Format of DVD/BD rips
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Not sure what your other requirements might be, or whether you care about recompressing to save disk space, but what about simply ripping directly to ISO? That way your files are identical to the original, and you can re-burn to an identical copy should you ever decide you want something back on disc. To play back, mount the ISO, and you have a virtual drive that any player that works with a "real" disc should work with.
:thumbsup::thumbsup:
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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To clear up some shelf space, and ease retrieval, I am copying all my DVD/BD discs to hard disc. For now, I keep them in the same file structure as on the original (i.e. VIDEO_TS / BDMV directories), so I can select audio /subtitle track, titles and chapters at play time. The player must recognize the directory structure. PC players of today do, but you never know about the future. I do not know about smartphones and other non-PC devices that people use for watching movies. I sure can extract each title to a e.g. a plain H.264/H.265 video file. Then I must select a single audio track and either hard-sub one subtitle track (burn it into the image) or OCR subtitles to .srt files. (DVD/BD subtitles are not character codes, but text images!) All subtitle extracting programs I tried make so many errors that proofreading / correcting easily takes more effort than playing the movie and typing the subtitles as they pass by, even if I have to pause the movie many times. (Text rippers do give me the .srt time stamps, though.) I consider that an emergency / non-viable solution. Are there alternate video container formats that handle multiple audio/subtitle tracks, and preferably title/chapter structures? Are there tools available for converting DVD/BD structures into this format without loosing any such information? I obviously look for a format likely to live significantly longer than DVD/BD formats, available on a wider range of playback devices, today and in the future. From .mkv lie sheets, it might look as if MKV is designed for (some of) these requirements, but I never found a DVD/BD-to-MKV converter (or disk-to-MKV ripper) pretending to support it. Or it was so deeply hidden in the options that I overlooked it. Or my MKV player software doesn't support it. If MKV is The Answer, tell me what software to use (both for converting/ripping and playing)! :-) [Bonus question to those using their smart phone to watch movies: Can smartphone video apps play back DVD/BD directories? All of them? Some? None?] [Bonus question 2: When DVDs were introduced, the option to provide multiple camera angles, aka parallel video tracks, was heavily boosted in marketing. None of my several hundred movies make use of this facility, and it would obviously be incompatible with broadcasting or movie theater screening. Has any of you ever seen a commercial DVD/BD movie (excluding demos for showing the mechanism) allowing you to select camera angle?]
trønderen wrote:
[Bonus question 2: When DVDs were introduced, the option to provide multiple camera angles, aka parallel video tracks, was heavily boosted in marketing.
I've heard, but believe me or not, I have never seen for myself, that this feature was mostly used in the pr0n business when it was invented. Just because they could, I'd imagine. :-O
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
-----
Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain -
To clear up some shelf space, and ease retrieval, I am copying all my DVD/BD discs to hard disc. For now, I keep them in the same file structure as on the original (i.e. VIDEO_TS / BDMV directories), so I can select audio /subtitle track, titles and chapters at play time. The player must recognize the directory structure. PC players of today do, but you never know about the future. I do not know about smartphones and other non-PC devices that people use for watching movies. I sure can extract each title to a e.g. a plain H.264/H.265 video file. Then I must select a single audio track and either hard-sub one subtitle track (burn it into the image) or OCR subtitles to .srt files. (DVD/BD subtitles are not character codes, but text images!) All subtitle extracting programs I tried make so many errors that proofreading / correcting easily takes more effort than playing the movie and typing the subtitles as they pass by, even if I have to pause the movie many times. (Text rippers do give me the .srt time stamps, though.) I consider that an emergency / non-viable solution. Are there alternate video container formats that handle multiple audio/subtitle tracks, and preferably title/chapter structures? Are there tools available for converting DVD/BD structures into this format without loosing any such information? I obviously look for a format likely to live significantly longer than DVD/BD formats, available on a wider range of playback devices, today and in the future. From .mkv lie sheets, it might look as if MKV is designed for (some of) these requirements, but I never found a DVD/BD-to-MKV converter (or disk-to-MKV ripper) pretending to support it. Or it was so deeply hidden in the options that I overlooked it. Or my MKV player software doesn't support it. If MKV is The Answer, tell me what software to use (both for converting/ripping and playing)! :-) [Bonus question to those using their smart phone to watch movies: Can smartphone video apps play back DVD/BD directories? All of them? Some? None?] [Bonus question 2: When DVDs were introduced, the option to provide multiple camera angles, aka parallel video tracks, was heavily boosted in marketing. None of my several hundred movies make use of this facility, and it would obviously be incompatible with broadcasting or movie theater screening. Has any of you ever seen a commercial DVD/BD movie (excluding demos for showing the mechanism) allowing you to select camera angle?]
