Current Events > Anyone rip their DVDs to digital and set up a Plex server before?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I have probably 500 DVDs and 150 blurays sitting in boxes that I want to get rid of by donating to my local library and/or sell. (Some dude offered me 200 bucks for my Chipmunks Great Adventure bluray.) I was kind of a collector before streaming got huge and then I stopped.

Over the past year or two I've seen people talk about their Plex servers and I've casually started looking into it. For like 110 bucks I can get a 6 TB hard drive that should hold everything I own. When I first started looking into this I thought this would be a much bigger undertaking. I thought I would need to actually build a small server and all of that but it turns out I don't. I'm okay running it off my PC because when I'm watching a movie I won't be playing around on my PC at all. I also saw another OS or software or whatever called Jellyfin I may consider that I saw that is one of those "made by the community" type things.

It's going to be time consuming ripping my movies to my hard drive but whatever.

No dats against teh law.

I don't think it is. I'm making backups of stuff I own. Maybe that changes once I donate the movies to a library. I'm not entirely sure.

Subscribing to Netflix DVD/BluRay and ripping the movies to the hard drive as they send them to me would be illegal.

Just a tip, when talking about doing something illegal, maybe don't say you're going to do it 600 times.

I made one about a year into the pandemic and its been great. It really wasnt hard to setup, and as you mentioned, ripping the dvds and Blu-rays was the most time consuming part.

i think when all was said and done I had ripped about 300 discs, and now Ive got those discs all stored out in a rubbermade bucket in the shed, freeing up a ton of space in the house. I whole heartedly endorse Plex, its a great tool.

Every year or so they do a deal on the Plex pass making it half off, so keep an eye out for that (they just did it a couple weeks ago, so you e got to wait awhile probably.)

Yeah.

A full lossless DVD will take 3 to 8 GBs of space.

It's a bit time consuming, but quite simple enough once you learn the few basics steps.

You're going to need several external hard drives though if you're serious on backing up all of your films.

As a follow up, not sure why folks here are saying its illegal. Ripping/backing up your own discs is absolutely not illegal.

A lot of people also put a ton of pirated content on their media servers, but thats a totally separate thing that they choose to do. Ripping your own dvds and Blu-rays is just fine.

jcmason posted...

Every year or so they do a deal on the Plex pass making it half off

I'll keep an eye out.

Steffenfield posted...

A full lossless DVD will take 3 to 8 GBs of space.

I saw someone mentioned on reddit that they average about 7.5 gig a pop so that's how I have it figured right now. A 6 TB will fit all my DVDs with no problem, it's when I start mixing in the blurays that I think 6 might not be big enough.

I'm going to do a test tonight and try backing up my Adventures of Brisco County Jr boxset and see how that goes. If it all works nicely I will start figuring out what I need for a serious effort on this.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]



This makes sense. I get it. Maybe I won't donate them if it means crossing the legality line.

My dvd files are much smaller than that, like half a gig for just the video. The blu rays, converted down to a 1080p format, are around 1.7 to 2gigs, depending on the movie length.

Remember that dvds were only 480p, which is pretty low fidelity for streaming to a tv/monitor but is not too bad for streaming to a phone screen.

If youre ripping and organizing all the additional content from the discs (like bonus features, and behind the scenes, etc) then it will take up more space but dvds arent nearly as much space as Blu-rays.

For Blu-rays I used Handbreak to convert the raw ripped files down to that sub-2gb size, to keep it manageable. Unless youve got a 4k/uhd tv that youre going to stream to, you reallly dont need those full 30gb+ video files.

When using DVDShrink, don't accept the default settings.

Since you have the space, be sure there's no compression involved.

jcmason posted...

If youre ripping and organizing all the additional content from the discs (like bonus features, and behind the scenes, etc) then it will take up more space but dvds arent nearly as much space as Blu-rays.

This is something I realized I will have to think about but haven't put much thought into yet. I'm not entirely sure I need all the extra stuff. As long as it has the movie and subtitles I think I'm good. However I was debating doing a second backup of just the straight ISO files just in case.

I am 99 percent sure though I want to keep the video as perfect as possible.

I do have a 4K TV I planned on using as the main source to watch these.

WrkHrdPlayHrdr posted...

This makes sense. I get it. Maybe I won't donate them if it means crossing the legality line.

Do it anyway, just don't announce TO THE WORLD about it lol.

No, never thought it was worth it just for movies

Also, last mention....

