Best way to back up my DVDs?

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Forte224
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Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by Forte224 » Mon Oct 09, 2017 1:02 am

DISCLAIMER: I honestly don't know where to put this, I guess here makes the most sense.

Ok, so I just scored the Dragon Boxes. I'm pretty psyched. Anyway, I really want to back the Dragon Boxes up as soon as possible just in case something ever happens to them physically. What's a good software to do this? I used DVDFab9 in the past but it crashes constantly. Thanks!

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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by KBABZ » Mon Oct 09, 2017 1:07 am

Nice on scoring the Dragon Boxes! I have the OG Dragon Ball one, it's my most prized possession.

I used DVD Shrink to do it. It was shut down a while ago, but since this is the internet it shouldn't be that hard to find.

Obviously, only do this for DVDs you own!

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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by Forte224 » Mon Oct 09, 2017 1:11 am

KBABZ wrote:Obviously, only do this for DVDs you own!
Thanks for the info. Yeah exactly, it's literally just for back up purposes. Will probably back it up to like 5 different places so my paranoia can be calmed :lolno:

And thank you! Got them for under $700 and they come with Funi's DB Season 1 as well as 4 of the Blu Ray movie sets too! Quite a score if I do say so myself

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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by KBABZ » Mon Oct 09, 2017 1:52 am

Forte224 wrote:And thank you! Got them for under $700 and they come with Funi's DB Season 1 as well as 4 of the Blu Ray movie sets too! Quite a score if I do say so myself
Awesome! I'll probably never own one as while I watched DBZ back in the day, I can't remember a lick of it; I was instead imprinted onto Kai so that's what I have on Blu-ray. But more than that I love the Kid Goku stuff, hence why I have that Dragon Box thanks to Amazon Japan and Tenso. Me ripping the DVDs therefore has a practical application; I can't play Japanese DVDs on my NZ computer, so ripping them is the only way to watch them without changing the DVD region of my computer!

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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by Forte224 » Mon Oct 09, 2017 1:55 am

KBABZ wrote:
Forte224 wrote:And thank you! Got them for under $700 and they come with Funi's DB Season 1 as well as 4 of the Blu Ray movie sets too! Quite a score if I do say so myself
Awesome! I'll probably never own one as while I watched DBZ back in the day, I can't remember a lick of it; I was instead imprinted onto Kai so that's what I have on Blu-ray. But more than that I love the Kid Goku stuff, hence why I have that Dragon Box thanks to Amazon Japan and Tenso. Me ripping the DVDs therefore has a practical application; I can't play Japanese DVDs on my NZ computer, so ripping them is the only way to watch them without changing the DVD region of my computer!
Ah yeah, I own all of Kai on Blu Ray as well but the Japanese version isn't as good as it was in Z. And I recognize Dragon Ball as the better show for sure...but man my Z nostalgia just won't let me like DB better

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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by KBABZ » Mon Oct 09, 2017 2:13 am

Forte224 wrote:Ah yeah, I own all of Kai on Blu Ray as well but the Japanese version isn't as good as it was in Z. And I recognize Dragon Ball as the better show for sure...but man my Z nostalgia just won't let me like DB better
I'm honestly surprised at how little credit the '02 Dragon Ball dub gets around here. The voice actors were comfortable enough to take on their roles (such as McFarland as Roshi or Nadolny as Goku), it retains the Kikuchi score that absolutely makes the magic of this era of the series (and again when most people praise his work there's no love thrown to this era), and while there are some odd writing changes throughout the script is surprisingly accurate to at least the Viz translation. And the wonderful part is that with less filler and most of the voice actors returning for Kai, the jump from DB-148 to DBZK-001 is almost seamless! As you can guess I adore OG DB.

It is a shame that the Japanese side of Kai is so lackluster and opted to try and outright modernize the show rather than stick to trimming the fat, as well as other things like trying to hit a specific episode count rather than do what's best for the story (as shown by TFC). It would have been great to have the original placements of the Kikuchi score, or reuse the original voice clips (but the show is freaking old so that's understandable).

