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trønderen11-Dec-20 14:19

11-Dec-20 14:19

A physical format is a format as well. If you cannot access the physical format, it is useless even if you could have interpreted the data format - if you could have accessed it.

It is really insignificant on which level you cannot access the information, if it is due to the physical dimensions of the medium, the physical encoding of the bits, the way the bits are organized - from sector and tracks on the physical medium, through directory and file formats, to data formats within a file. If the information is inaccessible due to an unhandled format, it is inaccessible, regardless of level.

You may claim to always be ahead, always switching to new media, to new file systems, to new data formats, years ahead of their obsoletion. Lots of people are not following you; they do trust that those backups in the the attic will be as durable as grandmas old photo album.

Another problem is that you might be betting on the wrong horse. Like, I have helped out a couple people who had PC breakdowns, bought a new one, and several months later, when it was time for another round of complete backup, "discovered" that their new PC didn't have a CD burner. So it couldn't create a new backup - and couldn't read back the pile of old backup CDs.

I must admit that I went into that trap myself, although not backup related: A special request made me dig up an old, external adapter, to be plugged into the COM port of the computer. That's a piece of cake, not? But I couldn't find the COM port! The PC was more than two years old, and for over two years, I had never had a need for a COM port, and never realized that it was missing! Later I discovered that the motherboard had a COM header, and in my junk box I found a bracket with a COM socket, so I could have used my current computer. Before I discovered that, I had dug up an old PC wreck from the basement, one with an easy-to-find COM socket.

In an ideal world, no data is lost because physical, filesystem or information formats become obsolete. In an ideal world, no data is lost in conversion from one format to another one. But as they say: In theory, there is no difference theory and practice, but in practice there is.

dandy7211-Dec-20 17:38

dandy72

11-Dec-20 17:38

trønderen wrote:
A physical format is a format as well. If you cannot access the physical format, it is useless even if you could have interpreted the data format - if you could have accessed it.

It is really insignificant on which level you cannot access the information, if it is due to the physical dimensions of the medium, the physical encoding of the bits, the way the bits are organized - from sector and tracks on the physical medium, through directory and file formats, to data formats within a file. If the information is inaccessible due to an unhandled format, it is inaccessible, regardless of level.

You have plenty of time to switch physical formats; I've already made the case for that. To reuse your example, at this point in time you have no excuse to only have data on a floppy disk if you care about that data.

As for file formats - virtualization can help. If you have a file that can only be read by software that no longer runs on modern OSes (say, it only runs on XP), then you can run XP in a VM, install the software on it, and hang on to that VM. If a hypervisor manufacturer is showing signs that he's going to abandon support for older OSes, then look for something else to run that VM. VMware can still run Windows 95. Hyper-V can't, but it'll run DOS, which is older still.

trønderen wrote:
You may claim to always be ahead, always switching to new media, to new file systems, to new data formats, years ahead of their obsoletion. Lots of people are not following you; they do trust that those backups in the the attic will be as durable as grandmas old photo album.

And whose problem is that? I'm just telling you how I'd avoid the problems you're worrying about. It's up to these people to heed the advice they're given. They can't blame anyone but themselves if they don't.

trønderen wrote:
Another problem is that you might be betting on the wrong horse. Like, I have helped out a couple people who had PC breakdowns, bought a new one, and several months later, when it was time for another round of complete backup, "discovered" that their new PC didn't have a CD burner. So it couldn't create a new backup - and couldn't read back the pile of old backup CDs.

What a contrived example. Even with a laptop with no internal drive, you still have the option today to get a USB CD/DVD drive to read those backups. If you care about the data on those CDs, spend the money for an external drive and transfer it to another media. If you're waiting until CD drives completely disappear from the surface of the Earth before finding out you still need one...whose fault is that?

trønderen wrote:
In an ideal world, no data is lost because physical, filesystem or information formats become obsolete. In an ideal world, no data is lost in conversion from one format to another one. But as they say: In theory, there is no difference theory and practice, but in practice there is.

I'm not disagreeing here. But you have to take responsibility for your own archives if you care about them.

The oldest data I have is maybe 25 years old, and it's in no danger of being made unreadable. Video encoded with old codecs can still be converted. Pictures...well, I'm still not seeing support for GIFs going away. Audio formats from 25 years ago is the same. RealPlayer? If I had such files I wanted to keep, they would have been converted about 15 years ago.

If I had an old database that went back to (say) dBase, then there are tools that can still read those back, to this day, and extract tables and their relationships. Any proprietary front-end to this database would've been abandoned a long time ago and migrated elsewhere.