Have a completely unique password for your Plex account.

They were fully breached not too long ago.

Best of luck with this project. :)

WrkHrdPlayHrdr posted...

I'll keep an eye out.

For what you will use Plex for it probably won't be necessary. I've never needed Plex Pass for how I use my Plex server.

Here's the list of features.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201751006-plex-pass-feature-overview/

WrkHrdPlayHrdr posted...

For like 110 bucks I can get a 6 TB hard drive that should hold everything I own

Two things.

1. I'd suggest ripping all your media first to see your total size. It might end up being more than what you expected. Also do you ever plan on adding to this? If so make sure you have some wiggle room on that HDD for future expansion.
2. Make sure you have some sort of backup situation in place. That one HDD will be a single point of failure for you. Imagine 5 years from now. You've sold all your physical media and the HDD craps the bed. Now your entire collection is gone. Invest in two so you can set them up in a RAID 1 configuration. Basically means that any data or changes that happen on the first HDD gets copied over to the second one automatically.

WrkHrdPlayHrdr posted...

also saw another OS or software or whatever called Jellyfin I may consider that I saw that is one of those "made by the community" type things.

Jellyfin is an alternative to Plex. Most Jellyfin users seem to be former Plex users that have been pissed off by changes to the Plex software. Plex is becoming more corporate and doing things to annoy it's user base. For instance, forcing Plex users to create and log into Plex accounts just to use their own local media server. It's worth installing both and seeing which one you prefer. You can have both point to the same media folder paths on your computer without them affecting the files.

Thanks for the help everyone, I appreciate it.

jcmason posted...

As a follow up, not sure why folks here are saying its illegal. Ripping/backing up your own discs is absolutely not illegal.

It is illegal, it's just that if you're only using it for personal use no one is going to bother about it.

https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html

Question for people who have set one up:

What kind of hard drive did you use? I keep seeing recommendations for the WD Red ones but they all seem to be NAS and I'm not quite sure what exactly that is. Do they work in regular PCs?

Also, did MakeMKV work well for ripping the discs? That seems to be the most recommended but i'm seeing people mention issues with some TV shows.

WrkHrdPlayHrdr posted...

What kind of hard drive did you use? I keep seeing recommendations for the WD Red ones but they all seem to be NAS and I'm not quite sure what exactly that is. Do they work in regular PCs?

NAS - Network Attached Storage
Basically a server that has an ethernet cable connected directly to your router. You would then install Plex on that server so any device connected to your wifi could access Plex.

I have a Synology brand NAS and use WD Red Pros. WD Red models look like any other desktop HDD you've seen and can be installed in a PC. Difference is they have additional technology in them that work behind the scenes like disk error recovery prevention, noise/vibration protection, optimized performance and reliability. These model HDDs are typically used in 24/7 enterprise environments where a failed HDD is a much higher concern to the business. You don't want an off the shelf consumer model HDD running your servers that are under intense workloads nonstop. You'd be replacing drives every month.

WD Reds will either be overkill for your needs or give you piece of mind. Only reason I'm using WD Red Pros is because they were already in my Synology when I decommissioned it at work and took it home.

DVDShrink will get you 100%, full lossless backups.

Who cares if it's illegal >_> Literally no one is gonna give a fuck about it lol

Man this was WAY easier than I thought it would be. I ripped my Brisco County Jr and about half of my Sliders Season1/2 combo. I also tried two movies to see how it works and I did a random Star Wars bluray and also a Dawn of the Dead bluray. They work perfectly.

This is me at work connecting to my server at home and watching movies off of my home computer while away.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/7/1/AAdVIJAADxt3.jpg

The BIGGEST pain in the ass is naming and ordering the episodes. I spent 2 hours trying to fix Brisco County Jr because it was showing and playing them in aired order instead of DVD order. Now that I know how to fix it though I am happy. But getting them named the first time is a pain.

If I'm going to seriously give this a go I need at least one more DVD/Bluray drive so I can rip multiple things at once. That is going to be the biggest bottleneck by far. I'm going to order an 8TB harddrive in the next few days.

You can create a home network streaming server without needing to port forward?

I had no idea it could do this! :D

Oh, be sure to check all the streaming options on Plex.

Including volume and resolution.

By default I don't think they aren't set to maximum settings.

Imagine caring about legality. Imagine being that ridiculous, and then on top of that being wrong about it, rofl

Nothing illegal or immoral about backing up your stuff.

