HandBrake

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HandBrake

Postby Мастер » Mon Nov 07, 2011 4:32 pm

Several hours after starting, I have successfully transferred a single episode of "Yes Minister" to my telephone. The result is extremely good quality; it is also a giant PITA, and a giant memory hog.

The software that does this is "HandBrake". It can take video input from a DVD and produce the type of video file the phone likes. It also takes what seems like forever to do so. I have rather mixed feelings about the software. The final result is quite good; the process is painful. Once, the program quit for no reason I could figure out, and left an unusable video file behind. Another time, it seemingly caused the computer to go into hibernation in the middle of the conversion. I thought maybe the battery had run down, but when in fact, the battery was nearly fully charged. Why did this happen? I don't know.

So rough around the edges, it seems, but absent a better alternative, I think I will keep using it.

Trying to apply HandBrake directly to the DVD ended in miserable failure. Another piece of software is needed, to copy the contents of the DVD to the computer hard drive, without some region or copy-protection information. I used DVDFab QT, which includes a (free) component called HDdecrypter. That did the trick; I had earlier tried a different piece of software, which was supposed to do the same thing, but didn't work for me.

Now that I know the process, it should be faster, but still an awful lot of waiting. And a single episode of "Yes Minister" is 355 MB. My entire CD collection, when digitized, fits in my phone; the same will not be the case with my DVD collection.

A consequence of that is, I'm going to be in the market for a big honkin' external hard disk. Anyone have any suggestions?
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Postby Blue Monster 65 » Mon Nov 07, 2011 5:03 pm

I just built a 2-TB backup for my media computer for about $120. Granted, that's a bit more than some, but this is a full-size (not a notebook drive) 7200 rpm hard drive in an aluminum case with external power and a fan. Works for me. Go to you local computer geek store and look around.

Otherwise, WD, etc. all are offering storage in all kinds of sizes for budget prices these days. I've even seen 3TB drives for $150 or less.
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Postby Мастер » Wed Nov 09, 2011 6:08 am

Blue Monster 65 wrote:I just built a 2-TB backup for my media computer for about $120. Granted, that's a bit more than some, but this is a full-size (not a notebook drive) 7200 rpm hard drive in an aluminum case with external power and a fan. Works for me. Go to you local computer geek store and look around.


Went to the shop and saw a WD for $160, will probably buy today. Keep in mind our $$ are a bit smaller than your $$.

Now, on DVDFab - mostly, I like this software, but one annoying "feature". I am using it to remove the copy protection from my DVDs. The other piece of software (Handbrake) needs to have this done first, or the results are total rubbish. But DVDFab isn't really designed to copy from a DVD to a hard drive; you have to trick it. Tell it to copy one DVD to another, and insert the source DVD. It copies it to the hard drive, then prompts you to put the target DVD in. At this point, just cancel. Then there is a copy of the DVD, in the Windows C:\ drive; do what you like with it.

Problem is, I don't have 7 GB spare on my C:\ drive. Tried to clean up a bit, but to get this much free space would require some painful actions. Then I discovered, you can create symbolic links in Windows, just like in Linux! Take the folder where the DVD is supposed to go (temporarily), and replace it with a symbolic link to a folder on another drive! Problem solved!

Well, not really. The DVDFab program helpfully checks whether there is 7 GB free on the C:\ drive, and refuses to proceed if there isn't. So I still need to figure out a way to create some empty space :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:
Last edited by Мастер on Wed Nov 09, 2011 5:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby MM_Dandy » Wed Nov 09, 2011 4:36 pm

Does DVDFab allow you to change the temp directory?

ETA: Looks like it does...
Temporary directory:
DVDFab will rip the movie to the temp folder, then burn to blank disc. So please keep the free space the hard drive where temp folder is more than 10 GB. You can choose the directory of temp folder here. Normally, DVDFab will use 'My Documents' as default.
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Postby Мастер » Wed Nov 09, 2011 5:25 pm

MM_Dandy wrote:Does DVDFab allow you to change the temp directory?


This occurred to me, and I went looking for such an option, and could not find it.

MM_Dandy wrote:ETA: Looks like it does...
Temporary directory:
DVDFab will rip the movie to the temp folder, then burn to blank disc. So please keep the free space the hard drive where temp folder is more than 10 GB. You can choose the directory of temp folder here. Normally, DVDFab will use 'My Documents' as default.


I have found it now :P

Many thanks!
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Postby Blue Monster 65 » Wed Nov 09, 2011 6:07 pm

I use DVD Fab whenever I want to burn backups of our movies and also to put them on portables. My only advice is to make sure you have the latest version at all times, as most "problems" I've incurred have come about due to something new that I haven't implemented yet.

Good luck with your new HD - I'm sure you'll find it quite handy.
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Postby Мастер » Thu Nov 10, 2011 10:01 am

Blue Monster 65 wrote:Good luck with your new HD - I'm sure you'll find it quite handy.


I bought a 2 terrorbyte Western Digial today. Still in the box though.
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Postby Dragon Star » Fri Nov 25, 2011 1:47 am

It totally amazes me how cheap storage has become as of late. My first PC was a 98' mini tower HP, with a whopping 10gb of storage, which my research tells me was around $50/GB.