Jacquers10-Dec-20 18:19

Jacquers

10-Dec-20 18:19

Have a look at rebox.net Smile | :)

trønderen11-Dec-20 3:15

11-Dec-20 3:15

OK, that may be a good ripper (I haven't tried that one yet, I will!) - but essentially my problem is not the ripping, but which format to rip to. Two major concerns: Will the format preserve multiple audio tracks and multiple subtitle tracks so that they can be selected at play time? And: Is this a format that we have reasons to believe that will be handled by the majority of playback devices ten and twenty years from now?

I'll take a look at rebox.net, but by itself it doesn't answer the question about a suitable file format.

Jacquers11-Dec-20 3:32

Jacquers

11-Dec-20 3:32

MKV seems to be the format you want. Whether it's around in 20 years... you'll have to wait and see Smile | :)

trønderen11-Dec-20 4:59

11-Dec-20 4:59

Which MKC rippers/converters will convert multiple audio / subtitle streams and title / chapter structures from a DVD/BD?

Which MKV players are available to let me, at play time, select from the alternative audio / subtitle tracks and to let me navigate in the title / chapter structure of the original DVD/BD?

Daniel Pfeffer10-Dec-20 23:40

Daniel Pfeffer

10-Dec-20 23:40

You could recompress your files to MP4. That would save some space, at the cost of some resolution, and would still allow selection of multiple audio tracks etc. You would lose the fancy menus that some DVD/BD titles come with.

[Bonus Q2]: I have a few videos (some Disney and some action films, IIRC) that provide multiple camera angles, but I've never actually used them.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.

trønderen11-Dec-20 3:27

11-Dec-20 3:27

Saving space is a non-concern. Disk is cheap nowadays.

MP4 is certainly capable of handling any resolution. Maybe your concern is about conversion losses, but with a good converter, those are minimal - and lots of BD video is already in an MP4 format that should not require any conversion at all.

I have made MP4 versions of a number of my movie, mostly to take them to friends with "smart-TVs" that were not smart enough to play BD images (BDMV directory structures). With the software I have used, I have not been able to embed into the MP4 file several audio or subtitle streams, or title/chapter structure information. If you know of software that can do this: What is the software you are using?

Daniel Pfeffer12-Dec-20 6:12

Daniel Pfeffer

12-Dec-20 6:12

I use a program called DVDFab (www dot dvdfab dot cn). It's not free, but does a decent job of copying and ripping DVDs. I have just verified that it creates MP4 files with multiple audio streams, multiple subtitles, and chapter marks.

Note that all of the above must be in the original stream. AFAICS, it provides no methods for incorporating additional streams into the output MP4, nor can it create additional chapter marks.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.

Johnny J.11-Dec-20 0:43

11-Dec-20 0:43

trønderen wrote:
[Bonus question 2: When DVDs were introduced, the option to provide multiple camera angles, aka parallel video tracks, was heavily boosted in marketing.

I've heard, but believe me or not, I have never seen for myself, that this feature was mostly used in the pr0n business when it was invented. Just because they could, I'd imagine. Blush | :O

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modified 11-Dec-20 6:52am.

trønderen11-Dec-20 4:43

11-Dec-20 4:43

So maybe I should get hold of some pr0n movies ... Smile | :)

Johnny J.11-Dec-20 0:49

11-Dec-20 0:49

I'm almost done doing the same thing, actually.

The last weeks, I've ripped all of my DVD's to ISO files and thrown away most of the physical discs (saved a few of my favourites, though).

I must have ripped around 1500 discs, and the problem with that is of course that it takes a LOT of harddisk space. I've bought myself two 10Tb discs, one for movies, and one for TV series.

I have yet to decide what to do about the Bluray discs. I haven't got quite as many of those, but if ripped, they would obviously take up a whole lot more space per disc than the DVDs.

A curiosity: I activated disc compression on the two drives, because I wanted to save as much disk space as possibly. But lo and behold: The amount of space used before and after compression was pretty much the same. Seems like the DVD format is already compressed almost to the max.

modified 11-Dec-20 6:55am.

dandy7211-Dec-20 3:21

dandy72

11-Dec-20 3:21

Johnny J. wrote:
A curiosity: I activated disc compression on the two drives, because I wanted to save as much disk space as possibly. But lo and behold: The amount of space used before and after compression was pretty much the same. Seems like the DVD format is already compressed almost to the max.

I hope you're not surprised by this. Video compression is the holy grail of video storage and distribution, so if you could simply compress video by running it through WinZip and gain significant savings...that would mean codec developers have seriously dropped the ball.

I feel your pain re: ripping Blu-ray discs. I don't have many - and of those, there's maybe 12-15, max, that I want to keep backed up to a drive. They're all dual-layer, so you're talking about a minimum of 25 GB each. Many are closer to the disc's 50GB capacity.

