Which rip setting do you use?

[maynard001]

Which rip settings do most of you use when importing DVDs? I just started messing around with this last night and it looks like there are quite a few choices (Good, Medium, Excellent, Perfect). Since it a takes a couple hours to rip a movie I'd rather not try each of the different settings and then compare...

[jlagrone]

I usually use excellent, but it is always a trade off of quality and how much space you have. Perfect makes an exact mpeg copy of the disk, should take about 20-30 minutes depending on the speed of your dvd drive. The resulting file is typically over 4 GB as it is exactly what is on the DVD. Excellent re-encodes a a fairly high bitrate to a mpeg file which is typically around 2 GB and takes 1.5-2 hours for me. I can't tell a quality difference between the perfect and excellent on my tv, but it could be possible on an HD (maybe). Good transcodes to xvid (or dvix) and typically results in a files size of about 800 MB, quality is good and I have a hard time telling the difference from excellent during regular use, but if I'm looking for it I can see it. I've never tried any lower settings, but I would assume that it would be a lower bitrate of xvid, smaller file size, and lower quality.

You can rip several DVDs and the transcoding portion will queue. For example, my usual method to ripping DVDs is to put a disk in the evening and go off and do something else. After about 30 minutes, come back and put a new disk in and rip it. Once I have done five or so disks, and if I timed it well, it's bed time and they'll typically be finished or near finished when I wake up.

[maynard001]

Cool...thanks for the reply. I'll give "excellent" a shot.