Now it's like $0.27/GB. Holy crap.
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Postby Lance » Fri Nov 25, 2011 2:33 pm

I remember RAM being $100 per Megabyte! And a 20MB hard drive was a couple hundred bux.
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Postby Arneb » Fri Nov 25, 2011 8:47 pm

I know far less about computers than Lance, and even I remember those times. I bought my first 20 MB hard drive (for an Atari 1040 ST), from my former music teacher, in 1991. It was affectionately known among aficionados as the roaring shoe box, and set me back DM 100,--.
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Postby Blue Monster 65 » Sat Nov 26, 2011 1:22 am

In 1996 I got an IBM desktop with a 4-gig hard drive. One of the geeks I worked with was amazed: "What are you going to do with a FOUR GIG hard drive?" Now we have four gigs of ram in each of the KIDS' computers! :lol:

The price drop is pretty amazing, isn't it?
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Postby Arneb » Sat Nov 26, 2011 10:05 am

Yes. That's exponential growth for you, I guess.

I notice that the expansion in storage capacity seems to be abating a bit: Computers are switched from hard drives to SSL storage, and apparently, a sacrifice in capacity is willingly being made by the consumers because, really, what do you do with 250 GB worth of storage? :D

My personal benchmark is my music collection. It is worth about 70 GB of storage as highest quality .mp3. Annoyingly (this is a SCANDAL, I think), it doesn't fit in my car, which has an 18 GB hard drive and a 32 GB SDHC slot. And surprisingly, it wasn't easier to find an MP3 player with enough storage to store it in than two years before, it was harder. The large 80 GB iPods are there, of course, but I don't allow Apple products into my house. The only alternative was a 250 GB HDD tablet computer promised for October but still not really there by Archos, a French company that always specialised in large media storage devices. I ended up buying a used Archos player with 80 GB on ebay - one that was already around when I bought my current 100GB player two or three years ago.

Of course, IF you are into video and TV (which I am not very much) you very quickly travel to terabyte land. And these devices aren't portable, only transportable.
Last edited by Arneb on Sat Nov 26, 2011 10:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Мастер » Sat Nov 26, 2011 10:16 am

Arneb wrote:I know far less about computers than Lance, and even I remember those times. I bought my first 20 MB hard drive (for an Atari 1040 ST), from my former music teacher, in 1991. It was affectionately known among aficionados as the roaring shoe box, and set me back DM 100,--.


I remember the old days, when there were DM :D
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Postby Arneb » Sat Nov 26, 2011 10:28 am

I hope they won't be the new days...
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Postby Мастер » Sat Nov 26, 2011 11:20 am

If one ever forgot the probability density function for a Gaussian distribution (not that I ever would), all one had to do was pull a 10 DM note out of one's wallet, and read it off!
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Postby Arneb » Sat Nov 26, 2011 1:25 pm

There is that. And I must say, I liked the intricate and beautiful design of the last generation of DM notes a lot better than the genereic, bland, featureless bridges-and-windows-through-the-ages stuff on the Euro.
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Postby Enzo » Thu Dec 01, 2011 4:41 am

Oh foo...

My first computer was a Radio SHack TRS80 Model 3. It came in two versions: 48k RAM and 64k RAM... Yes, k. I chose the 48k version to save some money, after all, who really needed all 64k of RAM anyway?

I still have it, sits upstairs in the old office. Hasn't been on in over 25 years, but I bet it would still work. Has two 5" floppy drives right in the panel, but I got a third, external, drive so I could have three. Creation disc, data disc, work disc. Pain in the butt to swap discs all the time, so three drives.

If I can still find them, 16k RAM ICs are a few cents each.

It ran "TRS-DOS". The slang term for the TRS80 was "Trash-80", and the OS was called Trash-DOS.

I actually used it for my work.
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Postby Мастер » Thu Dec 01, 2011 5:48 am

Never had one, but I remember the Trash-80. Did some of them have 8" drives? Or was that another model?

Seems to me most of the Apple IIs had 48k, so when the IBM PC came out, with an option for 64k, that was a big upgrade. I do remember the boss man berating us for writing the code so inefficiently that we actually needed the 64k.

Subsequent models went up to 1,048,576 bytes, which was the limit of the 8086 processor, with it's bizarre scheme which took 32 bits to represent a 20 bit address. (Each memory location had 4096 addresses.). Some of that 1MB was reserved for video and other purposes though. There were a few competing standards for hardware trickery that would swap more physical memory into the same 20-bit address space on demand.
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Postby Enzo » Fri Dec 02, 2011 1:13 am

The model 3 was the consumer model - it had 5" drives. They also had a Model 2, which was a "business" computer, and I do think it had the 8" floppies.
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Postby KLA2 » Wed Dec 07, 2011 2:46 am

Enzo wrote:The model 3 was the consumer model - it had 5" drives. They also had a Model 2, which was a "business" computer, and I do think it had the 8" floppies.


I remember those. As an assistant comptroller in '79 - '80, we entered data to those disks on a terminal the size of a small filing cabinet, then sneakerneted them to the EDP department, there to be entered into the gigantic mainframe with a capacity of, oh, maybe 256 K. Awesome!

The humorous part is how often employees stapled notes to those disks, or used magnetic clips to fasten them to the sides of filing cabinets. Really. :lol:
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Postby Enzo » Wed Dec 07, 2011 8:50 am

SOmewhere out in my warehouse I have the disc from an old hard drive. It was a metal disc about maybe 16" in diameter with a large central hole. The disc had a coating of the brown oxide like coats recording tape. WHatever drive it came from had suffered a catastrophic head crash, there were several "tracks" where the heads had scraped away the oxide down to bare shiny metal. I don;t think they'd be recovering any data from that one. Probably made a great banshee scream at the time too.

In its day, it was a fancy hard drive. One can only imagine how many K it stored.


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