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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by Forte224 » Mon Oct 09, 2017 2:21 am

KBABZ wrote:
Forte224 wrote:Ah yeah, I own all of Kai on Blu Ray as well but the Japanese version isn't as good as it was in Z. And I recognize Dragon Ball as the better show for sure...but man my Z nostalgia just won't let me like DB better
I'm honestly surprised at how little credit the '02 Dragon Ball dub gets around here. The voice actors were comfortable enough to take on their roles (such as McFarland as Roshi or Nadolny as Goku), it retains the Kikuchi score that absolutely makes the magic of this era of the series (and again when most people praise his work there's no love thrown to this era), and while there are some odd writing changes throughout the script is surprisingly accurate to at least the Viz translation. And the wonderful part is that with less filler and most of the voice actors returning for Kai, the jump from DB-148 to DBZK-001 is almost seamless! As you can guess I adore OG DB.
Haha I'm glad you like it. The dub is ok I think but still sounds off in a lot of places. Also their narrating over the insert song when Goku is on his way to fight the Red Ribbon Army is where I draw the line. But yeah it's a pretty respectable dub. There are some things in Japanese Kai that are pretty good by the way. Majin Vegeta's speech about why he let himself be overtaken by Bobidi is better in Kai than OG Japanese Z I feel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRm-tb1e8Ig&t=2s

There's value in it for sure! And it blends in with Super better too

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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by KBABZ » Mon Oct 09, 2017 2:43 am

Forte224 wrote:Haha I'm glad you like it. The dub is ok I think but still sounds off in a lot of places. Also their narrating over the insert song when Goku is on his way to fight the Red Ribbon Army is where I draw the line.
Well, remember that the Insert Song that self-explains what the montage was about was in Japanese, and Funimation never did their own English versions outside of Makafushi and Romantikku (probably because they were also in the middle of doing the Buu Saga in Z, inarguably the more important project for them). Thus, having the Narrator talk over it helps explain the point of the montage instead. There's a similar parallel to The Son Goku Song being replaced with narration after the Muscle Tower arc; the Narrator is able to fulfill the same purpose as the original song did in another language.

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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by Robo4900 » Mon Oct 09, 2017 12:42 pm

This will take a lot of time, but I recommend encoding all the episodes on your computer to MKV files with AVC video, and untouched audio. Provided you use some good AVC settings, each episode'll be about 200-500MB. The quality will be indisinguishable from the proper DVDs when in motion, and if you put a bunch of episodes on a USB stick, you can watch it from there and not worry about damaging your discs. :)

On the subject of the Funi Dragon Ball dub... It's pretty good. The re-recorded instrumentation for the OP/ED songs, and the removal of the insert songs really bugs me. Neither of those was necessary(The CD single for Mystical Adventure in Japan included instrumentals of both Mystical Adventure and I'll Give You Romance), and although the OP/ED thing can be excused by saying Toei was awkward and didn't give them the masters, the music track goes completely silent during the insert songs bits, so I think Funimation just didn't want to license the insert songs. This annoys me to no end.
Plus, the scripts were not very good. The first 13 were the old BLT dub scripts, with supplements done the same was as their Z scripts(Spanish>Engrish translation cleaned up and screwed around with to adapt to Funimation's style), then the remaining 140 were entirely the latter. On top of this, there's censorship and such which prevent it from being a great uncut dub.
Ultimately, it's an okay dub, and definitely an acceptable option for viewing if you can't watch subs, but it's definitely better to watch subbed.

I do like that Funimation made an effort to keep consistency with their original series dub when they did Kai, which fixes the previous consistency issues with watching the shows in their correct order but via Funimation's dubs(Dragon Ball was recorded 2001-2002, Z 1-67 were recorded in about 2005, Z 68-291 were recorded 1999-2003, GT was around 2004... What a mess).
Last edited by Robo4900 on Mon Oct 09, 2017 12:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by Forte224 » Mon Oct 09, 2017 12:53 pm

Robo4900 wrote:This will take a lot of time, but I recommend encoding all the episodes on your computer to MKV files with AVC video, and untouched audio. Provided you use some good AVC settings, each episode'll be about 200-500MB. The quality will be indisinguishable from the proper DVDs when in motion, and if you put a bunch of episodes on a USB stick, you can watch it from there and not worry about damaging your discs. :)
Lol I have no idea how to do this. Time would not matter to me, just need knowledge. I will research I guess :thumbup:

