The Invisible, Omnipresent Digital Backpack
July 16, 2012 10:53 PM Subscribe
I want to digitize everything, and I mean everything: DVDs, CDs, books, food… okay, not food, just the media. What should I keep in mind? How can I make this easy?
(I've looked at some previous questions, and this one is the closest I found.)
My main concern is having my media be reliably accessible without (much of) a hassle.
CDs I have a process for, since a good amount of the sort of thing I like is only available in that form, and I only listen to the stuff digitally. It can be a bit of an involved process, though, since I often have to get the metadata manually. Then I rip the CDs to FLAC for archival purposes.
DVDs I have no process for. Some of what I have isn't really necessary to keep on hand, what with Netflix streaming and all. Other things aren't available on Netflix (or aren't always available — ugh, don't get me started). And I'm a bit of a fan of extra features, which are entirely exclusive to the physical media (or so I believe). I've ripped a few DVDs using Handbrake, but it's also an involved process and I end up just grabbing the main feature. I'm sure I could rip something with alternate audio tracks, just like the subtitle tracks, but I'm not that familiar with the process. And I don't also want to go through the hassle of ripping the featurettes separately. I might not mind just making disk images of the DVDs and figuring out what to do about video files later.
Books are more of a problem. I have a Kindle Touch, and I've already downloaded a few books I own and love to re-read, but I can't easily get them all. Some are free, some are strangely expensive, some have not-so-good formatting, some have a confusing number of editions, some are not available. And books can't be ripped (uh, in the same sense as the optical media).
I have a home server and a setup involving multiple external drives and rsync, but I'm already kind of tired of dealing with it and getting more so. It would be great to have all of my media "in the cloud", accessible anywhere and anytime. That seems kind of like a pipe dream, though, considering my travels can take me to places where I can hardly check my e-mail. But everywhere I go I have my laptop (MBP) and phone (Galaxy Nexus) with me, and now my Kindle as well.
I'd also like to offload/outsource/whatever the digitizing effort to someone else if possible. Are there good services for this out there? Is there someone with reasonable rates I can trust?
(I've looked at some previous questions, and this one is the closest I found.)
My main concern is having my media be reliably accessible without (much of) a hassle.
CDs I have a process for, since a good amount of the sort of thing I like is only available in that form, and I only listen to the stuff digitally. It can be a bit of an involved process, though, since I often have to get the metadata manually. Then I rip the CDs to FLAC for archival purposes.
DVDs I have no process for. Some of what I have isn't really necessary to keep on hand, what with Netflix streaming and all. Other things aren't available on Netflix (or aren't always available — ugh, don't get me started). And I'm a bit of a fan of extra features, which are entirely exclusive to the physical media (or so I believe). I've ripped a few DVDs using Handbrake, but it's also an involved process and I end up just grabbing the main feature. I'm sure I could rip something with alternate audio tracks, just like the subtitle tracks, but I'm not that familiar with the process. And I don't also want to go through the hassle of ripping the featurettes separately. I might not mind just making disk images of the DVDs and figuring out what to do about video files later.
Books are more of a problem. I have a Kindle Touch, and I've already downloaded a few books I own and love to re-read, but I can't easily get them all. Some are free, some are strangely expensive, some have not-so-good formatting, some have a confusing number of editions, some are not available. And books can't be ripped (uh, in the same sense as the optical media).
I have a home server and a setup involving multiple external drives and rsync, but I'm already kind of tired of dealing with it and getting more so. It would be great to have all of my media "in the cloud", accessible anywhere and anytime. That seems kind of like a pipe dream, though, considering my travels can take me to places where I can hardly check my e-mail. But everywhere I go I have my laptop (MBP) and phone (Galaxy Nexus) with me, and now my Kindle as well.
I'd also like to offload/outsource/whatever the digitizing effort to someone else if possible. Are there good services for this out there? Is there someone with reasonable rates I can trust?
Most smartphones have applications available which help them to act as scanners. For example Turboscan for iPhones. These let you combine multiple images into a scan for higher fidelity, crop, tag and then store or mail as PDF (for example). This process is often faster than dragging whatever you want to capture to a scanner. It is also good for providing a digitization of things like pictures, maps and other awkwardly positioned stuff.
I would consider spending some money on a cloud based backup solution that gives you unlimited storage space. After tracking other askme threads I chose Backblaze to do this for me - have been happy with it.
posted by rongorongo at 1:32 AM on July 17, 2012
I would consider spending some money on a cloud based backup solution that gives you unlimited storage space. After tracking other askme threads I chose Backblaze to do this for me - have been happy with it.
posted by rongorongo at 1:32 AM on July 17, 2012
If you want to have all your media available, and you have a decently reliable home connection, I'd suggest you check out Plex. It's a very nice branch of XBMC; the media server component runs on all three major operating systems, and with the MyPlex component you have easy media portability.
