Backing up DVD / blu ray & CD collection?

[Technique]

Yes i did (point to the right location).

I didn't put it on a USB drive this time, i just pointed it to the folder it was in on my hard drive.

 

Thing is, it's now listing various music and even photos on my hard drive when i specifically only pointed it to the folder with the movie in. I don't even want it showing photos up.

 

And for some reason the movie in the folder on my hard drive has now totally disappeared, like it's been deleted, yet i didn't delete it.

[DevTech]

1 hour ago, Technique said:

This upscaling - just a curiosity thing here so don't shoot me but is it more for me or yourself? Since i already said if upscaling involves a ton of work then i'm gone.

 

 

The upscale thing is 99% for you, 1% for my curiousity. Like everyone else, I don't use DVDs

 

I have been going with the hypothesis that all this silly PLEX stuff is a complete waste of thought, time, and space if you will vomit at the look of a "normal" upscale from DVD to HD TV compred to a "sophisticated" upscale that your Sony BluRay equipped PS4 is using.

 

The PLEX "nuts" in this thread are gambling that once you connect up PLEX to your TV, the "shiny new object effect" will take over and you will talk yourself into a "normal" upscale being "good enough" and that might very well prove to be the case, and to be clear, nothing wrong with that if you end up happy with the result.

 

I have posted a couple of posts that contain photos with "before and after" showing how sophisticated upscale processing makes a very noticeable difference even in tiny web photos.

 

The work involved is finding a solution which is my quixotic task. Once found if it exists, then there won't be much work at your end. But no point if you don't read and understand the few sentences I have just written here. So ask questions on anything at all that is not 100% clear to your in this post but stare at the photos first if you can.

 

[xendrome]

Is this really on page 10 now....

[sc302 Veteran]

it doesn't magically delete stuff....there would be a lot of complaints if it did.  It will search your default folders for music and other stuff, you can redirect to a blank folder or take those out of the search in plex.

[DevTech]

9 minutes ago, Technique said:

Yes i did (point to the right location).

I didn't put it on a USB drive this time, i just pointed it to the folder it was in on my hard drive.

 

Thing is, it's now listing various music and even photos on my hard drive when i specifically only pointed it to the folder with the movie in. I don't even want it showing photos up.

 

And for some reason the movie in the folder on my hard drive has now totally disappeared, like it's been deleted, yet i didn't delete it.

WELL,

 

Since you have it on a USB, and the TV might be a more sophisticated device than we had previously thought, it would be a nice test to plug the USB into the TV and play the movie for a bit and then play the same clip from the DVD in the PS4 and see if the TV upscaler is any good.

 

[DevTech]

4 minutes ago, xendrome said:

Is this really on page 10 now....

Why not?

 

A lot of different topics have been discussed.

 

Not like a wizard in Harry Potter has cast a spell which forces your House Elf to drag you to the computer and read this thread, or... wait... is this a secret request for help? Should we be calling Hogwarts for an intervention?

 

[fusi0n]

1 minute ago, DevTech said:

Why not?

 

A lot of different topics have been discussed.

 

Not like a wizard in Harry Potter has cast a spell which forces your House Elf to drag you to the computer and read this thread, or... wait... is this a secret request for help? Should we be calling Hogwarts for an intervention?

 

I have been researching on higher end dvd upscaling.. A lot of good movies never made it to bluray.. Sorta interested in trying some, but there seems to be a huge learning curve to do it right. This thread has a ton of valuable year information.. Easily 10 years of research posted in one thread.. lol 

[DevTech]

10 minutes ago, fusi0n said:

I have been researching on higher end dvd upscaling.. A lot of good movies never made it to bluray.. Sorta interested in trying some, but there seems to be a huge learning curve to do it right. This thread has a ton of valuable year information.. Easily 10 years of research posted in one thread.. lol 

A huge amount of science/match/product/patent research has gone into the topic with most of it during the time period of general movement from SD to HD in human civilization.

 

A bit of renewed interest in upscale techniques during the current similar transition from HD to 4K but the source material is better this time.

 

Due to recent advances in AI/Machine Learning, there has been a mini-revolution in Computer Vision and some of these super advanced techniques are being applied to upscaling too.

 

Now, for DVDs the giant problem is that most research happened before Open Source Software was the accepted thing it is today and also most playback was happening inside hardware players which did not have the power these devices have today with ARM CPUs running Android etc. So all the best algorithms got locked up inside custom processing chips and the Spec Sheets for high-end BluRay Players would list the chips they used for this since at the start it was a VITAL FEATURE when only a handful of BluRay movies existed.

 

It is a HARD TOPIC to discuss because:

 

- it seems simple on first thought

- it is almost in the category of "lost art"

- way too many people are "visually deaf" like "tone deaf" and can't even notice incorrect aspect ratios!

- almost nobody understands how video works so they imagine it is a series of images and the process is like photoshop

- and the ones that annoy me the most are the tech aware people that think you can't get information that isn't there in the original when you upscale so what's the point and the craziest part of this ignorance is it extends to people like the Handbrake developers who tell people to never upscale, leave it to playback when in fact there are two great divisions to this problem:

 

- non-real-time (like Handbrake if they weren't clueless) and real time upscaling on playback.

