How many bytes are movies?

[Celeste 341]

How many of you record movies from DVR - example - we purchase a Pay per View movie and use the DVR feature to capture it. Some of our electronic "stuff" provides the capability of hooking up say, an external hard drive, for writing. I'm thinking this is an awesome way to create a much more compact movie collection. How many gigabytes/terrabytes should we look for in this new toy?

Celeste

[Scott Stone 604]

I have a 30 gig ipod, and have about 23 movies on it, and they seem to take about a gig a piece. But, I think that teh mpeg4 format is a lot smaller. I have used my ipod to view a movie on a tv, and did not notice a huge deterioration in quality, and I have a 52 inch LCD, so I probably would have, if there had been one.

[Celeste 341]

Cool......we're looking at picking up a portable TB external hard drive. I'm thinking that will hold a gracious plenty movies :)

[Beth n Rod 1,279]

Cool......we're looking at picking up a portable TB external hard drive. I'm thinking that will hold a gracious plenty movies :)

They had one at an office supply place I was at....Staples I think it was...storage is cheap now.

Beth

[PressurePros 249]

A gig per movie is a good average if they are compressed. HD movies would be much more, especially with the 5.1 sound information channel.

[Celeste 341]

Okay, I know even less about compressing a movie. I just want to write from the DVR to an external. But with a TB drive, even if a movie was 10gig, I could still put a healthy number of flicks on, right?

[MMI Enterprises 289]

Well no..

Perhaps a bit more to think about than yer bargaining for...

Generally speaking 2 hour of dvd starts anywhere from 4-6 gig..I mention as if you decide to ever stick the media onto dvd and have standard machines decompress it the format needs to be readable.

What your talking about doing for storage though is different. It comes down to what bitrates the video and audio is to be and what your willing to give up to be small file size. What is the container format/compression the dvr is going to record into? Are your dvr recordings adjustable in bitrate and resolution?...I don't have such hardware, only have software capture via computer myself so but I doubt your standard dvr stuff your using will offer much on the initial recording. What are you going to be playing it back with as you may decide to compress it differently so other hardware can decompress it? Takes long time to transcode just so you know.

But anyways, Hardware dictates what formats you can play back. Ipod that Alan is talking about is an mpeg4 format, which btw is often times tweaked into being a proprietary contaner format such as what microsoft uses for media center. Open source mpeg container format would be xvid and but am unsure if there is any suitable hardware players readily avalable that would dish it out to your tv. You would not want to transcode a movie at original resolution for say to watch on ipod and tv both. It would take up too much space on ipod hence conversion/transcoding softwares to turn bitrates, resolutions, frame rates down. Sizes for such can be anywhere from 500mb to over a gig. But again, there is no way to make such resolution really look good though. That said, some ding a lings can't tell dif between regular tv resolutions and hd..haha. Softwares I liked for transcoding work are crunchie and procoder but are probably dated now.

All this treads on paracy if talking about commercial rentals of course so I can't really advocate what your trying to do. lol.. For those so inclined though I would ask why they just not rent from the Red Box for a dollar and then clone/anydvd it to disk? Takes about 10 min tops per disk to burn once yer setup with proper softwares. Now what if say ya don't like that route in renting and ya also hate the speed of bittorrents...ya could check into usenet and snag the iso's to burn at incredible rates. Is no different really than what your talking about doing really but the storage is dvd disks (standard single layer 4.7 btw with clone :) ). Hard dirves inevitably die so then ya get into aspecs of backing up all them gigs which is for the birds in my opinion.

ps- I get lost for days and weeks in such stuff so I say run Celeste..run!. Such is part reason I aint been on this last bit. I spent about a week changing my Wii into a monster.. lol. Now I can play movies on it as well as backups of all the games (no matter where I get them)...all by way of legal open source stuff that Nintendo can't say crap about.

Is funny as the making of backups of your own stuff (movie or games)always opens door for piracy. That's technology for ya. There really is no encryption that can't be compromized. Just depends where the pro's want to place their efforts. Latest high profile cases would be Dishnet and now the Wii..

