Originally Posted by
Saracen999
Yup. I have, dunno, just a few hundred CDs, maybe three. Plus another couple of hundred LPs. And some tapes, which is a sore point because I HAD the LPs/CDs and converted to tape for the car. Then, in a few cases (some CDs too) lent them to a 'friend' (except LPs) and never saw them again. Or him, for that matter. He moved. Life lesson learned there.
Anyway, for LPs/tapes I either digitised through a capture box, or for the 'lent' ones with no capture, well, I might have streamed them. ;)
But the real pain is DVDs. Those I have, again dunno, but north of 2000. And it's SLOW going, working through that.
I was going through MakeMKV to get, well, MKV files, then Handbrake to MP4 them, while carefully following Series/Episode naming conventions. By judicious use of copy/past/edit on on filenames, I can simplify the process a bit, but it's still long and slow. The payback is that, if I do it carefully and right, Emby successfully interrogates the IMDB / TVDB resources and populates all the images, cast details, etc. It also nearly always means that Emby picks up the correct (relevant) database IDs automatically, but occasionally and with 'Specials' I've had to get and enter the ID manually. Then, Emby populates the background stuff.
I was looking for a better (if paid) piece of software to simplify this process, and don't mind buying it provided it works, is slick to use and critically, gives decent quality. Oh, and supports hardware encoding with the 3080. And, the 'price' isn't extortionate. I did find one briefly appealing package 'til I noticed the full version price (probably overkill for me anyway) was some £800. When I got out of hospital, having recovered from the combined stroke and heart attack that caused (just kidding), I decided to stick with MakeMKV and Handbrake, until a better solution crops up.
Ripping the whole DVD in one go is interesting and I'll try it, but it feels counter-intuitive given that I want individual files per episode, for the emby lookup to work correctly.
Without trying it, I suspect it depends exactly how you want to treat your digitised media collection.
If, as you do, the point of the exercise is a digitised version of the whole disc, to save storing physical discs on display then finding/loading it, then sure, that works great.
If, as i do, I'm after a .... if you like, personal and local Netflix-type result, picking programs, episodes with all the info, tracking of media played, and the bells and whistles, then having ripped the disc, I'd still have to use something to break it down file by file, to label/store. The process of ripping into files directy seems to cut out one step and runs pretty much at the DVD drive's full speed anyway. To what extent this process is hardware-dependent on time taken I'm not sure, beyond saying this current machine (laptop) is FAR faster than doing the same thing with my older MS Surface Pro (gen 4, IIRC). But then, this one is a 5900X with RTX-3080, so it should be quicker. It still takes an appreciable length of time per disc though, and the somewhat disheartening thing, is the comparative sizes of the 'done' and 'to-do' piles of discs. Good job I'm retired, and relatiely time rich, especially this time of year. And the heat from the 3080 in Handbrake saves on using the central heating too, so that's a plus! :D