I'm almost done doing the same thing, actually. The last weeks, I've ripped all of my DVD's to ISO files and thrown away most of the physical discs (saved a few of my favourites, though). I must have ripped around 1500 discs, and the problem with that is of course that it takes a LOT of harddisk space. I've bought myself two 10Tb discs, one for movies, and one for TV series. I have yet to decide what to do about the Bluray discs. I haven't got quite as many of those, but if ripped, they would obviously take up a whole lot more space per disc than the DVDs. A curiosity: I activated disc compression on the two drives, because I wanted to save as much disk space as possibly. But lo and behold: The amount of space used before and after compression was pretty much the same. Seems like the DVD format is already compressed almost to the max.
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
-----
Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain -
To clear up some shelf space, and ease retrieval, I am copying all my DVD/BD discs to hard disc. For now, I keep them in the same file structure as on the original (i.e. VIDEO_TS / BDMV directories), so I can select audio /subtitle track, titles and chapters at play time. The player must recognize the directory structure. PC players of today do, but you never know about the future. I do not know about smartphones and other non-PC devices that people use for watching movies. I sure can extract each title to a e.g. a plain H.264/H.265 video file. Then I must select a single audio track and either hard-sub one subtitle track (burn it into the image) or OCR subtitles to .srt files. (DVD/BD subtitles are not character codes, but text images!) All subtitle extracting programs I tried make so many errors that proofreading / correcting easily takes more effort than playing the movie and typing the subtitles as they pass by, even if I have to pause the movie many times. (Text rippers do give me the .srt time stamps, though.) I consider that an emergency / non-viable solution. Are there alternate video container formats that handle multiple audio/subtitle tracks, and preferably title/chapter structures? Are there tools available for converting DVD/BD structures into this format without loosing any such information? I obviously look for a format likely to live significantly longer than DVD/BD formats, available on a wider range of playback devices, today and in the future. From .mkv lie sheets, it might look as if MKV is designed for (some of) these requirements, but I never found a DVD/BD-to-MKV converter (or disk-to-MKV ripper) pretending to support it. Or it was so deeply hidden in the options that I overlooked it. Or my MKV player software doesn't support it. If MKV is The Answer, tell me what software to use (both for converting/ripping and playing)! :-) [Bonus question to those using their smart phone to watch movies: Can smartphone video apps play back DVD/BD directories? All of them? Some? None?] [Bonus question 2: When DVDs were introduced, the option to provide multiple camera angles, aka parallel video tracks, was heavily boosted in marketing. None of my several hundred movies make use of this facility, and it would obviously be incompatible with broadcasting or movie theater screening. Has any of you ever seen a commercial DVD/BD movie (excluding demos for showing the mechanism) allowing you to select camera angle?]