Edited December 2, 2008 by MMI Enterprises

[Beth n Rod 1,279]

megabyte=1,000,000 bytes

gigabyte=1.07 billion bytes

terabyte=1000 gigabytes

4 gigabyte/movie = 200 movies on a TB hard drive cause you have to leave space for partitioning. Still that's a considerable amount of movies.

Rod!~

[Celeste 341]

Can somebody tell me what Kevin just said?

[MMI Enterprises 289]

sorry..makes sense to me ;(

Basically I mean to say it is perhaps best to keep your content in as high a quality as you can for archival sake and only compress as much as your hardware can deal with. If the content is standard size that ends you on a single layer dvd then, as Rod's figures imply, you really don't have to worry about doing any compressing or transcoding at all. The hardware/capture ability of the dvr itself may already have you at as poor a quality that you would want to go anyways so transcoding in the idea of changing file size might be regressive idea. Further compressing it is likely out the picture also as perhaps it is already in a tight mpeg4 container format?..

No way I would depend on a TB drive to store 200 movie without having it backed up. Drives break!

100 stack of dvd runs like $20 on sale..takes about 6-10 minute per movie to burn with Nero. If files are compressed into mpeg4/xvid and smaller size already then current burning software likely converts it into raw vob/.ts files and sets you all up automatic for them to play like a retail offerings on standard dvd players. If standard mpeg2 stuff they for sure all do this and just makes the required .ts files/folders lickity split.

Edited December 3, 2008 by MMI Enterprises

[PressurePros 249]

I'm glad you cleared that up Kevin.. was much clearer the second time around.

:think:

[Beth n Rod 1,279]

sorry..makes sense to me ;(

Basically I mean to say it is perhaps best to keep your content in as high a quality as you can for archival sake and only compress as much as your hardware can deal with. If the content is standard size that ends you on a single layer dvd then, as Rod's figures imply, you really don't have to worry about doing any compressing or transcoding at all. The hardware/capture ability of the dvr itself may already have you at as poor a quality that you would want to go anyways so transcoding in the idea of changing file size might be regressive idea. Further compressing it is likely out the picture also as perhaps it is already in a tight mpeg4 container format?..

No way I would depend on a TB drive to store 200 movie without having it backed up. Drives break!

100 stack of dvd runs like $20 on sale..takes about 6-10 minute per movie to burn with Nero. If files are compressed into mpeg4/xvid and smaller size already then current burning software likely converts it into raw vob/.ts files and sets you all up automatic for them to play like a retail offerings on standard dvd players. If standard mpeg2 stuff they for sure all do this and just makes the required .ts files/folders lickity split.

Here is what he is trying to say:

Just stick the disc in the drive and click 'Record' dammit!

Rod!~

[MMI Enterprises 289]

and if burner software such as nero express or burning rom don't recognize format the dvr did then there are simple .ts to mpeg2 convertors like videoredo. See one .ts meaning is not the same as the next. Means transport stream file but often confused thing as it is also a folder while making a dvd that actually contains the converted mpeg2 in the form or vob's. It's all confusing what with everything being wrapped up inside containers and such...

Ken..do I detect friendly sarcasm..lol? ...how ya doin btw?

[Celeste 341]

I have the whole Nero thing - what I don't want is stacks and stacks of discs, hence the single drive.

[mattspws 15]

Here's a couple links I think will help ya out. The first is a how-to on using DVD decrypter and DVD shrink. The other 2 are downloads for the programs. Basically you decrypt the file in DVD decrypter then shrink it in dvd shrink then turn around and burn it in dvd decrypter. If your libarary of movies starts getting to big your gonna have to start burning them. Not only that there would be nothing worse than loosing a terabyte of movies hard drives don't last forever and accidents do happen. I lost 40gigs of music cause somebody tripped over the wire from the external drive to the computer.

Consumed Consumer . org: HOWTO: Back-up your DVD for free

DVD Decrypter

Download DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15 - DVD Shrink - A FREE software to backup DVD disks ! - Softpedia

Edited December 4, 2008 by mattspws

[MMI Enterprises 289]

yonk yonk..now there be some imfamous progs r matie.. :)

[Curb Appeal 14]

Kevin, you're a man after my own heart.

