Backing up DVD / blu ray & CD collection?

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

1 minute ago, Technique said:

I did wonder if it was something like that. I actually thought of the PC going in to standby mode or something but when i came upstairs it seemed fine. 

Storing on the portable wouldn't be my final choice anyway. I'm only doing this now as i can currently rip blu rays for free, no hassle so i'm getting it done while i can.

Understood  

[Technique]

Budman was right though - this IS addictive 

 

I'm currently in the process of acquiring blu-rays of movies that i already own just so that i can have the blu-ray version in my library  I wont be doing this for every single movie i've got because in the near future this is going to start costing and there's some movies that i own that i may very well never watch again but i enjoyed them and don't want to throw the DVD out because i MAY watch them again.

 

Then there's those that i'll most certainly watch again. We enjoy action movies and for example we really like the Marvel movies that come out - so those for example will be getting put in the library in Blu-ray quality as we'll watch them again, whereas let's say for example the movie 'Friday' with Ice Cube that i own, i may not watch it again so it'll stay in DVD quality.

[Technique]

Here's a question for you buffs...

 

Now i'm sure that years ago, 70s, 80s, 90s, the equipment and technology that was available to movie recorders at the time was vastly different to what is available today. Today it's not a thing to record in quality fit for Blu-Ray and beyond, 4k, 8k (i was actually in a store this week & saw my first 8K TV. Noticed zero difference between that and 4K but there you go).

 

Years ago Blu-Ray wasn't a thing. In fact DVD wasn't a thing depending on how far back you go. Yet today we can get old movies ... in Blu-Ray.

 

How do they improve on what the original was to make it a blu-ray DVD? Surely you can't improve on the original, so what wizardry are they using?

[sc302 Veteran]

To put it simply, they can’t.  I have a blue ray mastered version of spaceballs, back to the future, and Indiana Jones series and you can tell they can’t.   

 

There is a lot of “static” in the remastered copies. 

[+BudMan MVC]

Depends on how its done... If they still have the original film.. They can re digitize it... If they are just cleaning up the digital copy.. Then yeah not going to be anywhere as good.

 

https://www.howtogeek.com/199182/ask-htg-how-can-studios-release-high-definition-versions-of-decades-old-movies-and-tv-shows/

 

As to 8k over 4k... Human eye not going to be able to tell really at such high resolution...

 

[DevTech]

3 hours ago, Technique said:

Here's a question for you buffs...

 

Now i'm sure that years ago, 70s, 80s, 90s, the equipment and technology that was available to movie recorders at the time was vastly different to what is available today. Today it's not a thing to record in quality fit for Blu-Ray and beyond, 4k, 8k (i was actually in a store this week & saw my first 8K TV. Noticed zero difference between that and 4K but there you go).

 

Years ago Blu-Ray wasn't a thing. In fact DVD wasn't a thing depending on how far back you go. Yet today we can get old movies ... in Blu-Ray.

 

How do they improve on what the original was to make it a blu-ray DVD? Surely you can't improve on the original, so what wizardry are they using?

 

3 hours ago, sc302 said:

To put it simply, they can’t.  I have a blue ray mastered version of spaceballs, back to the future, and Indiana Jones series and you can tell they can’t.   

 

There is a lot of “static” in the remastered copies. 

 

1 hour ago, BudMan said:

Depends on how its done... If they still have the original film.. They can re digitize it... If they are just cleaning up the digital copy.. Then yeah not going to be anywhere as good.

 

https://www.howtogeek.com/199182/ask-htg-how-can-studios-release-high-definition-versions-of-decades-old-movies-and-tv-shows/

 

As to 8k over 4k... Human eye not going to be able to tell really at such high resolution...

 

I have typed up a lot of posts in this thread on various possible techniques on how to improve video quality from bad sources.

 

There are so many potential ways to do this that saying "you can't" is ill informed.

