Digitizing my collection and piracy

I am in the early steps of a very time consuming process. I own somewhere around 2000 DVDs (including TV shows and kids DVDs), and I want to eventually convert the entire thing to digital. I bought a 2 terabyte external HD yesterday, because my poor laptop only had about 6 gigs of space left, and I started moving all my digital films to the hard drive. It's formatted to be read by my PS3 and I believe it can also play directly on my HDTV (though I haven't tried it yet, I assume the formatting will allow the TV to read it). I'm organizing it by film types and TV shows get their own folders.

Now, the point I'm really trying to get to is this: I cannot find a program to reliably digitize these films. The ones I find make the files really big in size, sometimes several gigs for one film and I have to find a program to condense them. Also, the ones I've used so far convert the films into several different video files and aren't able to convert the film into one file. This isn't the fault of the programs, that's just the way DVDs are made.

So, after all this, it turns out that downloading copies is easier than doing what I have been doing. However, I am not endorsing the act of piracy, but it seems simpler than the fiasco that my endeavor has turned out to be! To keep myself honest, though, I've done this the hard way thus far. But it does suck.

Which leads me to my real point. Will Hollywood ever actually give us, fans of digital media anyway, what we really want? What I want is my video collection on a hard drive that I can plug in at a friends/family members house and watch my movies. I want a film collection that can be carried around with me and I want it at non-obscene prices. I'd gladly pay for a digital copy of my favorite film if it's reasonably priced (under $10, anything over is ridiculous for something that requires no physical media) and it's portable.

Now, I'll gladly take the cloud version. I don't need the actual video file as long as the copy is formatted to play on multiple platforms. I don't want my films to be stuck only playing on Apple devices, etc. I want plug and play ease for my film collection and i just don't see Hollywood doing this any time soon.

Is there anyone else who wants what I'm talking about? Will Hollywood ever figure this out and make it happen? What are some of the solutions they could do to give pirates what they want without making the problem worse?

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Most of it, but possibly not for less than $10. Which kinda makes sense, seeing as how you'd be asking not for a copy you can move around (and which is therefore limited), but for the "right" to play it from basically anywhere, stream it from places, etc. That's what matters; the physical media isn't where the cost comes from.

We're getting close-ish to this already, with films going for $15-20 on Verizon FlexView and iTunes and all that. It might come down a little, but maybe not much. I think the real problem is simply giving it some kind of uniformity. If I buy a movie on FlexView I can't just toss it into iTunes, or vice-versa. Everyone wants to be the platform I get this stuff from, which restricts how easily I can move something from place to place.

I think the cloud-based thing is clearly where we'll end up, for all the obvious reasons, but also because that could (possibly) get us to the point where the device we play something on is largely untethered from the place we bought it from. But that might be wishful thinking, and it might take awhile, because it's worth everyone's while to try to become the de facto provider of most of it.

I went through the same thing with my music (until my computer AND external HD crashed). I still wonder if the RIAA would sue me for downloading things I actually own.

The price thing you mentioned is the whole issue though. I don't see Hollywood switching mediums because they're leading the charge on SOPA, CISPA, RIAA, or any way to sue people really. The physical copies of these products should be as cheap as your proposed digital price I think, especially considering they don't come with **** anymore. The superior packaging of vinyl is dying.

This looks like what you might want

http://convertdvdtoavi.com/

or

http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php

You're the best WT. I'll check that stuff out further when I'm not at work!

To the rights, Yoda. Yeah, I get that's where the money is really going (it's something like $.05 to make a DVD), but the fact that I don't typically get the bonus content, etc. with a digital copy there's less overall cost reflected in that copy of the film. I'd be more than happy to pay $10 for that since, with most films, you can eventually get the Blu-ray for about that price depending on the time it's spent on the store shelves or what time of year it is. If I buy a film from the PS3/X-Box 360 stores it's usually quite expensive whereas the physical copy can be purchased for cheaper. That's crazy to me.

Does anyone know, can I get in trouble for downloading pirate copies of films I own? I do that with music all the time because my music collection is packed up in boxes in the basement but I can find some of those discs in torrents. Am I breaking the law by being excessively lazy?

I don't know, but I can't see why not. Despite that, I say do it.

Yes, but **** it. You'd have to have a right cnut of a jury/judge to come down hard on someone who was d/ling stuff they already owned, just for ease of use.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

I do know that there are laws that say you can download video games as "back-ups" for copies you own, though I don't know the specifics. For a while it allowed people to download ROMs. I don't know if they changed that, but you used to be able to get away with it!

I will definitely have to go for the above recommendation of Handbake. Depending on what hardware you are working with I would also recommend DVDFab. I use this to rip the dvds/bluray to my hard drive and then load up handbrake. You can queue items to handbrake with the same settings (minus subs and some audio selections). Then just walk away and come back later. If you are ripping just DVD files and getting over a gig, you really need to check your encoding settings and file type. Bluray (720) shouldn't be over a gig either (unless it is a long movie).

If you are planning on doing this yourself, it may take a bit of time but you would be happier with the outcome. Plus, you would be inside the safe area of law restrictions (I think? If you sold the movies or disposed of the hard copies, I think you would be in violation, eh, whatever). You could take this a step further and setup a very nice, very functional media center pc. From what I read it seemed like you were trying to move to that. Just a few links for that process:

XBMC
XBMC Setup

Also, for note, the system would be completely customizable to your own liking. You could even run random upcoming previews from the web as well as trivia questions like some of the cinemas do now. Not only that, seperate your movies and tv shows however you would like (check out Media Companion).

As with what Yoda said, there is no uniform method for what you are trying to accomplish. Until then, you are stuck with what you can come up with and still be transportable. Even with what you are doing now, think about all the different file types for movies you would be encoding (unless you stayed uniform yourself [for the above setup, or any for that matter it would be good to do so]).

^^^Wow! Thanks for all the advice!