Want to convert your movie collection to digital files that you can play on your tv or computer?
This is how you do it.
To rip all your dvd and blu-ray discs to digital files you need three things - a dvd or blu-ray
reader, software to convert the movie files, and advice to store and play those movies. There are
many ways to accomplish this but I'm about to show you the best way. The first thing you're
going to need is a dvd reader so that you can read the disk into your computer and do the conversion.
My system requires an external because I don't have one built in and I went ahead and spent a
little bit extra money to get a combo blu-ray/dvd reader and writer so if you want the flexibility
I recommend this one. It's a little bit more expensive but it's highly rated and I'll put
a link in the description of the video. Just make sure you get a blu-ray and a dvd combo
if you intend to copy blu-ray discs as well. The second thing you're going to need is software to
do the file conversion from your dvd disks. I recommend using Makemkv beta. MKV files
are fairly standard and this program will convert your dvd disk into an MKV file that you can store
on your hard drive. You can see by the list of options here that it reads dvd and blu-ray discs,
it reads blu-ray discs that are protected, and it preserves all the video and audio tracks including
hd audio. This is great because you end up with a complete representation of your original dvd
disc on a hard drive file and then you can copy it to a variety of different devices.
So let's go ahead and download Makemkv. You can see here you have versions for Windows or Mac
and there is even a Linux version as well. I'm going to choose the Windows version.
It's going to download the files for install. Open that.
It asks which language you wanted to install.
Hit Next. I'm going to accept the terms of the license
and I'm going to leave these defaulted as checked. Choose a location to do the install
and a folder name and that's it. It's installed. Let's go ahead and run it
now. The first thing I'm going to recommend is come up here to View and go to Preferences
and you can set a default directory where it copies your files. So I've set up a D:\movies
folder. Under the Video tab you can set the default destination. I choose Semiauto and
then I put in the same folder and what that does is it automatically creates a subfolder for each
disk that I'm importing in. There's also an option here to set the minimum length of the
title that you want to convert. So what happens is a lot of dvds come with multiple tracks that
include your original movie as well as commentary and other types of titles. When you set this to
1200 seconds, that's 20 minutes, I'm eliminating all of those small files because all I really want
is the hour and a half or two hour long movie but if you want to see all the different commentary
you can set this to a lower amount. You can leave the defaults on the rest of these. Hit OK and now
you're ready to load a disc. When you insert a dvd into your drive it begins loading the information.
It determines the label of the dvd and the protection that's set up on it.
Come up here to File and go to Open Disk and select your reader from the menu there.
This scans the file in preparation for the conversion
and it comes up with a list of two different titles, both the same size. This is probably
just a copy so I'm going to turn that one off. So I have one file now selected to convert.
Click this button to make the MKV file. It's going to create a folder just for that
and it begins the conversion. Now this process can take a number of minutes depending on the size of
the file that you're trying to convert. After it calculates for a few seconds it'll come up with an
elapsed time and a projected time for completion and since this is a blu-ray disc with a very large
file it's going to take quite a while to complete. This is probably one of the longer ones. I've seen
them anywhere from about 15 minutes to 25 minutes typically and for blu-ray maybe 30 or 40 minutes
so let's skip ahead and as you can see it took about 30 minutes to complete that conversion.
Hit OK and now we can take a look at our folder and there's our converted file and
you can right-click on this and Cast it to a device or Open it. It'll play that file.
The final item you're going to need is storage for these very large video files that you've
converted. My current collection is about 200 videos and it takes up 1.3TB so I purchased
this external seagate backup drive. It holds 2TB and uses a USB connection so I can plug it into
the various devices and run my video files. A USB connection works very well if you have a tv with a
USB port on it or something like a Roku Ultra that has a USB port. You can plug the hard drive in
and play your videos directly. USB is universal to a lot of different devices and the MKV files
can be read easily on many of those devices as well. The reason I recommend a 2TB external hard
drive and not something larger is because of the limitations of many devices. For example,
the Roku Ultra will only allow up to 2TB for an external hard drive plugged into the USB port.
Anything larger and it won't read the drive at all. You can't even partition a larger hard
drive into 2TB blocks. It won't read any of those. Now I will warn you that some USB ports on TVs or
Roku Ultra don't provide enough power to handle an external hard drive and you may need an inline
power booster like this USB hub. So I ordered one of these and added it to my system as well.
I've also found that this USB 2.0 extension cable is a must-have. It often works without the need
for a USB powered hub. The reason why is because it forces the communication between your hard
drive and your device to run at 2.0 speeds which sometimes makes the two talk better together.
I found this to be true of the Roku Ultra. It's inexpensive and it's probably something you should
keep on hand in case you need it. I'll provide links to all of these devices in the description
below the video. And that covers everything you need to digitize your dvd movie collection. Stay
tuned for an upcoming video where I discuss how this works with a Roku Ultra. Thanks for watching.
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