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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by Robo4900 » Mon Oct 09, 2017 1:01 pm

Forte224 wrote:Lol I have no idea how to do this. Time would not matter to me, just need knowledge. I will research I guess :thumbup:
Well... I think yours are the Funi DBoxes, which have a particular slightly annoying quirk to them that makes encoding them a little annoying, so... I'll get back to you on this. :lol:
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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by Forte224 » Mon Oct 09, 2017 1:02 pm

Robo4900 wrote:
Forte224 wrote:Lol I have no idea how to do this. Time would not matter to me, just need knowledge. I will research I guess :thumbup:
Well... I think yours are the Funi DBoxes, which have a particular slightly annoying quirk to them that makes encoding them a little annoying, so... I'll get back to you on this. :lol:
Haha of course they do! It's Funi after all. Thank you, any help is appreciated

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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by KBABZ » Mon Oct 09, 2017 3:27 pm

Robo4900 wrote:This will take a lot of time, but I recommend encoding all the episodes on your computer to MKV files with AVC video, and untouched audio. Provided you use some good AVC settings, each episode'll be about 200-500MB. The quality will be indisinguishable from the proper DVDs when in motion, and if you put a bunch of episodes on a USB stick, you can watch it from there and not worry about damaging your discs. :)
I'd be interested in how to do this as well, as eventually I'll have to do this step for The First Chapters project (which, btw, re-inserts the insert songs!).
Robo4900 wrote:On the subject of the Funi Dragon Ball dub... It's pretty good. The re-recorded instrumentation for the OP/ED songs, and the removal of the insert songs really bugs me. Neither of those was necessary(The CD single for Mystical Adventure in Japan included instrumentals of both Mystical Adventure and I'll Give You Romance), and although the OP/ED thing can be excused by saying Toei was awkward and didn't give them the masters,
I think what's worth noting is that for the intro and outro, the instrumental versions still have an instrument performing the part of the lyrical track; Funimation would have been looking for a karaoke version (compare the Instrumental and Karaoke versions of Over the Star, for example). On the intro and outro, I kinda prefer Funi's instrumentations, but obviously there's kind of a huge bias there.
Robo4900 wrote:the music track goes completely silent during the insert songs bits, so I think Funimation just didn't want to license the insert songs. This annoys me to no end.
What's confusing is that they kept the background music for Defeat the Red Ribbon Army, as well as The Blue Travelers. My guess was that it was retained for that climactic feeling, and felt that the removal of the others didn't impact the mood too much (as a kid I certainly didn't notice the lack of their inclusion).
Robo4900 wrote:there's censorship and such which prevent it from being a great uncut dub.
While I realize this falls into BLT script territory, I feel this was more appropriate early on in the series. Toriyama's more outright sexual humour has always rubbed me the wrong way, and it gets especially inappropriate when Oolong and Master Roshi are being depicted as rapists. And unfortunately it's one of the reasons why my girlfriend doesn't watch the show, which is a real shame.
Robo4900 wrote:I do like that Funimation made an effort to keep consistency with their original series dub when they did Kai, which fixes the previous consistency issues with watching the shows in their correct order but via Funimation's dubs(Dragon Ball was recorded 2001-2002, Z 1-67 were recorded in about 2005, Z 68-291 were recorded 1999-2003, GT was around 2004... What a mess).
Speaking of which, I've seen in a few places that Tao Pai-Pai was called Mercenary Tao to align with the horrible flashback explanation Roshi gives about the RRA during the Android Arc in the dub. Is there ever any proof of this, or is this another assumed fact by the dub fans?

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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by BlazingFiddlesticks » Mon Oct 09, 2017 3:57 pm

I used MakeMKV for my Dragon Boxes. If I recall it read the first three boxes (or one and three in my case, blast ye Dragon Box 2 drop outs!) as individual video files that could be ripped as 6-7 .mkvs straight away, while the later boxes read as giant single files that I manually cut down with MKVToolNix's MKVMerge later on. Each episode came out 1 GB~ apiece. You will have to do all of your ripping within a fairly short time though, as each free version of MakeMKV has a 60-day time limit.

https://www.videohelp.com/software/MakeMKV (The actual site is currently down, sounds like the team forget their hosting dues)
https://mkvtoolnix.download/
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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by Forte224 » Mon Oct 09, 2017 4:28 pm

