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Video Streaming | How to rip and stream your personal DVD collection—the legal way

GregTinker| January 11, 2011 - last edited January 13, 2011
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Welcome back, both Chris and I trust you had a wonderful holiday break and New Year’s celebration.

 

This week’s topic is aimed at addressing a common problem that movie buffs encounter. Whether you have Disney movies for yourself, or your children, or other titles, I’m sure we all could agree that a streamline method to play your titles on your media device(s) would be welcomed.  Point in case, over the holiday break I spent a great deal of time working on a method to stream my personal DVD collection to all my end devices (PS3, Iphone, IPAD, DirecTV HR20).

 

Before I begin, it is extremely important that the methods and software I mention herein are intended to help individuals who own the DVD (HD or SD) in which they work with. With that understanding please adhere to the local and Federal laws that are included with your DVD Titles.

 

In continuation, my wife and I are—what you would call—movie buffs.  We rarely watch regular TV, and when we do it’s almost always from our DVR—a Wonderful invention! 

Today, we own more than 150 Movies—over 30 Disney Titles just for our children.  As I am sure most would agree with, unfortunately owning movies is far easier than watching them. Whenever my daughter request to watch Cinderella, or other Disney movie, we have to go on the hunt for the DVD. In some cases once we find the DVD, we are unable to play the DVD due to a scratch or some sticky residue. In order to resolve this ongoing problem, I decided to RIP all of our DVDs. This decision brought far more questions than answers upon my initial attempt.

 

Ripping a DVD:

The first course of action when deciding to RIP your DVDs is to determine the encoding methodology. H.264, MPEG-4, MPEG2—bit rate for each—and many other codecs exist; so, which is the best option to use?  In my case, I wanted to RIP the DVD and keep the original format intact. 

 

Why not encode to a specific format?  The reason is rather simple; I did not want multiple copies of the same DVD tile on my hard drive.  Rather than having multiple formats for different devices I would rather allow my computer to encode the video in any required format on the fly.  In order to achieve this, I needed the manufactures original format copied from the DVD to my local HDD. As I’m sure most of you already know, this is not a simple copy and paste as all dvds are encrypted with varying encoding keys.   Luckily, there are many software manufacturers that produce DVD Ripping tools. 

 

Note: ripping is the method in which a video image (or music) is copied from its original source(DVD/CD) to a file for easy manipulation.

 

Though many ripping tools exist, some free (handbrake, dvdshrink, MacTheRipper, etc.) and some not (iSkysoft Video Converter Ultimate, Magic DVD Ripper, etc.), my personal favorite is Magic Dvd Ripper. I wanted an out of the box solution that would RIP my DVD with absolutely NO encoding, allowing the original format to stay intact and Magic DVD Ripper http://www.magicdvdripper.com/, provided this functionality.

 

Streaming Video’s:

What solution will STREAM ANY video file (including web video) to my end device(s)?  Far too many applications exist for me to list them all, but the most well-known video streaming applications are Windows Media Player, VideoLan, Tversity, Twonky, Playon, etc… In my personal opinion TVersity is one of the best video streaming applications on the market (lite version free, pro has a small onetime fee that’s worth it.)  

 

Though TVersity supports apple devices (Iphone, IPAD etc..) I was not able to get my Iphone to work out of the box due to a missing codec.  I spoke to the development team at TVersity and they informed me that this would be simplified in future releases.

 

To that end, my final solution was twofold; TVersity for in-home devices (such as PS3) and Air Video for Apple devices.  Though both products read from the same source, each product has a unique purpose.  TVersity streams my videos to my in-home devices (PS3, etc…) as well as internet HD video blogs (such as http://revision3.com/tekzilla/). With respect to my apple devices (iphone, Ipad, etc), Air video http://www.inmethod.com/air-video/index.html  is able to convert the video in real-time from its source MPEG-2 High RES DVD’s to a fraction of the size for my Apple devices (IPAD, Iphone, etc) so that I may stream my videos outside my home firewall without consuming large amounts of bandwidth.   

 

Though TVersity can down convert in real-time, I do not use this functionality on my local devices and due to the missing codec for apple devices.  With respect to Air Video, it is compatible with apple devices only (at this time).

 

Observations:

Lots of storage is required.

  • Regular DVD (Standard Def) will be ~720 X 480 MPEG-2 and consume about Approximately 5.5 GB for 2 hours.

Processing Power

  • Minimum Dual core recommended for real-time conversion (no matter streaming server software)

Memory recommendations

  • Minimum 4 GB with Windows 7, or Mac OSX 10.6 or >

 

ISP speed for remote video viewing

  • Recommend ~ 5Mbit or greater upload speed

 

I use a model similar to HP Pavilion Elite HPE-590t series found at  http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_store&category=...

 

Though 100’s of computer models exist that will achieve GREAT results for the above objective, if you currently own an HP computer and encounter performance limitations I suggest you contact your local HP technical support services center (or go to hp.com) and investigating upgrading your hardware (you may be able to change just the CPU, or add some memory to reduce upgrade cost)

 

As of today, TVersity allows me to watch my movie collection at home in Perfect clear vivid detail, and air video allows my daughter to watch her Disney movies on our IPAD/Iphone anywhere (as long as the IPAD has 3G access)…  I am sure other software exist for none apple devices but I have not taken the time to research these solutions as of this time.  If anyone has any pertinent info that they would like to share on this topic, please post a reply.

 

Happy video streaming!!!

Tags: Air Video| TVersity| Video Streaming
Labels: Air Video| TVersity| Video Streaming
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Comments
S Turner(anon) | ‎01-14-2011 03:37 PM
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I use DVDfab for the last few years, I felt bad so this year I purchased a subscription, I figured why not,!! I working on setting up TVersity on my WHS Media Server, becaue I save all my rips to VOB but then convert them for the XBOX360, I figure TVersity will reduce one step in the process..

 

Steve

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GregTinker | ‎01-15-2011 05:00 AM
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Steve,

 

Thanks for the info on DVDfab.  I have used it in the past, but its been a long time. 

 

I believe you will enjoy TVersity, let me know how it goes.

 

GT

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Brian S(anon) | ‎02-18-2011 05:15 PM
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Greg & Chris,

 

Thanks for the tips.  I was successful in downloading/installing/configuring the Air Video server software on my OSX system and connecting to it from my IOS device (iPad).   

 

I had to hunt for some instructions on how to configure Air Video Server, but after I found the requisite information in the LOG file, I was able to get everything up and running.    What a great way to have access to your library, without taking up precious space on your device.

 

For $2.99, you can't go wrong with this solution.   (Too bad the other product TVersity is only for Windows).

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GregTinker | ‎02-18-2011 05:39 PM
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Brian,

 

Thanks for the feedback... Glad to see it worked so well for you on OSX system as well.

 

Happy streaming!!!

 

Greg

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Tania(anon) | ‎03-02-2011 10:44 AM
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Hi Gtinker,

 

Thanks for chosing a different topic like Video Streaming. HD Video Streaming is the latest and hottest topic as of now. Very happy to learn something in video streaming. Very good article."How to rip and stream your personal DVD"  Zthe explanation you gave is very clear. Good and keep it up. Thanks for sharing this info with us. I would like to share something that is, Live Video Streaming/ Live Webcasting can be completely done through

 

http://instantvideobroadcast.com/

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GregTinker | ‎03-30-2011 02:00 PM
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Tania,

 

Thanks for the feedback and link... 

Greg Tinker

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Darnell King(anon) | ‎08-27-2012 05:08 PM
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I have been using Nero to copy and move all of the DVD's that I have accumulated onto a drive just like you!  I think out of all the ripping softwares that I have used, Nero is the most comprehensive and easiest to use.  If you want to give is a try, try searching Descargar Nero,and  it should take you to a page where you can download it!  Seriously, give it a try!

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  • More than 30 years in Sales and Marketing in IT services business. Currently managing global campaigns for Datacenter Care.
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  • I am an identical twin. My brother’s name is Chris Tinker and we have been extremely fortunate working similar careers within HP, known to our HP colleagues and many of our customers as "The Tinkers". Our job is to be the technical lead on major business operational outages with millions of Dollars/Euros hanging in the balance. We both have a complete background in architectural, Infrastructure and application environments from both the proactive and reactive side of HP Enterprise Service (HP ES), and HP Enterprise Business (HP EB). We have always attended the same schools, studied the same material (big surprise, as we are identical twins), and have always worked as a close team and strive to demonstrate our teaming ability’s to others. We each have more than 11 years experience supporting mission-critical enterprise customers on a broad range of technologies. We’ve both won the HP MVP award multiple times as well as coauthored books, programs, and whitepapers in our spare time.
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