I wanted to get some info from this thread - http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/673010 I have over a 1TB of DVDs on my computer as backup and want to convert them to a smaller size so I can free up some space. I own CloneDVD2 but am not sure how to use the features this thread is talking about. I have only used the Clone DVD button to backup my DVDs to my hard drive. I don't know anything about the Copy DVD Titles or the Write Existing Data buttons. How do I get the h.264 codec? If something happens to my original DVD is it easy to convert back to the DVD format so that I can burn another copy? My player is a Sony DVP-NC665P so it will not play DivX or avi movies. I am just trying to save some space on my HDDs. I have several that hold movies right now. Any help would be appreciated.
Why not take the backed up DVD and make a DVD copy with CloneDVD2, then you don't need to store it on your computer. One of the best formats for small good quality is .mkv I haven't tried converting anything to that yet though.
If your dvd backups are in ISO format (instead of video_ts folders) you can use the free fairuse wizard lite program to convert them to xvid or h264. Fairuse wizard only converts dvd's that are in ISO format, it is very good at keeping video/audio insync everytime. The free version is only able to save to a maximun of 700mb, which is ok for a 1.5 to 2 hour movie. For longer movies you need a file size of 800 or 900mb. For that you might need the paid version of fairuse. Usually 900 kps is about the sweetspot for decent quality. If your dvd backups are in video_ts folders, you can use dvdshrink to backup into an ISO, take about 5 minutes. It would be a good idea to have a quadcore cpu to do the conversions. My amd 9750 quad takes about 1.5 to 2.0 hours to convert a movie using the 2-pass mode. My intel coreduo 6300 takes over 3 hours to do the same conversion. Fairuse will let you batch process several ISO at one time, it will even turn your computer off when it's done.