X-Media Recode[^] and Handbrake[^] both do what you want. X-media has more setting but is quite finicky to use. Handbrake is easier. Subtitles are quite overlooked in both, but they work after some fiddling about. (needs conversion or burn to the image, personally I don't care for them) Both are completely legal so neither of them handles encrypted media.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger
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X-Media Recode[^] and Handbrake[^] both do what you want. X-media has more setting but is quite finicky to use. Handbrake is easier. Subtitles are quite overlooked in both, but they work after some fiddling about. (needs conversion or burn to the image, personally I don't care for them) Both are completely legal so neither of them handles encrypted media.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger
In Handbrake, subtitles only work for me if I choose to burn them in. Is it better in X-Media? :confused:
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
-----
Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain -
In Handbrake, subtitles only work for me if I choose to burn them in. Is it better in X-Media? :confused:
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
-----
Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark TwainNot really, in my limited experience one needs to convert the subtitle format to one that's supported by the container AND the player, both must support them. <edit>and the server if you're streaming</edit> Personally I can't be bothered with the fuzz.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger
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Not sure what your other requirements might be, or whether you care about recompressing to save disk space, but what about simply ripping directly to ISO? That way your files are identical to the original, and you can re-burn to an identical copy should you ever decide you want something back on disc. To play back, mount the ISO, and you have a virtual drive that any player that works with a "real" disc should work with.
Saving disk space is a non-issue. (I just bought another 14 TB disk.) My requirements are essentially for a file format that we can expect to be viable at least ten years from now, hopefully twenty. And, one that at that time we can expect to be handled by the majority of players. You suggest an ISO image of the DVD/BD disk. That is one containing the directory structure of a DVD/BD disk. My worry is that in ten to twenty years, the typical media player software will not be able to mount an ISO image of a DVD/BD, and will not be capable of interpreting the VIDEO_TS/BDMV directories - and to be able to bypass the encryption, region restrictions etc. When I rather rip those directories to my HD, I can copy the files to another file system, and make myself independent of any ISO reading capability and of any need for encryption or region bypassing software. For the long term accessibility requirements, I see ISO files as a no better solution than plain (but decoded) VIDEO_TS/BDMV directory copies.
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To clear up some shelf space, and ease retrieval, I am copying all my DVD/BD discs to hard disc. For now, I keep them in the same file structure as on the original (i.e. VIDEO_TS / BDMV directories), so I can select audio /subtitle track, titles and chapters at play time. The player must recognize the directory structure. PC players of today do, but you never know about the future. I do not know about smartphones and other non-PC devices that people use for watching movies. I sure can extract each title to a e.g. a plain H.264/H.265 video file. Then I must select a single audio track and either hard-sub one subtitle track (burn it into the image) or OCR subtitles to .srt files. (DVD/BD subtitles are not character codes, but text images!) All subtitle extracting programs I tried make so many errors that proofreading / correcting easily takes more effort than playing the movie and typing the subtitles as they pass by, even if I have to pause the movie many times. (Text rippers do give me the .srt time stamps, though.) I consider that an emergency / non-viable solution. Are there alternate video container formats that handle multiple audio/subtitle tracks, and preferably title/chapter structures? Are there tools available for converting DVD/BD structures into this format without loosing any such information? I obviously look for a format likely to live significantly longer than DVD/BD formats, available on a wider range of playback devices, today and in the future. From .mkv lie sheets, it might look as if MKV is designed for (some of) these requirements, but I never found a DVD/BD-to-MKV converter (or disk-to-MKV ripper) pretending to support it. Or it was so deeply hidden in the options that I overlooked it. Or my MKV player software doesn't support it. If MKV is The Answer, tell me what software to use (both for converting/ripping and playing)! :-) [Bonus question to those using their smart phone to watch movies: Can smartphone video apps play back DVD/BD directories? All of them? Some? None?] [Bonus question 2: When DVDs were introduced, the option to provide multiple camera angles, aka parallel video tracks, was heavily boosted in marketing. None of my several hundred movies make use of this facility, and it would obviously be incompatible with broadcasting or movie theater screening. Has any of you ever seen a commercial DVD/BD movie (excluding demos for showing the mechanism) allowing you to select camera angle?]
These look like nice options: [BD Rebuilder 0.61.18 Free Download - VideoHelp](https://www.videohelp.com/software/BD-Rebuilder) [MakeMKV 1.15.4 Beta Free Download - VideoHelp](https://www.videohelp.com/software/MakeMKV)
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OK, that may be a good ripper (I haven't tried that one yet, I will!) - but essentially my problem is not the ripping, but which format to rip to. Two major concerns: Will the format preserve multiple audio tracks and multiple subtitle tracks so that they can be selected at play time? And: Is this a format that we have reasons to believe that will be handled by the majority of playback devices ten and twenty years from now? I'll take a look at rebox.net, but by itself it doesn't answer the question about a suitable file format.