BlazingFiddlesticks wrote:I used MakeMKV for my Dragon Boxes. If I recall it read the first three boxes (or one and three in my case, blast ye Dragon Box 2 drop outs!) as individual video files that could be ripped as 6-7 .mkvs straight away, while the later boxes read as giant single files that I manually cut down with MKVToolNix's MKVMerge later on. Each episode came out 1 GB~ apiece. You will have to do all of your ripping within a fairly short time though, as each free version of MakeMKV has a 60-day time limit.

https://www.videohelp.com/software/MakeMKV (The actual site is currently down, sounds like the team forget their hosting dues)
https://mkvtoolnix.download/
Great! Thank you I'll check that out too. Been using MKVMerge for a while now so I have that at least.
KBABZ wrote:I'd be interested in how to do this as well, as eventually I'll have to do this step for The First Chapters project (which, btw, re-inserts the insert songs!).
Yeah if you could keep me updated on that, that would be great

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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by KBABZ » Mon Oct 09, 2017 4:47 pm

Forte224 wrote:
KBABZ wrote:I'd be interested in how to do this as well, as eventually I'll have to do this step for The First Chapters project (which, btw, re-inserts the insert songs!).
Yeah if you could keep me updated on that, that would be great
It has its own thread over in the Fan Works board, you just have to scroll down a bit. Right now I'm uploading some of my best/most clever edits to YouTube as I go (here's a Playlist).

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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by SupremeSSJ » Tue Oct 10, 2017 7:52 pm

Forte224 wrote:DISCLAIMER: I honestly don't know where to put this, I guess here makes the most sense.

Ok, so I just scored the Dragon Boxes. I'm pretty psyched. Anyway, I really want to back the Dragon Boxes up as soon as possible just in case something ever happens to them physically. What's a good software to do this? I used DVDFab9 in the past but it crashes constantly. Thanks!
I'm a lifetime member of dvdfab and the cloning process is the best i've used out of a bunch of cloning software. They also now have a Cinavia removing tool, but you wont need the since these disc aren't Cinavia protected.

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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by Robo4900 » Tue Oct 10, 2017 8:06 pm

MakeMKV is a bit meh. It doesn't do any re-encoding, and the MKV files it spits out don't usually gel properly with MeGUI.
It'll do fine for backing up to your PC, but the files will be pretty huge, and you'll have to manually split each disc's MKV into individual episodes using MKVToolNix or something.
KBABZ wrote:I'd be interested in how to do this as well, as eventually I'll have to do this step for The First Chapters project (which, btw, re-inserts the insert songs!).
Provided you're using the Japanese Dragon Boxes of the original series, it's really easy to do. You basically just put the disc in the drive, open up MeGUI, do the one-click encoder, point it to the VIDEO_TS.IFO file, pick the correct PCG(They're in the wrong order in the menu. Pay attention to the numbers. The PCGs that contain the episodes are PCGs 3-8. I believe 1 is a marathon feature, while 2 is a marathon feature with the NEPs and such included), and click queue. Naturally, you'll want to set up some proper encoding settings first, and work on the avisynth script and such, but that's all one-time setup stuff that you do before doing your first episode. From then on, it's easy as pie.
If you want me to go into detail with the Avisynth and encoding settings, PM me, and I'll give you some more details on this. Don't want to clog up the thread with that stuff.
KBABZ wrote:I think what's worth noting is that for the intro and outro, the instrumental versions still have an instrument performing the part of the lyrical track; Funimation would have been looking for a karaoke version (compare the Instrumental and Karaoke versions of Over the Star, for example). On the intro and outro, I kinda prefer Funi's instrumentations, but obviously there's kind of a huge bias there.
Actually, the instrumentals of Mystical Adventure and I'll Give You Romance on the Japanese CD singles were proper instrumentals. Literally just the tracks as-is, but without the vocals. There are instruments that follow the vocals somewhat, but they do that in the main song too as an extra nuance.
The only thing it's missing is the gong sound from the TV version of Mystical Adventure, but it's the same gong sound as you hear in the eyecatches, so it's very easy to reinsert.
KBABZ wrote:What's confusing is that they kept the background music for Defeat the Red Ribbon Army, as well as The Blue Travelers. My guess was that it was retained for that climactic feeling, and felt that the removal of the others didn't impact the mood too much (as a kid I certainly didn't notice the lack of their inclusion).
I think they basically cut all the ones they thought they could get away with so they could save money on music licensing.
KBABZ wrote:While I realize this falls into BLT script territory, I feel this was more appropriate early on in the series. Toriyama's more outright sexual humour has always rubbed me the wrong way, and it gets especially inappropriate when Oolong and Master Roshi are being depicted as rapists. And unfortunately it's one of the reasons why my girlfriend doesn't watch the show, which is a real shame.
Fair, but I think that's just a flaw with the show(In fact, I'd specifically categorise it as early installment weirdness, as the predatory aspects of certain characters is -- as far as I remember -- entirely confined to a couple of episodes in the first arc. Point is, most shows have some form of early installment weirdness. Parks And Recreation was straight-up bad in its first 6 episodes). An uncut dub's job is not to provide a different take on a show, it's to provide an option for people who don't like or can't watch subtitles. The BLT dub worked great because it was a TV dub; it was cut and censored, because of course it would be. That kind of stuff just doesn't belong in an uncut dub, though.
KBABZ wrote:Speaking of which, I've seen in a few places that Tao Pai-Pai was called Mercenary Tao to align with the horrible flashback explanation Roshi gives about the RRA during the Android Arc in the dub. Is there ever any proof of this, or is this another assumed fact by the dub fans?
His name in their dub of the original series is Mercenary Tao. But in Z, they called him General Tao.
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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by KBABZ » Tue Oct 10, 2017 8:30 pm