And then, I just bought the full Game of Thrones series in 4K. I don't even know how much space a single disc might take - I don't imagine the "old" Blu-ray drive hooked up to my system could read them even if I tried.

Johnny J.11-Dec-20 3:47

11-Dec-20 3:47

dandy72 wrote:
I hope you're not surprised by this.

Not as such, but it may or may not have surprised me that somebody had actually had luck in developing something that both worked and was efficient at the same time... Laugh | :laugh:

I may have worked with computers for too long... Sigh | :sigh:

dandy7211-Dec-20 9:53

dandy72

11-Dec-20 9:53

Johnny J. wrote:
both worked and was efficient at the same time...

I guess that's an iterative process. MPEG-2, in hindsight, is probably considered to be horribly inefficient if you compare with H.265 files. Much smaller files, yet many times the resolution. But try to zip either, and you won't gain anything in any appreciable amount.

trønderen11-Dec-20 3:55

11-Dec-20 3:55

To echo what dandy72 says: Modern video compression is extremely well tailored to that specific use, and there is no way that a general method (such as zip) for 'any' data format could do a better job. If you manage to dig up an extreme example where zip reduced the file size by half a percent, the savings would be in the metadata of the file, not in the video content.

I've got 'enough' disk space to rip even BD disks. But I encountered a problem when I wanted to take a BD movie to a friend to play on his smart-TV: It didn't fit on my old 32 GB memory sticks, so I had to buy a new 64 MB memory stick. ... And later, I brought that memory stick to another friend, but his smart-TV was so old that it only supported USB sticks up to 32GB size!

Bonus comment, now that we are in season: That BD movie not fitting on as 32GB stick was the Finish "Rare Exports" Christmas horror comedy. We view that on every winter solstice. It is just a great movie! Be prepared for getting a different view on St. Claus after watching it Smile | :)

(Rare Exports - IMDb[^]

Jörgen Andersson11-Dec-20 1:32

11-Dec-20 1:32

X-Media Recode[^] and Handbrake[^] both do what you want.
X-media has more setting but is quite finicky to use. Handbrake is easier.
Subtitles are quite overlooked in both, but they work after some fiddling about. (needs conversion or burn to the image, personally I don't care for them)
Both are completely legal so neither of them handles encrypted media.

Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger

Johnny J.11-Dec-20 1:44

11-Dec-20 1:44

In Handbrake, subtitles only work for me if I choose to burn them in. Is it better in X-Media? Confused | :confused:

Jörgen Andersson11-Dec-20 2:47

11-Dec-20 2:47

Not really, in my limited experience one needs to convert the subtitle format to one that's supported by the container AND the player, both must support them. <edit>and the server if you're streaming</edit>
Personally I can't be bothered with the fuzz.

Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger

modified 11-Dec-20 9:03am.

Jörgen Andersson11-Dec-20 5:44

11-Dec-20 5:44

If it's vobsub from DVDs it's because it's a graphical layer, not actual text.

Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger

trønderen11-Dec-20 4:08

11-Dec-20 4:08

My first problem is to decide on a format that we can expect to be long-lasting, and handled by the majority of viewers ten or twenty years from now.

The question of rippers/converters that will produce those long-lasting formats come next.

Maybe X-Media Recode and Handbrake are suitable tools, but for ripping to which (long-lasting) formats- A couple of years ago, I looked at Handbrake, but at that time, there were alternatives I found more suitable. but I don't remember the arguments. Is it so that Handbrake can handle multiple audio tracks, multiple subtitle track and title/chapter information? In which formats is it capable of storing this information? Which players allow me, at playback time, to select a given audio or subtitle track, or navigate by title or chapter?

Jörgen Andersson11-Dec-20 4:59

11-Dec-20 4:59

Well, then we need to differentiate between the container and the encodings they contain.
The container can quite easily be swapped using any of the tools, while retaining the encoded tracks/streams.

So the question is rather which video and audio formats we can expect to survive for a longer time.
If you play your movies on a computer there probably won't be any problems, vnc and similar players will support almost anything you throw at them for the foreseeable future.
Streaming is a different question though.
If you're using a Plex server for example it will also work with most files, but the recieving end won't.
MPEG2 (DVD-video) is already dead, seemingly on purpose. Neither Chromecast nor Apple-TV will accept that.

The only format that's supported on both is H.264
And HEVC/h.265 works on Chromecast Ultra and the newest AppleTV
For the future you probably want h265, but it won't work with everything today. So my answer for now will have to be H.264 video with AAC for sound.
Haven't a clue what to use for subtitles at the moment.

Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger