I know most people probably don't care, but for those that might stumble on the site via Google or some other search engine, my episodic dvd ripping is going well. Last night, I set my computer to rip and convert all of Seinfeld Season 2. It took about 24 hours to process the 13 episodes, but it was worth it (note: I will compare this later when my new computer is built to see how much faster an AMD Athlon 64 can handle the duties).

When all was said and done, 18.7 gigs of Seinfeld DVDs were shrunk to 4.46 in 20 episodes (18 original + 2 alternate versions) through the first two seasons while Viva La Bam: Season 1 was shrunk from 7.0 gigs to 3.55 gigs over 8 episodes. Kind of odd the different compression ratios I got considering the same process was used. I guess depending on the quality of the original video and the way in which it was shot (fast motion action (Bam) vs. slow sit-com action (Seinfeld)) makes a difference. Either way, I've done 5 DVDs and I have 8.02 gigs (let's just call it 8 for simplicity). Previously, I figured I'd have 150 DVDs to rip, so...let's go with the 5/8 ratio and we end up with 150 DVDs taking up 240 gigs of space. After proper formatting, and sector sizing, the 250 gig drive comes out to only 233 gigs of usable space (probably will be less than 230 usable gigs after more room gets taken up), so I will need another drive to hold all of my television episodes - but that's no problem since the original media center idea called for 2x250 gig drives and optimally, I'd like a third to set them up in a RAID5+1 configuration.

Either way, I just have to keep ripping to see how it all comes out and I also need to figure out how to get the metadata worked into each file. Right now, they're very simply named with the tv show name, the season & episode number, and the title of the episode - so we have:

Seinfeld S01E01 - The Seinfeld Chronicles (Original).avi
Seinfeld S01E01 - The Seinfeld Chronicles (Revised).avi
...
Seinfeld S02E13 - The Deal.avi
and
Viva La Bam S01E01 - Phil's Hell Day.avi
...
Viva La Bam S01E08 - Scavenger Hunt.avi

And while that may be good if you know what happens in "The Pony Remark." But if you don't...then it would be nice to have maybe a screenshot and the description of:

"Jerry inadvertently offends his elderly relative by saying he hates people who had ponies growing up. The woman dies before Jerry can clear the air. Jerry is torn between attending her funeral and playing in a championship softball game."

Progress to be continued...next up for ripping: MI-5: Season 1 & 2.

And for those concerned, even though I am violating the DMCA (which is an asinine law in and of itself), I am only making backup copies for my own personal use. These files are not going to be shared outside the house and I do believe that my own private use is lawful no matter what I decide to do with the stupid CSS encryption being used on these DVDs.

URL: "Seinfeld" (1990)