For DVDs, if you want to keep all the extras and menus and such, ripping to ISO is definitely your best bet.
posted by jammer at 7:11 AM on July 17, 2012
For DVDs, if you want to keep all the extras and menus and such, ripping to ISO is definitely your best bet.
posted by jammer at 7:11 AM on July 17, 2012
Best answer: RipIt for the Mac makes automating DVD ripping very easy. If you go into System Preferences and tell your Mac to launch RipIt when you insert a DVD, you can then set RipIt to rip the disc and eject it when it's done. This can be hacked together with free utilities but I like RipIt's simplicity. It'll also convert the files into iTunes-playable formats, but you might want to fiddle with the options more than it lets you.
posted by davextreme at 7:11 AM on July 17, 2012
posted by davextreme at 7:11 AM on July 17, 2012
Before I moved across the country 2 years ago, I went totally digital so as to unburden myself of all my DVDs and CDs. I couldn't see the sense in moving 200 DVDs when I could put them all on a drive that fit in my hand and weighed almost nothing compared to the weight of the discs.
Anyway, to the nitty gritty.
For streamlining the process of ripping all your CDs and DVDs, you could get on some nice torrent trackers and download all of the media you already own in digital format. (Of course, I'm only suggesting you downloading things you've already bought and were going to rip.) When you can click a couple of times to get the whole Buffy series instead of manually setting up and ripping 50 DVDs, you'll see the time savings immediately.
I want to echo spitbull in using something like XBMC, because this program will scrape metadata for you from thetvdb and themoviedb, so you don't have to spend any time entering metadata by hand. If you read up on what the filename formats that XBMC looks for when scraping metadata, you'll find that if you've been naming things consistently so far (like the tenth episode of season 3 of "Buffy" lives in the "Buffy" folder and is named 03x10.avi), you won't have to do anything.
XBMC also allows for off-site access, although I haven't been able to perfect that yet since I'm behind some weird firewalls I can't control, so I can't speak to the "cloud" nature of the XBMC program (i.e., being able to access stuff from anywhere). Ideally, you'd have some large tower sitting in your closet and a small, low-noise front end sitting in your living room connected to your television. You can access stuff on your phone and watch as long as you are on a network that can "see" your tower from the outside.
What you should do when you are done with this is put all the DVDs, CDs, and books into some boxes, and then bring them to your local library. You could sell them if you want, but that might be more hassle than it's worth, plus you'll be doing a good thing by donating them to a place you know would get some use out of them.
Also, I'm getting rambly so I will stop. Good luck.
posted by King Bee at 1:43 PM on July 17, 2012
Anyway, to the nitty gritty.
For streamlining the process of ripping all your CDs and DVDs, you could get on some nice torrent trackers and download all of the media you already own in digital format. (Of course, I'm only suggesting you downloading things you've already bought and were going to rip.) When you can click a couple of times to get the whole Buffy series instead of manually setting up and ripping 50 DVDs, you'll see the time savings immediately.
I want to echo spitbull in using something like XBMC, because this program will scrape metadata for you from thetvdb and themoviedb, so you don't have to spend any time entering metadata by hand. If you read up on what the filename formats that XBMC looks for when scraping metadata, you'll find that if you've been naming things consistently so far (like the tenth episode of season 3 of "Buffy" lives in the "Buffy" folder and is named 03x10.avi), you won't have to do anything.
XBMC also allows for off-site access, although I haven't been able to perfect that yet since I'm behind some weird firewalls I can't control, so I can't speak to the "cloud" nature of the XBMC program (i.e., being able to access stuff from anywhere). Ideally, you'd have some large tower sitting in your closet and a small, low-noise front end sitting in your living room connected to your television. You can access stuff on your phone and watch as long as you are on a network that can "see" your tower from the outside.
What you should do when you are done with this is put all the DVDs, CDs, and books into some boxes, and then bring them to your local library. You could sell them if you want, but that might be more hassle than it's worth, plus you'll be doing a good thing by donating them to a place you know would get some use out of them.
Also, I'm getting rambly so I will stop. Good luck.
posted by King Bee at 1:43 PM on July 17, 2012
Response by poster: Thanks for the responses so far, folks. I've recently played with Calibre (which rocks), and DIY Book Scanner looks amazing!
A couple points I'd like to respond to and/or clear up:
I mentioned I have a home server. I know a bit about what I'm doing, but I'd prefer not to deal with it anymore. This is partly because right now my ISP does some annoying firewall crap I've had to resort to SSH tunnel tricks to get around, and I don't have a choice (that I know of) of a different provider. I'm also going to be moving soon-ish and hence will have my home server at least temporarily off-line. And really, I'd rather not be a sysadmin even on a slice. Imagine I'm really, really, really lazy. If there's a reliable, accessible, reasonably-priced cloud service, I'd love to use it. Hell, I should be doing something like this for offsite backups, at least. I've been too lazy to look into it, but this is not the first time I've heard good things about Backblaze. I can also price out S3.