 

People who say you can't have an incorrect mental model of the various possible approaches and I won't pretend I can see the muddy thinking involved in someones else's head, but it probably involves what they think they know about upscaling a single image.

 

That single bad grainy  image has "buddy" images at 24 FPS before and after from which to glean information as just a starting point.

 

There is intense academic scrutiny of Neural Nets which one can google under the term "Super Resolution"

 

And so on.

 

Watch the clips in this article and be amazed:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/movies/peter-jackson-war-movie.html

 

“Their humanity just jumped out at you. This footage has been around for 100 years and these men had been buried behind a fog of damage, a mask of grain and jerkiness and sped-up film. Once restored, it’s the human aspect that you gain the most.”

 

 

 

 

[+BudMan MVC]

I agree here..

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/movies/peter-jackson-war-movie.html

 

But there is a big difference in the budget of such projects - and a bluray copy of movie "remastered" for bluray sale..

 

Its going to be hit or miss sometimes for sure - all depends on "how" they did it and how much time and effort and $ they put into the project..

[Technique]

The whole point of that question was to try and determine whether it is worthwhile acquiring blu-ray copies of movies i own in DVD format so that a better quality version can be added to my library.

 

First Batman with Michael Keaton

Terminator 1 & 2

Goodfellas

Enter the Dragon

Top Gun

All the Back to the Future's

 

Just a few examples of older movies that i'd be interested in in having in Blu-ray format IF the quality was significantly better than DVD format.

 

OR whether it's the exact same movie as i currently own, just with a Blu-ray symbol on the disc (& therefore not worth wasting my time on).

 

12 hours ago, BudMan said:

 

As to 8k over 4k... Human eye not going to be able to tell really at such high resolution...

 

This was going to be my next question ....

 

I don't know where it'll end up, but let's go with the 'K' idea & keep doubling up, 4K, 8K, 16K so on & so forth .... at what point does the human eye stop telling the difference? I don't mean the 1% of humans with hawk-like eyesight, i mean the average human being. So in years to come we can have people rushing out to buy their 512K TV at £emptyyourbankaccount prices  but is it really worth it over the previous version (in this example it'd be 256K).

[+BudMan MVC]

Its a bit more complicated then can someone tell difference 1080p, 4k, 8k

 

What is the distance to the monitor, what is the size of the monitor, etc. etc..

 

Here this should get you started on the quest down that particular rabbit hole

https://www.techspot.com/article/1113-4k-monitor-see-difference/

 

So you would have to do your own math for the size of your screen, distance from the screen, specs of the display, etc. etc..

 

You have a large TV right - how far away do you watch it normally?  Now get closer - what do you see

 

Keep in mind as well that when you start with your "server" hobby and streaming stuff that while you might start out with it just on your TV, and your particular viewing distance - as you get deeper down the rabbit hole you might start watching it on other devices with different resolutions and different distances, etc.  You might have bandwidth issues and have to transcode the video to lower quality bitrate, etc.  The higher your original copy is - its prob going to produce a better lower quality picture then if you have a low quality original but high bit rate and then have to lower the bit rate to be able to stream to say your friends machine with very low bandwidth constraints..

 

As I said very early on in this discussion - you are headed down a crazy, exciting very fun rabbit hole! hehehehe

 

 

[Technique]

So your closing statement there - it pays to have as good a quality (movie in this case) as possible to cover potential scenarios?

 

I went through my movie list last night & there were some movies i left out as i'm not overly bothered about having them in as good a quality as possible, but then there's some i certainly would prefer.

 

There were actually more than i thought in the end 🤣

[+BudMan MVC]

If your happy with quality of the picture for your needs, then your happy with it..

 

You should really do some comparison for your use case with your equipment, your (or family) eyesight..

