Movies on a USB?

May 3, 2022 5:13 AM

Hello; I have several DVD movies I have bought and I would like to put them on a USB stick so I can watch them later on a TV. When I searched for a answer,I read that it can't be done ,if the movies are store bought because they are protected. Do u know of a program that would do this? Using Win.11. Planning on staying in a RV,and don't want to carry a bunch of DVD"s with me. Suggestions? Thank you :-)
posted by LOOKING to Technology (15 answers total)

It sounds like you need to visit https://handbrake.fr as a first step. It's the best transcoder going. You can greatly decrease file sizes with more modern H.264 encoding. Most DVDs will submit to this, but not all. After that, you'll have a juicy unprotected .mp4 you can bring to your TV's USB port.
posted by sydnius at 5:19 AM on May 3, 2022 [9 favorites]

You can use software such as Handbrake to rip the DVDs and convert the movie files to a format such as MP4, that can be stored on a USB drive. But then you need a device such as a DVD player or a smart TV that has a slot for that USB stick, and the codeks needed to play the files.
posted by Zumbador at 5:21 AM on May 3, 2022 [2 favorites]

I used to rip all the DVDs I bought until I found out that downloading pre-ripped copies of the same titles via BitTorrent was faster and easier and also got me rips without the typical interlacing artifacts that come from DVD sources.

Handbrake was generally my weapon of choice for ripping DVDs. For BitTorrent, it's Transmission.

If you're with an ISP that will send you grumpy messages about its terms of service every time an MPAA snitchbot meets your home IP address in a BitTorrent swarm, such as "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk's Starlink, the easiest way to keep the peace is to rent an external seedbox to do the actual BitTorrenting and pull your content from that via HTTPS.

I currently use the cheapest available tier of seedbox from UltraSeedBox (Lancer-V2), with Transmission installed on that and the Transmitter extension in my browser. Fast as all get-out (way faster than ripping a DVD, for most things) and excellent value for money.
posted by flabdablet at 5:48 AM on May 3, 2022 [12 favorites]

I use DVD Shrink first, and then Handbrake. Handbrake is really slow. DVD shrink turns it into the base video files which you can watch through VLC on your computer. Handbrake turns it into a MP4 file. BTW: Not all TVs support watching mp4 videos on USB, but if you have a new enough TV it should.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:21 AM on May 3, 2022

Best answer: As Zumbador says, the TV will need to have a USB port and the ability to play whatever file format you're using. If you don't know for sure that will be the case, there are other options.

- Do you have a laptop? Does it have some kind of modern video-out port? If so, you can leave the video files on the laptop and get a cable that connects whatever your video-out port is to the TV's HDMI port. I think all modern TVs have HDMI input, and there are cables that convert from USB-C or DisplayPort to HDMI.
- Another option is to get some kind of Chromecast dongle (which plugs into the TV's HDMI port) and wirelessly transmit the videos from your laptop to that. You could also load the videos onto a smartphone or tablet and transmit them from there.
posted by adamrice at 7:42 AM on May 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

Downloading torrents will give you terrible quality, they are in most cases downconverted. MakeMKV is free and will preserve the quality.
posted by Ferrari328 at 7:57 AM on May 3, 2022

Best answer: The advice above about video files is excellent - and it's what you asked - but if the problem is just that you don't want to carry a ton of DVDs in their boxes, you could always keep them in a DVD storage book/binder.
posted by tomboko at 9:32 AM on May 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: you could always keep them in a DVD storage book/binder

Not if you ever want to sell them in the future. Those books/binders (all of them) will add micro scratches to the surface which stores will then use as a reason to decline.

Trust me, I worked in used CD / Video stores for almost 20 years. Those binders are crap, regardless of what sort of microfibre backing you're sliding the disc into.
posted by dobbs at 10:34 AM on May 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

I've used Handbrake and MakeMKV successfully. Note that MakeMKV is not fully free; it requires a purchase to rip BluRay disks.

To use Handbrake, you may need an easily-found and easily-installed addon file, which you can probably find by Googling "handbrake protected dvd". Even then you may find movies that can't be ripped.

Of course, you'll also need a DVD/BluRay player for your computer, if one isn't installed already. Good ones can be found for very reasonable prices. Many require two usb ports (one for data, one for power) so make sure to get one compatible with your machine.

Finally, rip to the highest resolution you feel comfortable with. Depending on your viewing device (phone vs. tablet vs. laptop vs. desktop vs. TV), it can make a real difference in your viewing experience. Bigger = longer rip time, of course, especially with Handbrake, but you can start it going and go do something else while it's working.
posted by lhauser at 12:27 PM on May 3, 2022

lhauser: "rip to the highest resolution you feel comfortable with."

This doesn't make any sense. DVDs are fairly low resolution, 720x480 pixels. Ripping at a higher resolution isn't going to produce a better image, just a bigger file.
posted by adamrice at 3:00 PM on May 3, 2022 [2 favorites]

Getting DVD into the USB stick is not a problem. That's known as "ripping", and it's a fairly standardized procedure, and everybody had explained already.

The problem is getting your TV to PLAY it. Unless it's a smart TV and has the ability to play offline media or run apps such as an media player, you will need to add a "TV box" which is basically a small Android device optimized to have TV as display and a remote as input controller. Fortunately, such devices are cheap.

If you are taking a laptop with you, that can act as the player if you can successfully plug it into the TV.
posted by kschang at 10:01 PM on May 3, 2022

Zumbador: But then you need a device such as a DVD player or a smart TV that has a slot for that USB stick,

We play Handbraked movies using a Raspberry Pi (3B) running OSMC (a Kodi spinoff; they're both fine) connected to a dumb TV via HDMI. A laptop running VLC will also do the job.
posted by Stoneshop at 11:30 PM on May 3, 2022

Response by poster: Thank you everyone!
Very good suggestions out there.
However,I chose a program called=WinX DVD Ripper Platinum.
Tried it,was fast,good picture quality with sound.
The search is over,lol.

Thanks again :-)
posted by LOOKING at 4:08 AM on May 4, 2022 [3 favorites]

Downloading torrents will give you terrible quality, they are in most cases downconverted.

Sorry, what? Worse than a US NTSC DVD spitting out a whopping 480p using an antique codec?
posted by some little punk in a rocket at 4:41 AM on May 4, 2022 [3 favorites]

720p is plenty for my old eyeballs at any normal viewing distance from a TV or phone screen. But it's getting increasingly hard to find rips that coarse, and when you do, they often have many fewer seeders than 1080p and 2160p versions of the same content. My normal process these days is to grab 1080p versions and then downconvert them to 720p for permanent storage after they've finished seeding.

In other words, in 2022 it's almost always possible to obtain movie rips via BitTorrent that are as good to look at as anything you'd find coming directly off a BluRay disc or over a high quality Netflix or Amazon streaming channel. Very, very rare to have to put up with video as bad as the best a DVD can do. And with a decent external seedbox and a halfway decent local Internet connection, also quite rare to have a movie take longer to arrive via BitTorrent than it would take to rip from DVD.
posted by flabdablet at 6:21 AM on May 4, 2022 [2 favorites]