Where do I start, what do I need?

grahamricho

i have around 300 DVDs and 100 Blu-ray Discs and 30 uhd discs. I'm changing my room round and will lose the storage for my discs at the front of the room if I go with a fixed at projector screen.

So what is the cheapest option of burning all my discs onto some sort of storage system.

I would love something similar to what I have for my CDs, ( cocktail )

I would like something I can put a DVD in, and it copies it and puts it in a library. Which I then can use an app on my iPad to pick a movie to watch later?  

So what do I need ? Thanks

mushii

You will need a decent PC for ripping your movies with some movie ripping software. An Intel i5 with 8Gb of RAM should be fine. Then you will need some form of storage like a NAS to store them all on. Assuming 30Gb per BluRay that is 3Tb in BluRays, 50Gb per 4k, so that is 1.5Tb and 4Gb per DVD, so 1.2 Tb for DVDs. As a round number say 6 Tb of storage for what you have now.

Assuming you would want expansion capacity a 4 bay NAS with 2x 6Tb WD Reds - £175 each plus a decent 4 bay nas - Synology DiskStation DS918  £500. So £850 for a NAS with 12 Tb storage and a basic i5 PC for ripping £500 (Dell Vostro or similar) So all in all £1350 for hardware.

Assuming an hour per disk ripping - 430 hours. If you manage 5 Rips per day that is 86 days or approximately 3 months of ripping non-stop.

That is what you will need time and money wise.

grahamricho

Ooh, thank you for that, a lot of time needs? I may build a new cupboard instead!

Sloppy Bob

I can rip a bluray in about 20-30 mins, a DVD in a lot less. I just did it to start off with a huge collection while I was sitting at my PC or desk while doing other things.

But yes it is a large investment in money and time. Once you've got it done then obviously it's not as time-consuming just ripping your new stuff when you buy it.

mushii

@Sloppy Bob are you ripping those BD / DVD 1:1 or are you compressing them? What kind of rig are you ripping them on? I figured an hour to include sorting disks, admin and copying them from the ripping machine to the server and screen-scraping all of the meta-data.

What are you using to rip 4k UHD's ?

grahamricho

Hi thanks, it would be great after it's done and then adding any new discs would be a doddle.

How do you control the nas? Is there a iPad controller and how does the library look?
Does it put a cover picture of each disc or do you have to find and add them yourself?

Could the PC be hidden and have the DVD drive external so all you would do is put a disc in and a few clicks and its ripping?

Just re read the above, so you rip to the PC, than transfer to the nas? Can this be done over wi fi ?

Mister_Tad

I rip them without any further encoding with MakeMKV - chances are a few TB extra disk is a lot cheaper than your time.

4Ks are 40-60 mins (45-60GB)
BDs 20-30 mins (20-30GB)
I would assume DVDs are way less - I can't recall when I've last ripped one.

The system you're using is largely inconsequential - the reads form the drive will be the bottleneck unless you're transcoding. Putting a 4K through handbrake (RF15) on a 7700HQ laptop took 12 hours in comparison.

Plex (and any other player/library worth its salt) sorts out all of the metadata for you, you just need to name it something half-way intelligent such as "title (year).mkv" and it does the rest.

If you want cheap - a single disk NAS with an 8TB disk, and another 8TB external to pull a periodic backup - total cost of ~£400. Not much room to grow from what you have now though, so 10TB  may be a better call for the long run.

One area that will give you grief is films with subtitles for foreign audio. There's so much inconsistency between how these are stored from disc to disc that I've given up entirely on pulling them from the disc and will get the SRT from opensubtitles instead.

Sloppy Bob

@mushii I'm just ripping 1:1 using MakeMKV, I do compress some movies using x264/x265, but only stuff that's not exactly cinematographic and it makes little to no difference to the output.
To rip 4K UHD discs you need to be very careful what drive you buy as many won't work. I don't have a UHD drive, but my drive is UHD friendly an Asus BW16.

I'm using an older i7 laptop. I don't think it makes much difference for ripping what your rig is as long as it's not a low spec POS as all the work is really done by the DVD/Bluray/UHD drive, the PC is just copying the data the drive reads.
Compressing takes a lot of processing and takes hours/days with x265 but I don't do it much, more with the likes of comedies or drama.

I'm ripping from my laptop straight to a folder on my NAS that I mark as ID, then when I'm happy with the copy and naming I scrape it with media companion and transfer it to the relevant folder on my NAS.

@grahamricho I use Kodi as my media player, as Mister_Tad says Plex sorts out your media library, so does Kodi, they're basically both the best media playing apps out there but they go about it a very different way. Both give you a nice configurable GUI on your TV with posters, moviesheets, synopsis etc.
I choose to scrape the movies myself using Media Companion as it gives you more control over what posters etc are chosen but Kodi and Plex will scrape for you.

mushii

@Sloppy Bob thanks. Its years since I ripped anything. Always good to keep up with current processes. I know that ripping my CDs is a pain, but you just need to keep on top of it.

Sloppy Bob

To make sure I keep on top of it I don't own a UHD player and when my Bluray player went bust I never replaced it.

Buy a new disc, you can't watch it until you rip it. That can be a pain though as sometimes it's weeks after release until the ripping tools get an update for some new discs.
That doesn't affect me much though as I tend to wait until discs are discounted or on special offer rather than pay day one inflated prices.