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I'm almost done doing the same thing, actually. The last weeks, I've ripped all of my DVD's to ISO files and thrown away most of the physical discs (saved a few of my favourites, though). I must have ripped around 1500 discs, and the problem with that is of course that it takes a LOT of harddisk space. I've bought myself two 10Tb discs, one for movies, and one for TV series. I have yet to decide what to do about the Bluray discs. I haven't got quite as many of those, but if ripped, they would obviously take up a whole lot more space per disc than the DVDs. A curiosity: I activated disc compression on the two drives, because I wanted to save as much disk space as possibly. But lo and behold: The amount of space used before and after compression was pretty much the same. Seems like the DVD format is already compressed almost to the max.
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
-----
Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark TwainJohnny J. wrote:
A curiosity: I activated disc compression on the two drives, because I wanted to save as much disk space as possibly. But lo and behold: The amount of space used before and after compression was pretty much the same. Seems like the DVD format is already compressed almost to the max.
I hope you're not surprised by this. Video compression is the holy grail of video storage and distribution, so if you could simply compress video by running it through WinZip and gain significant savings...that would mean codec developers have seriously dropped the ball. I feel your pain re: ripping Blu-ray discs. I don't have many - and of those, there's maybe 12-15, max, that I want to keep backed up to a drive. They're *all* dual-layer, so you're talking about a minimum of 25 GB each. Many are closer to the disc's 50GB capacity. And then, I just bought the full Game of Thrones series in 4K. I don't even know how much space a single disc might take - I don't imagine the "old" Blu-ray drive hooked up to my system could read them even if I tried.
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You could recompress your files to MP4. That would save some space, at the cost of some resolution, and would still allow selection of multiple audio tracks etc. You would lose the fancy menus that some DVD/BD titles come with. [Bonus Q2]: I have a few videos (some Disney and some action films, IIRC) that provide multiple camera angles, but I've never actually used them.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
Saving space is a non-concern. Disk is cheap nowadays. MP4 is certainly capable of handling any resolution. Maybe your concern is about conversion losses, but with a good converter, those are minimal - and lots of BD video is already in an MP4 format that should not require any conversion at all. I have made MP4 versions of a number of my movie, mostly to take them to friends with "smart-TVs" that were not smart enough to play BD images (BDMV directory structures). With the software I have used, I have not been able to embed into the MP4 file several audio or subtitle streams, or title/chapter structure information. If you know of software that can do this: What is the software you are using?
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Saving disk space is a non-issue. (I just bought another 14 TB disk.) My requirements are essentially for a file format that we can expect to be viable at least ten years from now, hopefully twenty. And, one that at that time we can expect to be handled by the majority of players. You suggest an ISO image of the DVD/BD disk. That is one containing the directory structure of a DVD/BD disk. My worry is that in ten to twenty years, the typical media player software will not be able to mount an ISO image of a DVD/BD, and will not be capable of interpreting the VIDEO_TS/BDMV directories - and to be able to bypass the encryption, region restrictions etc. When I rather rip those directories to my HD, I can copy the files to another file system, and make myself independent of any ISO reading capability and of any need for encryption or region bypassing software. For the long term accessibility requirements, I see ISO files as a no better solution than plain (but decoded) VIDEO_TS/BDMV directory copies.
I suspect ISOs will be around for a long time, and operating systems will continue be able to mount them for years to come. As for players being able to use them...hang on to the players that work right now, and (at worse) hope they keep working on the operating systems of tomorrow. Review every 5 years or so, and if you're finding support is disappearing, look for converting/migrating then. Don't worry about having an archive format *today* that will continue to work 20 years from now.
