To rip first or not

[Nuservi]

This is a general question about the best way to encode DVDs at high quality.

My current method is to read directly from the DVD and encode using the Super HQ 720 option. For certain DVDs that don't encode completely, I rip them to a file using Mac the Ripper, and then encode from the ripped file.

My question is, does ripping first to a file, rather than encoding directly from the DVD, improve the quality or speed of encoding?

Thanks!

[rollin_eng]

Quality, No. Speed, maybe but it depends on your settings.

Best practice is to rip first then encode.

Try ripping with makemkv as that is considered the ‘gold’ standard.

[BradleyS]

DVDs are 480p (NTSC; America, etc.) or 576p (PAL; Europe, etc.). You may want to use the Super HQ 480p30 (or Super HQ 576p25 for Europe) preset. Minor differences to the 720p presets, notably a slight bump in quality. Not enough that I would redo any existing encodes, just for future reference.

[Nuservi]

DVDs are 480p (NTSC; America, etc.) or 576p (PAL; Europe, etc.). You may want to use the Super HQ 480p30 (or Super HQ 576p25 for Europe) preset. Minor differences to the 720p presets, notably a slight bump in quality. Not enough that I would redo any existing encodes, just for future reference.

Are you saying the 720p has a slight bump in quality when compared to the 480p, or vice-versa? This is all NTSC stuff, so 480p throughout.

Thanks for the responses!

[BradleyS]

Vice-versa. As resolution goes up, not quite as much quality is needed perceptually. So Super HQ 720p30 Surround uses RF 17 which is very slightly lower quality (single digit percent bit rate) than Super HQ 480p30 Surround at RF 16. It's not a huge issue, there are no other changes between those two presets other than the resolution limit.

[Ronin]

There is no visible difference in quality if you rip first or rip afterwards, There is no need to use MakeMKV, which does work well but does not result in any difference in image quality. MakeMKV requires you to re-dwonload it every month because its in Beta, which is an unnecessary step if you use some other ripper. You could pay for a license for MakeMKV to get rid of this nuisance but I find MakeMKV to still be slightly buggy and incomplete so I would not pay the excessively high price they ask for it.

Make sure that you update to the very latest version of the libraries (that enable Handbrake to Rip) they seem to be even more reliable and dependable

Do use the 480 preset in Handbrake since DVDs are all 480 resolution, this will result in a very small but noticeable improvement in image quality.

[Woodstock]

The advantage of a separate ripper is that programs intended for ripping make changes as new copy protection mechanisms come out, and handbrake can use the resources that would be needed for that rat race to improve the supported functionality of the program, i.e., the encoding of video.

As for "is it faster?", that depends on how you're running it. If you rip one disk per day, there isn't a lot of difference if you have handbrake plus the third party DVD access library to rip, or using a ripper then feeding the MKV files to handbrake. If you are ripping more than one disk at a time, though, the time YOU spend with the computer changing disks will be reduced, because rippers are much faster at getting the data off the disk.

Ronin, if you're unwilling to pay for buggy software, you must be running Linux.

The fact that all ripping software requires periodic updates for new protection schemes would explain why you "have" to download a new version periodically.

[Nuservi]

To follow up, I bought a copy of Mac the Ripper. I'm converting my whole collection, so I've been ripping a bunch of discs at once, then queuing them up with Handbrake. It's been working well!

Thanks again for all the advice and explanations.

[BradleyS]

Hopefully you mean Mac DVDRipper Pro... I haven't heard of anyone using Mac The Ripper in ages.

[Nuservi]

Right, that's the one. Sorry!