What format to save my DVDs to hard drive?

[alittletank]

Hello, I am getting ready to deploy and want to take about 40-60of my favorite movies from my personal collection with me. Although I could take back up discs I would rather use my 500g external HD because of space issues.

The question is what format should I save the dvds in and what software to use to play those files.

Thank you all for the help.

[alittletank]

Oh and BTW I dont mind keeping these in a 4.3g file and I do have DvD decrypter installed and ready to rip from my back ups of the DVDs.

[seeker010]

you can keep them as ISOs and use a virtual drive manager to mount them. Your system would seem that as normal DVDs once mounted and you can use any dvd software to play them back. it’s the least time intensive option. You could also use autogk to convert them to avi movies, but of course it’s rather time consuming.

[olyteddy]

You should ask a mod to close one of these threads because crossposting is confusing and a little bit rude.

[leaglebob]

You have to match the format to whatever you will be playing or seeing the pictures on?

That said, I would transcode your favorites into DivX format and pick the smallest bitrate you stand watching. Lots of DvD quality movies can be saved at around 800 MB per film.

Could easily go 50% of that depending on what you have. Action flicks with lots of movement–maybe not.

Take some music too?