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OK, that may be a good ripper (I haven't tried that one yet, I will!) - but essentially my problem is not the ripping, but which format to rip to. Two major concerns: Will the format preserve multiple audio tracks and multiple subtitle tracks so that they can be selected at play time? And: Is this a format that we have reasons to believe that will be handled by the majority of playback devices ten and twenty years from now? I'll take a look at rebox.net, but by itself it doesn't answer the question about a suitable file format.
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Johnny J. wrote:
A curiosity: I activated disc compression on the two drives, because I wanted to save as much disk space as possibly. But lo and behold: The amount of space used before and after compression was pretty much the same. Seems like the DVD format is already compressed almost to the max.
I hope you're not surprised by this. Video compression is the holy grail of video storage and distribution, so if you could simply compress video by running it through WinZip and gain significant savings...that would mean codec developers have seriously dropped the ball. I feel your pain re: ripping Blu-ray discs. I don't have many - and of those, there's maybe 12-15, max, that I want to keep backed up to a drive. They're *all* dual-layer, so you're talking about a minimum of 25 GB each. Many are closer to the disc's 50GB capacity. And then, I just bought the full Game of Thrones series in 4K. I don't even know how much space a single disc might take - I don't imagine the "old" Blu-ray drive hooked up to my system could read them even if I tried.
dandy72 wrote:
I hope you're not surprised by this.
Not as such, but it may or may not have surprised me that somebody had actually had luck in developing something that both worked and was efficient at the same time... :laugh: I may have worked with computers for too long... :sigh:
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
-----
The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
-----
Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain -
I'm almost done doing the same thing, actually. The last weeks, I've ripped all of my DVD's to ISO files and thrown away most of the physical discs (saved a few of my favourites, though). I must have ripped around 1500 discs, and the problem with that is of course that it takes a LOT of harddisk space. I've bought myself two 10Tb discs, one for movies, and one for TV series. I have yet to decide what to do about the Bluray discs. I haven't got quite as many of those, but if ripped, they would obviously take up a whole lot more space per disc than the DVDs. A curiosity: I activated disc compression on the two drives, because I wanted to save as much disk space as possibly. But lo and behold: The amount of space used before and after compression was pretty much the same. Seems like the DVD format is already compressed almost to the max.
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
-----
The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
-----
Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark TwainTo echo what dandy72 says: Modern video compression is extremely well tailored to that specific use, and there is no way that a general method (such as zip) for 'any' data format could do a better job. If you manage to dig up an extreme example where zip reduced the file size by half a percent, the savings would be in the metadata of the file, not in the video content. I've got 'enough' disk space to rip even BD disks. But I encountered a problem when I wanted to take a BD movie to a friend to play on his smart-TV: It didn't fit on my old 32 GB memory sticks, so I had to buy a new 64 MB memory stick. ... And later, I brought that memory stick to another friend, but his smart-TV was so old that it only supported USB sticks up to 32GB size! Bonus comment, now that we are in season: That BD movie not fitting on as 32GB stick was the Finish "Rare Exports" Christmas horror comedy. We view that on every winter solstice. It is just a great movie! Be prepared for getting a different view on St. Claus after watching it :-) (Rare Exports - IMDb[^]
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X-Media Recode[^] and Handbrake[^] both do what you want. X-media has more setting but is quite finicky to use. Handbrake is easier. Subtitles are quite overlooked in both, but they work after some fiddling about. (needs conversion or burn to the image, personally I don't care for them) Both are completely legal so neither of them handles encrypted media.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger
My first problem is to decide on a format that we can expect to be long-lasting, and handled by the majority of viewers ten or twenty years from now. The question of rippers/converters that will produce those long-lasting formats come next. Maybe X-Media Recode and Handbrake are suitable tools, but for ripping to which (long-lasting) formats- A couple of years ago, I looked at Handbrake, but at that time, there were alternatives I found more suitable. but I don't remember the arguments. Is it so that Handbrake can handle multiple audio tracks, multiple subtitle track and title/chapter information? In which formats is it capable of storing this information? Which players allow me, at playback time, to select a given audio or subtitle track, or navigate by title or chapter?
