVD shows, and 100 Home videos.  Right there, that's approximately 300 DVDs that I most definitely want to rip.  I'm estimating I'll get to around 500GB when I finish the last stack of DVD movies but then I'm down to under 500GB of free space on my network drive.  Granted about 786GB can be removed...that's the thousands of hours of computer time re-encoding all of those same movies.  The home movies are much smaller than the Movies & TV so this might all fit...but the delete?

I'm concerned when it will come time for me to delete those encoded files.  It is so convenient having a single file for episodes of shows.  They are, interestingly enough, very high quality so they aren't really handy for portable devices.  Finding a particular episode of a show will be a challenge since it is all in the DVD menu now instead of filenames that can easily be searched.

I feel like if I delete all the encoded files I may regret it because I'm still skeptical or ignorant on the topic of backing up complete DVDs.  I ended up encoding all our movies about 3 times because I kept changing my mind on quality, etc, so if I delete them now, what if I go in for a 4th time?  I'm not interested in that but it just seems eerily possible.  I want the complete method because it's as close as you can parallel with FLAC ripping -- saving the "best" you can but there seem like so many drawbacks.  Is this just because of the horrendous DVD file format that isn't standard in any way?  I guess it is (obviously) but it has so many extra features like multiple subtitles and audio tracks..etc..  It's complicated and I'm probably confusing everybody.

[jgreen]

I don't think the cost/benefit equation is there yet.  Every year I look at doing this, and it's X-thousands of dollars to buy the storage, and I think "I'll just do it next year when it's half the price."  But it still hasn't gotten to the point where the cost of the drives is a compelling alternative to just leaving it on the plastic.

My impression is, there aren't many people who have their DVD collections on drive array as their primary source, for HT or whatnot.  I'd be interested in what's being tried, also.   

[benn600]

I like to watch the movies from my array when possible because it's very convenient--and I'm devoting a lot of space to it.  Since I have already purchased and setup my 2.5TB array (backed up) I might as well use it.  I think what I'll do is start--and they might all fit--and then I'll keep in mind that I can delete my less favorite movies.  Besides, when the 500GB drives I bought come down in price and are $100, I'll just buy a few more of them and then I won't have any trouble.  My upgrade path is, at a minimum, 2 500GB WD My Book Essentials--there aren't really any other options.  But, just those 2 (one is for backup) adds 500GB which can hold over 50 movies.

[benn600]

Including all my TV DVDs, Movies, and Home movies which are all individually very close to 1/3 of the total as far as number of discs, I am right around 1.5TB for everything we own.  Add another few hundred gigabytes and it's not that far away from my 2.5TB capacity.

It looks like I'll be needing to add one or two more drives.  Adding drives is the biggest pain in the world--not to mention dangerous.  With two RAID0 arrays, it means I have to delete one for a period which could last close to a week!  I still have my extra drive with the most important data--Music, Pictures, Documents, Profiles, etc., so I would just lose all the video rips, my podcasts, and a bunch of discs I keep on the drives.

It definitely takes a lot of space but I think if I get to 3.5TB I will be able to be fine for quite a while.  A 500GB drive holds around 80 movies so two more would be 160 movies...

What is a good sized DVD collection for people today?  I know lots of people have hundreds of CDs but a good average for good-sized collections is between 500-1000 CDs, which is where most people I know fall and where I fall in.  How do DVDs compare?  I find DVDs less appealing to collect.  First of all, you rarely watch a movie more than 2 or 3 times even if it's good.  They also take about 20 times the space to store compared to a CD (300 MB v. 6000 MB on hdds).  I find that I might just be foolish for saving all these movies but I have to say it is so nice to browse through in thumbnail view and see all your movies!  At least for now, I can stay put and will still have a few hundred GB free.

Not sure how close people fill drives but at one point, I had my 2.5TB array down to 300 MB free.  That was as I started ripping full quality, complete DVDs before I deleted the old files I converted from the DVDs--those were really HQ so they took 1-4GB per movie anyway or 300-1200 MB per episode...so they were incredibly out of control in filesize.

[Magic_Randy]

What is a good sized DVD collection for people today?

I have no idea.  I have 1,602 DVDs myself. 

The count is not pure as I do not count the extra discs that contain special features.  Also, on TV series I count episodes.  There are multiple episodes on a single DVD.

633 Movies & TV Specials (Not counting special features
887 TV Series (Episodes)
82 Music

[benn600]

Well, you would obviously need quite a few terabytes to hold all that if you even decided to pursue it.  Too bad hard drive companies couldn't make a huge jump and get us 1TB drives for $150.  I believe people would then completely pursue full DVD backup for most sized collections.

If you count individual episodes, then I guess I am around 700-800 total items.  I was just looking at individual DVD discs and not counting all special features DVDs but definitely including some.

[johnnyboy]

It all boils down to how rich you are and how much you want to spend on your backups to get what quality.
Also, what are you watching these on is a huge important factor.

If you encode all these to say Xvid for example - you could shrink each disk down to 2Gb and still have a very high quality copy. If you wanted slightly lower quality you could get away with 1.5Gb for still pretty good quality.
This would also give you a single file .avi film which you want by the sounds of it for simplicity.

Alternately you could use any of these applications out there which are used to backup DVD's and let them shrink your DVD down to the size of a single layer DVD-R and have it reduced to 4.4 Gb from its current (probably 5-8Gb) size.

Nero's 're-encode' I believe it's called that comes with the Nero application suite these days does a great job of it and produces excellent backups.