I used to do the rental/netflix thing and ended up with two big aluminum suitcases full of DVDs. Over 2000 movies. Last year I threw that system out the window when I got one of the first Popcorn Hour streamers. It streams all of my movies off of my server, through my home network, directly to my HDTV. It will play almost every type of video, audio or picture file.

As for the probability of HD failure, I have 6 HDs (about 4TB of space) in my server running unRAID from a usb drive. This allows me to spin down drives that are not being used (greatly extending their lifespan) and if one drive dies, I can re-create the information lost from information stored on the recovery drive.

As for compression, I've found that x264 compression is by far the best in terms of quality vs file size. I can take a 20GB Blu-Ray movie and compress it down to 4.3GB without a noticeable loss in quality. Most of my movies are X264 in an .mkv format.

The best thing about this setup is that I no longer have to search through discs and load them into the DVD player. I just pick up my remote, select the movie (or TV show) I want to watch and press play.

[Celeste 341]

THAT is what I want to do! Just have drives, no discs!

[Beth n Rod 1,279]

THAT is what I want to do! Just have drives, no discs!

Drives crash. You'll need a backup. Always have a backup.

Beth

[Celeste 341]

Drives crash. You'll need a backup. Always have a backup.

Beth

I'd still rather back up to another drive rather than have 14000 discs - I hate all of the little cases that discs NEVER get put back into - and they all get HEAVY....

If I have on a portable external, couldn't I find some cyberstorage place and back up out there?

[Beth n Rod 1,279]

So long as you have a backup, don't care what it is.

Beth

[Curb Appeal 14]

I'd still rather back up to another drive rather than have 14000 discs - I hate all of the little cases that discs NEVER get put back into - and they all get HEAVY....

If I have on a portable external, couldn't I find some cyberstorage place and back up out there?

I think carbonite.com offers unlimited backups for $50/year. It would take a while for my 4TB to upload though.

The beauty of unRaid is that it is easy and cheap to set up, secure and redundant. You can use an old PC (no monitor needed) and the tiny OS fits and runs from a $10 USB thumbdrive. Of my 6 drives, one is a recovery drive. If any of the drives fail, I can recreate the missing data fromm the recovery drive. This drive holds info to recreate any one of the drives in the array. Granted, if two drives fail at the same time, I would loose data, but the chances of that are nill...

[MMI Enterprises 289]

Celeste, Oh fer sure when talkin such massive collections now being discussed I can see the point. I'd go with that popcorn/raid setup anyday if I had that many. Is there even that many good movies worth having hard copy of really?

Joel, Sounds real nice setup! Before I buy though I have to get me a new home audio receiver and might get me a Dishnet HD receiver and go back that route.

Can ya share yer transcoding or dvr to server setup?

[Curb Appeal 14]

Can ya share yer transcoding or dvr to server setup?

Sorry, I don't do much transcoding these days. I use bittorrent for my TV shows.

That being said, I do know that Handbrake will handle most .TS files from DVRs and encode them into x264/MKV format.

Common sizes the x264/MKV format yeilds are:

DVD-1.5GB

Blu-Ray-4.3GB

TV Show (720p HD)-1.1GB for a 1 hour show

[mattspws 15]

As for the probability of HD failure, I have 6 HDs (about 4TB of space) in my server running unRAID from a usb drive. This allows me to spin down drives that are not being used (greatly extending their lifespan) and if one drive dies, I can re-create the information lost from information stored on the recovery drive.

Curb Appeal has the right idea If you don't want disks laying around. You could also sync to an online back-up service. But uploading 1TB of data is going to take some time depending on your connection speed.

[MMI Enterprises 289]

I like both the hd or dvd methods in terms of both storage and use. If a dvd is made as you go then you wouldn't really have to have backup drives/raid.

You can throw dvd's to yer kids like bones or scraps to play on whatever player they care to use. The browsing/finding titles via electronic methods without leaving easy chair though is great stuff.

Joel, are yer titles all sorted by catagory or various other ways like On Demand cable menus along with title info?