 

Obviously you can do a lot more processing in non-real-time and there is tons of professional studio equipment from back in the DVD days that did that to provide HD content of TV networks before there were any HD Cameras to make HD shows!

 

For real time playback upscaling the most effective source of video processing would be in the GPU, but before the frame buffer is assembled otherwise you just end up doing photoshop upscale 60 times a second!

 

 

If you have any questions please ask.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DevTech]

47 minutes ago, fusi0n said:

I have been researching on higher end dvd upscaling.. A lot of good movies never made it to bluray.. Sorta interested in trying some, but there seems to be a huge learning curve to do it right. This thread has a ton of valuable year information.. Easily 10 years of research posted in one thread.. lol 

If you own a couple of these DVDs and you live in a large city, you could visit a small specialty store in "audiophile" or "home theater" category that sells that insane expensive stuff and play you DVDs in some high end equipment so you can see for yourself a baseline comparison of what those specialized chips managed to achieve,

 

The LG device I linked to with Dolby Vision, Sony ESX1000, Oppo 2XX series, etc

 

Note that Sony sometimes used a licensed chip but mostly felt they knew what they were doing and had their own set of upscale algorithms..

 

I'm convinced that viewing those devices becomes a "hard to beat" baseline that should be able to improve upon in 2018 with the right software, particularly non-real-time upscaling with current AI neural net techniques based on adversarial networks

 

In fact China is going nuts using hordes of people to train computers to recognize objects.  Once that works, you can substitute a hi-res simulation of stuff in a movie scene when upscaling! (actually you would enhance objects in more subtle ways by knowing what they are, just like a 3D game where water in a scene gets one type of processing, grass another etc)

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/25/business/china-artificial-intelligence-labeling.html

 

 

 

 

 

[DevTech]

Seriously people?

 

Do we have to see these "is it really on page X" posts that imply the discussion is stupid when in fact that comment is stupid?

 

Otherwise all the posts would be Acronis vs SyncBack if we were just mindlessly answering a question like Seagulls chasing a fish in Finding Nemo, instead of what this amazing thread is actually doing by exploring the realms of human knowledge and boldly going where no video enthusiasts have gone before!

 

[+BudMan MVC]

So did get plex working... It really is pretty idiot proof!!!

[Technique]

Lol, Devs last post I was going to post the exact same right before I leave for work. 

Take a look at the page number at the bottom if you can't believe what page we're on. Yes, believe your eyes, you don't need to ask anyone else. 

 

Remove those posts & we'll probably be on page 3. 

 

And so what if we're on page 501? Is it really harming your day any? If so then someone needs a break from the internet, seriously. 

[fusi0n]

20 hours ago, DevTech said:

Seriously people?

 

Do we have to see these "is it really on page X" posts that imply the discussion is stupid when in fact that comment is stupid?

 

Otherwise all the posts would be Acronis vs SyncBack if we were just mindlessly answering a question like Seagulls chasing a fish in Finding Nemo, instead of what this amazing thread is actually doing by exploring the realms of human knowledge and boldly going where no video enthusiasts have gone before!

 

Removed

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

1 hour ago, fusi0n said:

We should try to figure it out how to do it ourselves. I'm a huge fan of DIY.. I try to rip all my own music and movies because of the quaility.. The quality of FLAC streaming via AirSonic vs Spotify Premium is huge.. Are you in the Neowin IRC? we could set some time aside and see how to set something up

Agreed. We can help you, yes, but you have to try it yourself. Not just asking left and right.

 

I understand your time is limited, but please TRY before you ask us 100 questions on how to do it.

[DevTech]

46 minutes ago, Mindovermaster said:

Agreed. We can help you, yes, but you have to try it yourself. Not just asking left and right.

 

I understand your time is limited, but please TRY before you ask us 100 questions on how to do it.

You got him mixed up with the OP...he has different interests

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

5 minutes ago, DevTech said:

You got him mixed up with the OP...he has different interests

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

Also just noticed that OP has Xmas decorations up (or something that suspiciously looks like Xmas decorations). What gives? 😛

 

That error that OP had looks like Plex had found the file, indexed it and tried to play it but it's gone. The file (USB or external storage ) needs to stay plugged in.

[+BudMan MVC]

My wife put our stuff weekend after thanksgiving.. I put up the lights outside that Friday - good thing too since on Sunday we got over 8" of heavy wet snow

 

Suppose to get more this weekend, so clearly their would of been no xmas lights outside this year if had not put them up on Friday

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

2 hours ago, BudMan said:

My wife put our stuff weekend after thanksgiving.. I put up the lights outside that Friday - good thing too since on Sunday we got over 8" of heavy wet snow

 

Suppose to get more this weekend, so clearly their would of been no xmas lights outside this year if had not put them up on Friday

Thanks for the warning....  