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I suspect ISOs will be around for a long time, and operating systems will continue be able to mount them for years to come. As for players being able to use them...hang on to the players that work right now, and (at worse) hope they keep working on the operating systems of tomorrow. Review every 5 years or so, and if you're finding support is disappearing, look for converting/migrating then. Don't worry about having an archive format *today* that will continue to work 20 years from now.
dandy72 wrote:
Don't worry about having an archive format today that will continue to work 20 years from now.
Well... A whole lot of private archives, not the least photo archives from the first couple of generations of digital cameras, will be lost: The files are kept in the attic (/basement), but who can read the files of those old 5.25" diskettes today? Even with 3.5" diskettes you may have trouble finding one today. And even if you find one (I've got a USB diskette station that may be plugged in "everywhere"): The majority of preformatted diskettes of the 1990s didn't have a proper format code written into the boot sector. Win 9x (and predecessors all the way back to early DOS) would then try alternate formats, one by one, until one succeeded. Win 2K/XP and successors said: No format code? Then it isn't formatted, and can't be read. Even if the medium is properly formatted, you may still have a problem. "Everyone said that magnetic tape was the solution for my long-time storage, so I've got these Travan tapes ...". Can you still buy drives reading the early generations of Travan drives? Those I was in touch with had dedicated interface cards for the ISA bus. When did you last see a PC with an ISA bus? Unless you prepare for your current formats going obsolete in five to ten years, you will loose some of your data. I've got documents, photos and other data that I can no longer read: For the 2" diskettes of my first digital camera (it wasn't mine but my employer's, so I couldn't keep it) I have no reader. The documents I wrote in Ami Pro I have preserved as files, but the software to read them disappeared when I switched jobs, 20+ years ago. And so on. If you refuse to see 20 years ahead, I assume that you don't care to see 20 years backwards in time. What happened in the last millennium has no interest. If you think so, fair enough. You have the right to. But for those thinking of history, background, earlier knowledge ... as having some sort of value, information storage over a period far beyond 20+ years are essential. Not a luxury reqirement.
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trønderen wrote:
[Bonus question 2: When DVDs were introduced, the option to provide multiple camera angles, aka parallel video tracks, was heavily boosted in marketing.
I've heard, but believe me or not, I have never seen for myself, that this feature was mostly used in the pr0n business when it was invented. Just because they could, I'd imagine. :-O
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
-----
The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
-----
Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain -
MKV seems to be the format you want. Whether it's around in 20 years... you'll have to wait and see :)
Which MKC rippers/converters will convert multiple audio / subtitle streams and title / chapter structures from a DVD/BD? Which MKV players are available to let me, at play time, select from the alternative audio / subtitle tracks and to let me navigate in the title / chapter structure of the original DVD/BD?
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My first problem is to decide on a format that we can expect to be long-lasting, and handled by the majority of viewers ten or twenty years from now. The question of rippers/converters that will produce those long-lasting formats come next. Maybe X-Media Recode and Handbrake are suitable tools, but for ripping to which (long-lasting) formats- A couple of years ago, I looked at Handbrake, but at that time, there were alternatives I found more suitable. but I don't remember the arguments. Is it so that Handbrake can handle multiple audio tracks, multiple subtitle track and title/chapter information? In which formats is it capable of storing this information? Which players allow me, at playback time, to select a given audio or subtitle track, or navigate by title or chapter?
Well, then we need to differentiate between the container and the encodings they contain. The container can quite easily be swapped using any of the tools, while retaining the encoded tracks/streams. So the question is rather which video and audio formats we can expect to survive for a longer time. If you play your movies on a computer there probably won't be any problems, vnc and similar players will support almost anything you throw at them for the foreseeable future. Streaming is a different question though. If you're using a Plex server for example it will also work with most files, but the recieving end won't. MPEG2 (DVD-video) is already dead, seemingly on purpose. Neither Chromecast nor Apple-TV will accept that. The only format that's supported on both is H.264 And HEVC/h.265 works on Chromecast Ultra and the newest AppleTV For the future you probably want h265, but it won't work with everything today. So my answer for now will have to be H.264 video with AAC for sound. Haven't a clue what to use for subtitles at the moment.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger