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Thanks for the thorough discussion.
I'm somewhat familiar with Handbrake, although not all of its nooks and crannies. I was hoping that, once I found settings that worked well enough for a sample or two, I'd be able to just re-use those same settings for all my rips, consistently. But if I have to experiment with different settings for various files...it'll probably never get done.
I can't imagine it's safe to say there's a set of one-size-fits-all settings? In theory, it should be safe to consider all my rips were done in a consistent fashion.
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I second trønderen's experience with HandBrake[^]. Getting started is a bit like old school photography: you convert a movie a few times fiddling with filters and bit rates until you get the result you want, just like you used to play with exposure and aperture until the right print came out.
Mircea
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"a few hundred discs" wow that's quite a collection . i believe i would have difficulty identifying a fraction of that number i would consider collecting though i do not collect films rather instead music . i would inquire the titles in your collection but of course these text boxes are not large enough .
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I'm more of a TV series DVD collector than movies. When one season of a show includes 5-7 discs, it quickly adds up.
A coworker of mine is counting his DVD collection by the thousands. Then he's moved onto Blu-ray (and UHD after that...)
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amazing . i am currently enjoying "The Firm" series and am disappointed "Roadkill" w/ Hugh Laurie provided only 4 episodes . i must say i do not understand video collection as i do not receive the same pleasure upon subsequent viewing unlike music .
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BernardIE5317 wrote: i must say i do not understand video collection as i do not receive the same pleasure upon subsequent viewing unlike music .
It's a lot easier to play (and re-play) some music over and over as it's something you can do while doing other things, like mow the lawn or drive to work. Watching a movie or TV series requires more of a commitment (sit down and watch) so I understand where you're coming from.
I'm not saying I constantly rewatch old series repeatedly, but it's nice to have the ability to binge a series without worrying whether it'll actually be there on Netflix to stream when I feel like it. I'm also rather selective - anything I buy is something I've thoroughly enjoyed and would re-watch again, uninterrupted, with no commercial break, etc.
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I would add that when a show can be streamed, you don’t know whether the content has been edited to remove an ‘offensive’ scene or some other reason.
I haven’t digitized my DVDs yet and have less than a hundred titles, but I like to have them on hand.
Time is the differentiation of eternity devised by man to measure the passage of human events.
- Manly P. Hall
Mark
Just another cog in the wheel
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Great point.
Didn't someone point out recently that Trump's cameo in Home Alone was edited out in some broadcast of the movie a few weeks ago?
It's not the fact that he's no longer in the movie I'd object to. It's the principle behind it. In this case, it's beyond petty, and nobody needs that.
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as for me i take my music listening seriously . i insist on rapt attention while listening to Yuja Wang or Chicago . otherwise though you are quite correct . i destroyed the tape player in my car some years ago as i insisted on playing Kronos Quartet "Pieces of Africa" on every trip . as for video i am fascinated by how the characters / authors will solve their problems . once i see how that occurs it is difficult for me to imagine viewing again as i then know what will occur .
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I get that.
For a while, my "repeated go-to" movie was the Lord the Rings trilogy. I think it's one of those rare productions that deserved the awards it got. I must've seen each part a dozen times.
From there, my re-watch count drops precipitously. 
[Edit]
Oh, and Band of Brothers. I must've gone through the series 6 times, and if only I had the time, I could absolutely picture myself watching it again.
modified 5-Jan-24 17:03pm.
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BernardIE5317 wrote: i must say i do not understand video collection as i do not receive the same pleasure upon subsequent viewing unlike music .
I guess that I am at the very other end of the line. If a movie isn't worth watchin twice (or more), it isn't worth my time at all. The concept of 'spoilers' (as something you don't want) makes no sense to me. Have you ever heard a music aficionado rejecting a work of music on the ground that he knows how the final chords of that piece sounds?
Books are the same - except that time hasn't allowed me to read all my books twice or more. With a handful of my books, I haven't read my own copy even once: I have read the copy of a friend or from the library, and decided it to a book I want to have available in my bookshelves so I can re-read it whenever I feel like. I can stand by my bookshelves reading the author and title on the back, recalling its contents from memory and smile, or shiver, or whatever the book as a whole provokes of feelings in me.
So I do with movies. Seeing the title, or cover photo of a BD/DVD box brings back a lot of the emotions I had when I watched the movie for the first time, and if time allows, I may sit down to watch that movie again. Even though I know how it ends. A couple movies I watch regularly, such as "Rare Exports Inc." - we play it every winter solstice, and every year I pick up some nice details of the story (/storytelling) that haven't discovered before. (If you don't know the movie, try to get hold of it for next Yule! A great Yule time horror comedy!)
Even if the 'story' is a mystery story, 'Who did it?', and you know that the butler is the culprit, that is not the point (if it is a good movie), but how the author / storyteller gradually builds up the suspense, up to the big finale. You can read/watch and enjoy it again and again, just like you can watch that painting on the wall again and again.
For those who like to read, my favorite short story to illustrate that gradual building of suspense, read Roald Dahl: Taste[^]. (He wrote a lot of stories with surprise endings like this one, "Taste" is the best of those!)
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Quote: I can stand by my bookshelves reading the author and title on the back, recalling its contents from memory and smile, or shiver, or whatever the book as a whole provokes of feelings in me.
I like.
Sometimes I read too fast and mis details, so a second read is wanted.
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apparently you have an appreciation / understanding of film i do not . though a few films i have re-watched to wit "2001 : A Space Odyssey" "Paths of Glory" "Lonely Are the Brave" "Blade Runner" "Dr. Strangelove" . perhaps a few others . it seems to be a matter of the "feelings" generated / experienced .
as for books i can re-read a book if i am fascinated by it . however even this is very limited to wit i have read "The Princess Bride" many times in particular the making of the six fingered sword a portion of the story which i consider to be the reason the English language was invented so that it can be told and of course the duel atop the Cliffs of Insanity also "Forever War" and finally "The Right Stuff" w/ exception of course my mathematics / physics text books which require multiple reads for proper comprehension so that i can learn how it turns out in the end .
thank you kindly for the suggestions . i will of course examine further .
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Another +1 for Handbrake.
If you are converting mainly DVDs (480 lines) rather than BluRay discs you will get very good quality and lightning-fast, low-cpu, conversions if you have a graphics card with h264/h265 NVENC capability. If doing heavier-lifting encodes, it would appear that pure CPU gives better quality (last time I looked at the subject).
I currently use a GTX 960 which is quite economical to purchase second-hand.
Here is a side by side of a frame from a 480p VOB file (left, 20.7 MB) recoded to h265 (right, 5.5 MB) at a blistering 670 frames per second. No banding or noise in the blacks.
http://www.clumpton.com/uknwebimg/clipboard_2024-01-04_09-14-41.png[^]
So old that I did my first coding in octal via switches on a DEC PDP 8
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I'll have a VM doing the encoding job, and I'm hoping I can just queue up a bunch of them using common settings. I can't say I really care much about encoding time; I care more about the output (I realize I'll lose the benefit of any sort of hardware acceleration by doing it in a VM).
Have you found a generic setting that works "well enough" for most MPEG-4 480p input?
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If you're encoding to h265 a video bitrate of about a 1000 kb/s should be quite sufficient.
Profile: Main@L3.1@Main. YUV 4:2 . 8 bit depth.
AC3 should do for your sound needs, though using the original mp2 for simple 2-channel audio tracks could save some time at the expense of slightly larger file size.
It should be possible (with VMWare) to assign a graphics card in pass-through mode to a VM (or even a GPU on a multiple GPU card). If you already have on-board graphics you could simply add an NVidia card for encoding via VM.
Hope this helps
So old that I did my first coding in octal via switches on a DEC PDP 8
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Clumpco wrote: If you're encoding to h265 a video bitrate of about a 1000 kb/s should be quite sufficient.
Profile: Main@L3.1@Main. YUV 4:2 . 8 bit depth.
That's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for, thanks
Clumpco wrote: AC3 should do for your sound needs, though using the original mp2 for simple 2-channel audio tracks could save some time at the expense of slightly larger file size.
Encoding time is a non-issue, my VM host is already running 24/7, if I can batch a bunch of videos and just let do its thing even for a month, I'll be happy.
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HandBrake.fr been my goto and simplest/easiest by far IMHO multi platform and CLI/batch also 
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Some notes about general conversion:
Choose a quality setting/target average bitrate appropriate for the source format.
Make sure that decombing is on (prevents the horizontal comb-like jagged edges)
Sound data can be passed through unaffected by the video conversion (which could prevent sync problems).
Specifically about Handbrake, it does everything I want and it's been my go to for years. It's sometimes hard how to find how to do something just by looking at the options available in the app (sound passthru being an example) but it is so widely used that you'll find help in the forums.
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Phil Hodgkins wrote: Make sure that decombing is on (prevents the horizontal comb-like jagged edges)
Thanks Phil. Those nuggets of knowledge is exactly why I posted. I think I know exactly what you're talking about; problem is, I never would've guessed the "decombing" setting is what I would need to look at.
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It's always nice to be appreciated 
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I'm currently doing this with a bunch of .iso files. The following seems to be a basicly competent application from what I can tell (it's what I've been using). I haven't watched a movie through yet, so I can't promise no audio sync drift, but what is nice about it is that you can select a zillion .iso files and leave it to go, rather than doing it one by one. And it seems to make good choices regarding aspect ratio etc. I've been using its MP4 option. Known downsides: help seems to be incomplete, no command line interface, uses original .iso disc names even if file has previously been renamed. Haven't tried to rip with a folder based source, I'm afraid.
<a href="https://www.easefab.com/video-converter-ultimate/">EaseFab Video Converter Ultimate: All-in-one Video, DVD and Blu-ray Solution for Windows (Windows 11/10 included) | OFFICIAL</a>[<a href="https://www.easefab.com/video-converter-ultimate/" target="_blank" title="New Window">^</a>]
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Thanks for that. Responses so far have all been leaning heavily towards Handbrake, but it's good to keep another option in my back pocket.
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The part about your experience with an out of synch thing happening. . .that would seem to be due to the player IMO. I say this because you say that skipping around doesn't exhibit the delay, which says to me that the files must have the correct information (timing info for audio and video) because how could it not?
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Kent K wrote: because how could it not?
That's a mystery to me - I don't understand it. I tend to stick with VLC as my player of choice, but I believe I got the same results with other players. Hard to tell, as - like I said - it tends to drift over time, so it's not like I sat through the same 2-hour movie multiple times just to see what works/doesn't work.
The longer the content, the more obvious the drift effect. So it wasn't enough to just let a 10-minute clip play out with different players.
And thanks for getting back to me on this topic. I got a lot of responses about the conversion itself, but nobody mentioned anything about the audio/video drift, which was my main concern.
I've yet to start the process.
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