You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
OK so I have around 600 DVDs that are cluttering up the house, I want to transfer the bulk of the content onto some sort of media server so I can stream them to any of the screens in my house.
I was thinking that a second hand server would be the best device to use as I could set it up to have a mirrored drive in case of failure.
Any thoughts? Also any suggestions on the software to use?
Ta
Loads of options. I use a 4 bay NAS for this RAID 5 with 4 x 3TB drives. An older server will chew power up, if thats not a concern look for an older Dell power edge server on ebay then add your drives. Use serviio to serve them to your DLNA devices.
A NAS is a good idea - lower power and less noise in a smaller footprint than a server - mine lives under the TV in the living room.
I'll recommend QNAP because that's what I have and it works well ( 219PII with 2 hard drives in it ). Synology also seem to be good from reputation.
Whatever solution you find, ask this question - what happens when ( not if ) a hard drive fails ?
An external drive kept off site with a copy of your films/data might be a good idea*, RAID will help, but isn't a full solution**. I keep a 2nd NAS in another physical location that syncs with my home machine automatically***.
* You will need to bring it on site to backup your collection as it changes though
** especially if the machine dies/gets stolen/flooded/eaten by the cat
*** so that it'll copy new stuff, but not delete anything already present
I use a synology NAS drive which syncs with my dads synology off site to make sure everything is backed up. Also means he can watch anything I put on there on his local media players 🙂
i went with a hp microserver upstairs out the way running ubuntu server
another recommendation for serviio
also check out makemkv to backup your dvd's
cheap dlna bluray players are good media players or check out something like mede8er 800x3d which has a nice media wall
if you go for a pc type nas probably best to put the nas in a spare room and a silent media player with the tv.
Get a NAS to store your films on, personally i've got a QNAP 219PII and it works fine.
Encode your movies in x264 MKV as its generally a good standard and a lot of devices will work with it. You'll want a fairly decent PC to do this quickly. Also might be worth investing in a gigabit switch to speed up transfer of files from PC to NAS.
Most SmartTVs etc will do DNLA but personally i'd grab some small media players that will allow XBMC, something like Pivos XIOS.
Thanks guys, that's most of my questions answered.
If I buy a NAS with multiple drives can they be set up to mirror each other so that when I have a drive failure the data will be safe on the other drive?
Ta
Jason
Nearly all 2 drive NAS will support mirroring, but make sure you check that it does RAID 1. This isn't 100% safe so alway take another backup. The easy/cheap option is a large removable USB HDD that you plug in from time to time.
I did this about 2-3 years ago and wish I'd encoded at a higher rate, not all my stuff is HD and it's a bit annoying, can't be bothered to re-do them. x264 MKV is good.
I actually bought some software (first time ever) to do it - Leawo DVD ripper. Created an encoding profile and then it was pretty quick.
http://www.leawo.com/pro/dvd-ripper.html
I started doing this and the realised; when will I actually watch any of these? There are a few films I will watch again and again, and the kids stuff is obvious, but the rest of it? Nah, sell the DVD's and get a Netflix subscription.
I have a Netflix and a Lovefilm subscription, most of the stuff on there is extremely mainstream, I won't be ripping anything that is likely to be on there. What I have is a lot of niche stuff - French and Italian cimema and a load of stuff I shot when I was at college years ago. I went to the effort of transferring it all from Hi8 and DVcam so it seems a shame to lose it all.
Thanks for all the pointers.
This has made me think I should get on and do this myself - I'm already NASed up. no need for all those discs cluttering up the living room shelves...
I have a decent computer and WLAN setup. What would people say is the software/format of choice for most space efficient, painless and quick backup?
I use [url= http://www.makemkv.com ]MakeMKV[/url] to rip dvds and BluRay disks, and then encode them using [url= http://handbrake.fr ]Handbrake[/url].
With a careful choice of encoding settings you can encode most things to save a substantial amount of space without loosing any noticeable quality. The settings I'm using are below.
[img] http://cloud.danielgroves.net/uL0Z+ [/img]
[img] http://cloud.danielgroves.net/1CEC+ [/img]
And now, onwards to the final draw, (which should finish off my 3TB NAS when done).
That's great, ta - will take a look. Gues I'll still have to have the Blurays out (as no bluray drive), but there are a lot fewer of those and they're smaller cases anyway! Shame you can't use the PS3 for things like ripping - damn you Sony and your clamping down on the Jailbreak a few years back...
People here think the Synology is a good bet, but I know a fair few of them use Mac and Plex to serve media ripped using the Handbrake route.
If you want a lossless copy of your dvds (including menus etc.) you can rip to dvd image (iso) format using e.g. dvdfab, (free version will do this uncompressed in combination with imgburn)
You can then use xbmc on many devices to play the resulting files. Ripped isos vary in size from 4.5 to 8TB (for dual layer dvd).
mkv will be a smaller file and plays on more software but you lose menus and possibly subtitle options.
mkv also requires more attention if you are ripping tv show box sets and need to split and individually name the episodes.
I have 9.5TB at the moment (1000 movies and 80 tv series) as iso files......
Maybe I should consider transcoding to mkv myself 🙂
You can then use xbmc on many devices to play the resulting files. Ripped isos vary in size from 4.5 to [s]8TB[/s] [i]8GB[/i] (for dual layer dvd).
For ripping I've used AnyDVD, copied each disk to the hard drive of my computer, and then run them through Handbrake. In Handbrake I had to create a new profile that kept things as high a resolution as possible with good quality ( with the trade-off of larger file size ).
FWIW on Mac I use RipIt then Handbrake - a typical HD movie reduces to 750mb. I can then watch movies on TV, phone or tablet. I really like the fact I can take movies anywhere and with simple cable I can play movies in other peoples houses / hotels etc.
If you have a Mac and an Apple TV (£100) you can access your library remotely direct from the TV, also a great setup to stream midweek mini movies 🙂
I keep my movies on a standalone external hard drive - it does mean the whole collection isn't available immediately and is best compressed (750mb vs 6GB) but it's much cheaper. You can get external RAID drives which cover your backup scenario. This is much cheaper than a whole server solution.
You can get external RAID drives which cover your backup scenario.
RAID is [i]not[/i] backup. It will only protect you from a failing drives, not from user-stupidity, viruses, your house burning down, etc.
If keeping the CDs / DVDs etc. and just using the media server copy for convenience, I wouldn't even be too concerned about backups. If a drive might be on the verge of failing, pop a new one in and copy the stuff over. If it totally fails then you'll still have the originals. If of course you're copying and selling the originals on eBay then no comment.
Photos and personal stuff, then yes definitely back up, to several devices, the cloud, and a remote NAS.