Steffenfield posted...

You can create a home network streaming server without needing to port forward?

Plex has an option when I was setting up the network to automatically attempt to do this. It successfully worked with mine so I didn't have to do anything extra.

LotsOfHorror posted...

Imagine caring about legality. Imagine being that ridiculous, and then on top of that being wrong about it, rofl

Nothing illegal or immoral about backing up your stuff.

honestly I don't all that much, but I am trying to keep it TOS friendly. Not sure what the rules are anymore. I don't have plans to add anything I don't own though.

Although, what's the legality of downloading a torrent of a film you own? I can download some stuff quicker than I can rip it to my drive. Specifically blurays.

I got a NAS (Network Attached Storage) 3 years ago that has 16TB of space on it. I have all my photos, phone backups, computer backups, as well as all my movies stored on it. I use Plex for all the movies & TV series and it's extremely intuitive and easy to set up, in fact, I hesitate to use the words "set up", that's how easy it is. You basically just have to connect your Plex server to where ever your stuff is stored on and it just mirrors it with a nice interface. I highly recommend it.

The picky file name thing for shows is a bit of a hassle but its really the only reasonable way they can work with it, so you just have to do it. Theres a utility called FileBot that is helpful for renaming with the right episode titles, I found it worked well for about 99% of my shows, you just have to make sure youre diligent about using the right season/episode number when you save the ripped files.

I know Im a bit late to respond about the NAS drive but I also used a pair of western digital Reds for my media server. A year and a half in with daily use and they seem to be holding up well.

winged_weltall posted...

I got a NAS (Network Attached Storage) 3 years ago that has 16TB of space on it. I have all my photos, phone backups, computer backups, as well as all my movies stored on it. I use Plex for all the movies & TV series and it's extremely intuitive and easy to set up, in fact, I hesitate to use the words "set up", that's how easy it is. You basically just have to connect your Plex server to where ever your stuff is stored on and it just mirrors it with a nice interface. I highly recommend it.

Agreed. It was so freaking easy. I was genuinely surprised.

jcmason posted...

Theres a utility called FileBot

Exactly the program I used. I even paid 5 bucks for the year pass.

WrkHrdPlayHrdr posted...

honestly I don't all that much, but I am trying to keep it TOS friendly. Not sure what the rules are anymore. I don't have plans to add anything I don't own though.

Although, what's the legality of downloading a torrent of a film you own? I can download some stuff quicker than I can rip it to my drive. Specifically blurays.

To clarify that was directed at the people criticizing you, you're totally fine! My understanding is its 100% legal, or at worst a gray area, as long as you aren't sharing the files with others.

WrkHrdPlayHrdr posted...

Man this was WAY easier than I thought it would be. I ripped my Brisco County Jr and about half of my Sliders Season1/2 combo. I also tried two movies to see how it works and I did a random Star Wars bluray and also a Dawn of the Dead bluray. They work perfectly.

Glad to hear the setup is going easy for you.

There is an audio mixing issue with movies that I wanted you to be aware of. Movies played via Plex tend to have very loud music/sound effects and very low voices. It only affects movies for some reason. Sometimes I have to max out my tv volume in order to hear movie dialog and keep the remote handy to turn it down during loud action scenes. If I play the same movie file on the same tv but directly from my computer, the audio is fine. It's just something with how Plex processes audio. People have complained to them for years about it and they've never attempted to fix it.

WrkHrdPlayHrdr posted...

The BIGGEST pain in the ass is naming and ordering the episodes. I spent 2 hours trying to fix Brisco County Jr because it was showing and playing them in aired order instead of DVD order. Now that I know how to fix it though I am happy. But getting them named the first time is a pain.

Plex takes it's episode order from thetvdb.com site. You might want to reference that so you know what order to rename the episodes.

winged_weltall posted...

I got a NAS (Network Attached Storage) 3 years ago that has 16TB of space on it. I have all my photos, phone backups, computer backups, as well as all my movies stored on it. I use Plex for all the movies & TV series and it's extremely intuitive and easy to set up, in fact, I hesitate to use the words "set up", that's how easy it is. You basically just have to connect your Plex server to where ever your stuff is stored on and it just mirrors it with a nice interface. I highly recommend it.

If you want to step up your media game even further, you can setup Sonarr and Radarr docker containers on your NAS. Not going to go too much more in detail but feel free to PM me about it.