What is the best codec, settings and software to backup animation (Disney, Pixax) DVDs?

December 14, 2007 10:58 AM

What is the best codec, settings and software to backup animation (Disney, Pixax) DVDs?

Through the years I have built up quite a large collection of DVDs of animated features (by Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks) and now I want to back them all up on an external harddrive. Main reason is convenience but also because I have had a few experiences where brandnew DVDs would be 'unreadable' at some point in the movie. My experiences with writable DVDs are even worse so that is why I want to go the harddrive route. For live-action movies I would just use the standard settings in any DVD to Divx software but with animated movies I can always tell that I'm looking at a compressed copy of the original. Is it possible to compress animation DVDs further without getting visible artifacts in the copy or should I just copy the VOB/MPEG2 files 'as is'?

posted by dinkyday to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

DVD author here. Just back up the VOB files (make sure to remove CSS and Macrovision). Any further compression from a DVD source will result in more artifacts, and MPEG-2 for DVD has a number of drawbacks that particularly impact cell-drawn and simple 3D animation.

As for your unreadable new DVD problem, have you confirmed that the same spot in the movie is unreadable in different players? If not, it is likely your player that has the problem.
posted by infinitewindow at 11:13 AM on December 14, 2007 [2 favorites]

If you're serious about backing up your discs, then don't settle for lossy compression. Back up the disc in it's entirety as an .ISO image, or just the .VOB files if you feel you don't need the menus and extra features.
Since you're concerned about time frames long enough for printed DVDs will wear out, then you should remember that storage space always gets cheaper over time. The two-thousand megabyte drive array I saw in college has become a dongle on my keychain, smaller than the lock I use at the gymnasium, and given away as swag at sales conventions.
posted by Mozai at 11:15 AM on December 14, 2007

Yeah, I'd just keep the VOBs, but if you don't want to go out and get new hard drives and want quality compression... I don't know... But the Anime Fansub groups are all pretty much on the move to h.264 codec and Matroska container. (and fansub groups tend to do a lot of dick waving over "quality"). So I think if you are going to compress, h.264 seems to be the favored option for anime/cartoon types of movies.
posted by zengargoyle at 11:52 AM on December 14, 2007

If you want backups, try Lagarith, its lossless. I usually get 20-35% smaller file sizes than DVD.

Personally, I keep my DVDs for backup and watch encodes in H.264 at 1800kbit. (Pretty much transparent to me)
posted by mphuie at 11:53 AM on December 14, 2007

I'd just image the DVD as an .iso if I were that concerned about the animation not looking as good as it should. Storage space is cheap and will always get cheaper.
posted by secret about box at 7:22 PM on December 14, 2007

If you can spare the space, why go lossy? With a lossless codec, the worst-case scenario is that you might someday transcode to some better, hopefully also lossless, codec. But with a lossy one, if the world moves on and decides it was a bad idea, you'll have to re-import the movies from the original source. I'd go with ISOs, VOBs, or something like Lagarith if you don't mind compatibility issues.

You really can't go wrong with lossless compression. Everything else is a chance.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:48 PM on December 14, 2007

For a true bit-for-bit backup, follow the above advice and copy the VOBs or make an ISO. If you want something of a more managable size (and playable by more devices) you might want to look into AutoGK. It's a very simple yet powerful encoding tool and it can utilize Xvid's ".cartoon" mode through it's advanced configuration panal (CTRL-F9).
posted by bizwank at 9:49 PM on December 14, 2007