[fusi0n]

3 hours ago, DevTech said:

You got him mixed up with the OP...he has different interests

Thanks!  lol

[DevTech]

5 hours ago, fusi0n said:

We should try to figure it out how to do it ourselves. I'm a huge fan of DIY.. I try to rip all my own music and movies because of the quaility.. The quality of FLAC streaming via AirSonic vs Spotify Premium is huge.. Are you in the Neowin IRC? we could set some time aside and see how to set something up

I am normally not a fan of messaging, private or public for 2 reasons:

 

1. Forums are like email, a "store and forward" mechanism that permits people to give a subject their attention when it is convenient to do so.

 

2. "FOR ALL MANKIND" - so it's not the Moon Rocket, but every time discussions go "off line" a potentially valuable body of information is lost to the community as a whole, while discussion here is searchable by Neowin members and by Google.

 

But, it is an interesting thought experiment to think about how one would upscale a DVD in 2018 with the resources available today, even though one would have to start with most of the older well thought out stuff a lost art of proprietary code and custom silicon chips.

 

Given the low cost of disk space in general, the previously accepted disgust of upscaling a DVD to FHD as an encode to take up hard drive space with "mostly empty video information" could be re-considered as a starting approach to permit vast computing power to be applied "off-line" to see if the DVD can be upscale enhanced using software that was simply not available in a previous era.

 

The primary new approach available is loosely named "AI" but is just a type of neural network config that large corps are now using every day, on every possible application. There has been a mini-revolution of image processing using GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks) being used in Google Photos and stuff like that which also would apply to Video Processing.

 

The big giant elephant of video processing that everyone forgets to think about, is what happens before that mental picture you have of a series of 1920 x 1080 images being pushed 60 times a second.

 

1. Its true that you end up there, and in fact all sorts of image processing can be applied to each and every one of those 1/60 of second images...

 

2. But the source you are starting with actually consists of "key frames" (like one of those images) plus DIFFERENCE INFORMATION which means (no duh) that you have images that are MOVING, which for DVD upscaling and enhancing, means you can also use information from other frames in your quality improvement quest! Depending on the scene in the movie this can be a lot of information that top end DVD upscalers from the previous decade (which are the current peak of DVD viewing equipment) couldn't use (at least more than a frame or two in either direction)

 

With CV (Computer Vision) you could even auto-tag objects and scenes from one part of a movie to help enhance scenes elsewhere.. Hmmm that might be a patentable idea...

 

 

 

 

 

[+BudMan MVC]

56 minutes ago, DevTech said:

how one would upscale a DVD in 2018 with the resources available today

You would purchase the new remastered 4K UHD BluRay

 

 

[Technique]

5 hours ago, DevTech said:

You got him mixed up with the OP...he has different interests

Interesting how the mindset is already there though don't you think Shows how some people are thinking as they step in to the thread before they even read what's been said like they've already decided what they're going to say

 

Anyway, about the comment that Plex doesn't magically delete stuff...

 

I never said it did (or didn't). I'm simply telling you what happened. That's like me telling you i had fries & cheese earlier & you telling me you never said i had to have it. No, nobody said you did. I'm just simply telling you what i ate.

 

I set up the server, i created a 'movies' library and i pointed it towards E:\Video which is where the movie was. In that folder there was the movie rip and what i think would've been the special scenes or the trailers or whatever it was (it was only a few mins long).

 

Once it had detected them, i deleted this special scenes clip. I tried to play the movie from within Plex and got the error i showed earlier. I then went to the E:\\Video folder only to find no movie there at all - the clip i'd deleted had gone (obviously) but now so had the other.

 

Add to that that the library was filling up with audio and picture media from my D:\\ hard drive.

23 minutes ago, BudMan said:

You would purchase the new remastered 4K UHD BluRay

 

 

I've only re-bought 2 movies in BluRay that i already had on DVD since they were my favourite 2 movies. The rest i leave in DVD quality

[DevTech]

1 hour ago, BudMan said:

You would purchase the new remastered 4K UHD BluRay 

 

Yeah, that's what people do.

 

Except 500 DVDs in a binder is a lot of money and then the case of movies that were never converted...

 

There's a practical reality as you suggest and that will dominate in the end, but it's interesting that in "copyright infringement" cases, Sony and their cronies argue that they didn't sell you a DVD but instead the value was the IP (Intellectual Property) and the actual DVD media was just worth a few pennies... So since you already have the IP "rights" to view the movie, you should be able to mail a request to Sony etc for a BluRay/UHD copy for just a few pennies...

 

22 hours ago, fusi0n said:

A lot of good movies never made it to bluray.

 

52 minutes ago, Technique said:

I've only re-bought 2 movies in BluRay that i already had on DVD since they were my favourite 2 movies. The rest i leave in DVD quality

Ah, humans  and their curiosity... What were the 2 movies that the industry extorted a second payment out of you for the same IP?

 

[Technique]

7 minutes ago, DevTech said:

What were the 2 movies that the industry extorted a second payment out of you for the same IP?

 

Scarface & Bad Boys