Robo4900 wrote:Provided you're using the Japanese Dragon Boxes of the original series, it's really easy to do. You basically just put the disc in the drive, open up MeGUI, do the one-click encoder, point it to the VIDEO_TS.IFO file, pick the correct PCG(They're in the wrong order in the menu. Pay attention to the numbers. The PCGs that contain the episodes are PCGs 3-8. I believe 1 is a marathon feature, while 2 is a marathon feature with the NEPs and such included), and click queue. Naturally, you'll want to set up some proper encoding settings first, and work on the avisynth script and such, but that's all one-time setup stuff that you do before doing your first episode. From then on, it's easy as pie.
If you want me to go into detail with the Avisynth and encoding settings, PM me, and I'll give you some more details on this. Don't want to clog up the thread with that stuff.
I think I'll do that. Thanks!
Robo4900 wrote:Actually, the instrumentals of Mystical Adventure and I'll Give You Romance on the Japanese CD singles were proper instrumentals. Literally just the tracks as-is, but without the vocals. There are instruments that follow the vocals somewhat, but they do that in the main song too as an extra nuance.
The only thing it's missing is the gong sound from the TV version of Mystical Adventure, but it's the same gong sound as you hear in the eyecatches, so it's very easy to reinsert.
Huh, I never knew that! I usually just come across the Instrumentals from the DB &DBZ boxset OST.
Robo4900 wrote:I think they basically cut all the ones they thought they could get away with so they could save money on music licensing.
Quite honestly, I think Funimation saving on money worked out in a lot of places for the 02 dub. The intro and outro were a lot closer to the originals than with DBZ, the score wasn't replaced, and in most places the script wasn't severely deviated upon either. The wording tends to be quite different (at least from the ViZ translation) but the same jist comes across in most cases.
Robo4900 wrote:His name in their dub of the original series is Mercenary Tao. But in Z, they called him General Tao.
Ah, pretty weird, but they probably didn't think they'd be able to dub OG DB at the time (that occurred during their dub of the Buu arc). Mercenary Tao makes sense since that's pretty much what he is, although Tao Pai-Pai is a lot cooler to say.

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Re: Best way to back up my DVDs?

Post by Captain Awesome » Tue Oct 10, 2017 8:57 pm

I've been ripping my collection as .iso files.

While it isn't the most space efficient of methods, I have a CFW ps3 and a script running on my NAS that allows me to mount the discs from the network and play them natively through the PS3's rather decent DVD upscaler, it also sidesteps the issue of region, and allows me to patch my Japanese releases with English subtitles.

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