 

Do 1 or 2 movies... Can you tell the difference when you rip it from your DVD, or when your rip it from your bluray... Then it will be up to you if its worth it or not.. Keeping in mind that doing so means more space heheheh 

 

As you explore this new hobby of yours, you might discover that hey that rip of from dvd can be shrunk via less bitrate, and you don't need 5.1, 7.1 because your sound system doesn't play it anyway.. And hey 192k mp3 stereo in the file sounds just as good to YOU on your system as 320k.. And now you are using only 3rd of the space required.. So now you can have 3x the number of movies in your library, etc. etc..

 

What I can tell you is - for me and my hobby it is night and day difference in quality and sound.. So whenever I can I update the quality of the copy of the media I have.. Just like when I first started with home video it was with a 720p that could do 30fps.. I then updated to a 1080p camera at 60fps... Wow did the videos get bigger!!!  Now I am toying with getting a 4k.. Especially now that I have a 4k TV..  But then again my grandkids are bigger now - and sadly have moved across country so not so many movies to make... But my younger son will hopefully soon be getting down to his job of providing me and the wife with 2 more grandkids for a total of 4 hehehehe

 

But maybe the 8k Camera's will be better choice when that happens - hehehe

[Technique]

What does your folder layout look like (question aimed to anyone who has a HD set up with various media for Plex).

 

For example is it just like:

 

Movies>and then a load of folders for each movie, so it's basically just 1 parent folder with a ton of subfolders?

Or something more like Movies>Action/Comedy/Thriller etc with movies in each of those genre folders?

 

Same with Music. Music>artist name>album for said artist?

 

 

Just wondering how you guys lay it out so that i can maybe get an idea of when i start building this. I'm slowly chipping away at it.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

I do it by album and by movie name. I don't bother with genres, because it can go either way with some selections.

 

(I do not yet use Plex, but I will in future)

 

These are my DVD and music collections:

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

Movies are just in one single folder. 

 

TV Shows by Name > Season

 

If you're still considering using Plex it gives you the ability to filter by other things, like year, genre etc, so I don't bother with any other sorting. 

[Technique]

What's that you're using there Mindovermaster? Looks like a different OS to one i've seen.

 

Also such a varying taste in movies. All bought or shall we not talk about it on the open forum? Just to note - i'm not being judgemental by that question. I just wondered what with the complete collections.

 

I'm just in the process of finding out whether it's worth acquiring some old DVDs in blu-ray form. Annoyingly Scarface was the next one i was supposed to get but it's turned out to be a couple of modern movies that i'll be receiving so i wont have a standard version to compare to a blu ray version just yet.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

1 hour ago, Technique said:

What's that you're using there Mindovermaster? Looks like a different OS to one i've seen.

 

Linux Mint 19.

1 hour ago, Technique said:

Also such a varying taste in movies. All bought or shall we not talk about it on the open forum? Just to note - i'm not being judgemental by that question. I just wondered what with the complete collections.

All are legal. It's a collection of my own, aunt's, brother's, and grandfather's. Have a large collection, from comedy to sci-fi.

 

1 hour ago, Technique said:

I'm just in the process of finding out whether it's worth acquiring some old DVDs in blu-ray form. Annoyingly Scarface was the next one i was supposed to get but it's turned out to be a couple of modern movies that i'll be receiving so i wont have a standard version to compare to a blu ray version just yet.

AFAIK, you can't upscale a DVD up to BR.

[DevTech]

7 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

AFAIK, you can't upscale a DVD up to BR.

OMG - Are we talking short term memory loss here?

 

Shall I count the large number of posts in this thread where I have discussed the complexities of upscaling DVDs?

 

TLDR; --> You can improve the DVD quality a lot which requires a lot of investigation and setup but of course will never get near to a BluRay Disc.

 

Personally, I stopped investigating DVD upscaling here because the people that would find it handy to have, are not likely to invest the large learning effort to understand the simpler issues such as de-interlacing and noise artifacts let alone the complex issues of video formats, frame rates, key frames and the effects of lossy encoding/decoding.

 

It's a lot easier anyways locating a "source" to replace the DVD copy with a BluRay file...