I'm totally with you on the torrent idea. Much of my trouble is that I'm buying CDs because they're not easily available in any digital format, legit or no. They're not as much of a problem, though. They come in seldom enough that my process handles them okay. I just have a bit of a backlog right now because of that big purchase I took a picture of. And I also have a stack of things I should get to and haven't (like Israeli ska and 90s rock, oh yeah). I'm not terribly worried about this, but I wouldn't mind someone else doing it for me. I'm also not terribly worried about most metadata, trusting on-line sources where available and maybe shrugging and moving on where not.
Thanks for verifying that ISOs are probably the best bet for my DVD extra feature wants. I'ma check out RipIt and see if that works for me. And maybe convince someone else to do the work. And I know that remote hosting/streaming of video is nasty. I'm all for transferring and storing some stuff I'm more likely to want on my travels.
Keep 'em coming, please. You people are the best.
posted by cardioid at 10:47 PM on July 17, 2012
A couple points I'd like to respond to and/or clear up:
I mentioned I have a home server. I know a bit about what I'm doing, but I'd prefer not to deal with it anymore. This is partly because right now my ISP does some annoying firewall crap I've had to resort to SSH tunnel tricks to get around, and I don't have a choice (that I know of) of a different provider. I'm also going to be moving soon-ish and hence will have my home server at least temporarily off-line. And really, I'd rather not be a sysadmin even on a slice. Imagine I'm really, really, really lazy. If there's a reliable, accessible, reasonably-priced cloud service, I'd love to use it. Hell, I should be doing something like this for offsite backups, at least. I've been too lazy to look into it, but this is not the first time I've heard good things about Backblaze. I can also price out S3.
I'm totally with you on the torrent idea. Much of my trouble is that I'm buying CDs because they're not easily available in any digital format, legit or no. They're not as much of a problem, though. They come in seldom enough that my process handles them okay. I just have a bit of a backlog right now because of that big purchase I took a picture of. And I also have a stack of things I should get to and haven't (like Israeli ska and 90s rock, oh yeah). I'm not terribly worried about this, but I wouldn't mind someone else doing it for me. I'm also not terribly worried about most metadata, trusting on-line sources where available and maybe shrugging and moving on where not.
Thanks for verifying that ISOs are probably the best bet for my DVD extra feature wants. I'ma check out RipIt and see if that works for me. And maybe convince someone else to do the work. And I know that remote hosting/streaming of video is nasty. I'm all for transferring and storing some stuff I'm more likely to want on my travels.
Keep 'em coming, please. You people are the best.
posted by cardioid at 10:47 PM on July 17, 2012
Response by poster: sebastienbailard (or others), how much should I worry about Amazon messing with what's on my Kindle if it comes from a torrent or other non-Amazon source? Especially if it's something that doesn't even legitimately exist in e-book form? Does it matter if I e-mail it to my Kindle, or should I transfer it directly over USB?
posted by cardioid at 10:18 PM on July 19, 2012
posted by cardioid at 10:18 PM on July 19, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
This is a first-principles analysis, I have no personal experience with itunes, Amazon Cloud Player, etc.
That said, let me google this for you.
Here's a fellow who just went through that stuff:
http://www.consideritfixed.com/2011/10/creating-my-private-cloud.html
Restricting the google search on "cd ripping service" to the last 12 months, I found a
WSJ article comparing 5 cd ripping services.
I'm not sure dvd ship-and-rip services exist. Hollywood spent a lot of money influencing politicians on the subject of transferring your dvds to hard disks and circumventing the copy protection on them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention
I have a home server and a setup involving multiple external drives and rsync, but I'm already kind of tired of dealing with it and getting more so. It would be great to have all of my media "in the cloud", accessible anywhere and anytime.
Regarding the multiple drives; you may want to switch to a tower case and maybe RAID?
You know you can access your home server from remote locations? The IP address you'd point your browser, file manager, vlc, ebook reader, etc. at changes once in a while, so you'd want dynamic dns:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_dns#DDNS_for_ISP_users
You can even have a domain name associated with your home server this way.
Remotely hosting video can be kind of bandwidth intensive. Consider storing a few isos (or down-shifted formats) on your laptop when you travel.
That said, try googling remote dyndns htpc or "media server dyndns", to see some of the issues and solutions.
Books are more of a problem.
For organizing ebooks, there's calibre:
http://calibre-ebook.com/
And books can't be ripped (uh, in the same sense as the optical media).
http://www.diybookscanner.org/
also, if you have a book in dead tree, it's probably ethical to get a torrent of it ...
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A quite dear geeky friend of mine is uncomfortable traveling with ripped or pirated media on his hard disks and devices. Immigration and border control folk can take your machine into the other room, scan the hard disk, and then nail you to the wall. A bit of cursory googling just now did not give any examples of people who had been abused this way, but it is a concern if you have ripped or pirated media on your devices and a government is looking for an excuse; i.e. dissidents, reporters, etc.
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:21 AM on July 17, 2012 [1 favorite]