 

Most of the modern approaches to upscaling are concerned with taking the "crappy" BluRay source and getting upscaled to 4K or 8K...

 

 

 

 

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

6 hours ago, DevTech said:

OMG - Are we talking short term memory loss here?

 

Shall I count the large number of posts in this thread where I have discussed the complexities of upscaling DVDs?

 

TLDR; --> You can improve the DVD quality a lot which requires a lot of investigation and setup but of course will never get near to a BluRay Disc.

 

Personally, I stopped investigating DVD upscaling here because the people that would find it handy to have, are not likely to invest the large learning effort to understand the simpler issues such as de-interlacing and noise artifacts let alone the complex issues of video formats, frame rates, key frames and the effects of lossy encoding/decoding.

 

It's a lot easier anyways locating a "source" to replace the DVD copy with a BluRay file...

 

Most of the modern approaches to upscaling are concerned with taking the "crappy" BluRay source and getting upscaled to 4K or 8K...

 

 

 

 

My mistake, sorry

[Technique]

3 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

My mistake, sorry

Hey! That's my line!!

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

10 minutes ago, Technique said:

Hey! That's my line!!

Not like I underlined it...  

 

With that upscaling, I was probably in la-la land...

[Technique]

Just 2 questions on this...

 

1) I have all the Dragonball Super episodes downloaded in 720p. They're currently all titled from DBS_001 up to the final DBS_131.

 

How would you folder these things up in a way that Plex would understand them as episode 1, episode 2 etc or would you need to manually edit all 131 files?

 

2) I have currently ripped the entire Christian Bale Batman series, i'll be doing the entire Fast & Furious list, the entire X-Men, entire Marvel, entire Terminator & Bourne for example.

 

How would you box these up so that they're 'collected'? It's ok for things like Fast & Furious where it's pretty much 1,2,3,4,5etc but take the Batman - Batman Begins, The Dark Knight etc.

The Marvel ones is another. You can group them off in to the phases but for titles alone they're all over the place.

 

So how would you group them up so that take fast & furious for example, you could select it & it'd be the entire list of movies and then from within that you'd select which movie you wanted?

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

11 minutes ago, Technique said:

1) I have all the Dragonball Super episodes downloaded in 720p. They're currently all titled from DBS_001 up to the final DBS_131.

 

How would you folder these things up in a way that Plex would understand them as episode 1, episode 2 etc or would you need to manually edit all 131 files?

just have them in seperat folders. season 1, season 2, etc.

 

To both your questions, sort it as you want. Plex just goes by folder, not any certain way.

[+BudMan MVC]

Its called a Collection.  Tag the movie with your Collection name.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/201273953-collections/

[Circaflex]

18 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

just have them in seperat folders. season 1, season 2, etc.

 

To both your questions, sort it as you want. Plex just goes by folder, not any certain way.

That's not necessarily true, Plex will look at the file itself for tags, in order for it to match to the database (generate title, cover art, fan art, description, etc).

On 12/27/2018 at 4:16 PM, Mindovermaster said:

All are legal. It's a collection of my own, aunt's, brother's, and grandfather's. Have a large collection, from comedy to sci-fi.

If you're going to try and pass that off as your response, at least rename your folders and remove the scene group names, LOL

 

@Technique

My recommendation would be for TV shows, create a folder for each show. Within that folder, create a Season folder and organize the files by season. In regards to grouping franchise sets, as @BudManmentioned you would use the collection tag. I use this particular software, https://sourceforge.net/projects/mediacompanion/ , to organize my library. This software will scrape all info for the movie, including art and tags, automatically. You can even have it rename files if you wish, for me I personally use Movie Title (Year).file extension for my movies and I have this software do that for me. It will also organize your TV shows and you can again have the wizard batch rename and scrape the info along with tagging your files. To make things easier for Plex, I keep all movies in their own folders and use the collection tag for display purposes on Plex, but having separate folders IMO is easier. See my photos below

 

 

[Technique]

Budman & Circaflex - thank you