I did get the little cat hangings done. I will share those this afternoon.
My past week has been stuck in the burning movies to my hard drive mode. Remember my little outdoor theater? And remember that I bought a DVD/Blu-Ray player for outside? Well...yanno...I started to wonder if instead of using that player, I could somehow burn the disks I own to a hard drive and run them using Plex.
And I found out I CAN! I had to get some different software than I have, trial and error to find which software(s) did the best job of ripping and converting.
The first one I found was Winxdvd. It did a great job of ripping the disks. And they were okay for viewing, but they weren't high definition. You need a converter for that. But I was okay with it. I bought it before I'd tried out other software. But in my defense, the trial versions had limitations on them. I could probably get a refund, but eh...I mean, I did get a fair amount of use from them.
One that I ripped was Cleopatra. A two disk version. I didn't watch what had been ripped, since all of the other movies seemed to be okay. I ripped each one then had to find a software that I could join the two parts together. I used a software I've had for ages (Movavi) and the words weren't in synch with the lips. (This hadn't happened with the other movies, just this one. So far.) Four hours. I re-ripped the first part with WinxDVD using different settings and it was the same problem.
I downloaded the trial of WinxDVD's converter software, but it had a limitation of five minutes. The movie has over five minutes of music before the movie starts. You know, how movies used to be in the old days? Music that gives you a chance to get comfortable in your seat before you actually see something on the screen? I had to purchase it to convert more than five minutes. It was a bust. The lips were still out of sync. Back to my search.
That's when I discovered Wonderfox software. I downloaded the trial for the converter software first. I converted the first part of Cleopatra that I'd ripped using WinxDVD. Lips were still out of sync. So, it wasn't the converter. At the completion of the conversion, I got a popup with a great price on Wonderfox's ripper software. I didn't buy it right away, but I did download the trial and, boy howdy! I was impressed. Because it converted at the same time it ripped! It wouldn't be a two step process. So, I bought it. For fifteen dollars! Super good price.
I ripped Clepatra again, this time with Wonderfox. Converting to 1080p from 720p at the same time. I started the movie. The lips were in sync! I bought the software! (Make sure to do a google search for promo codes.) Then I used Movavi (I've had this for a long time, so many softwares to do different things) to join the two parts and they look great. And I converted one of the twenty movies I'd ripped the previous couple of days.
Anyway, I re-ripped all of the movies I'd done with WinxDVD with Wonderfox, converting them at the same time. They look great. I actually got three of the ripping softwares, one for the Plex machine, one for my big PC and one for the laptop. Because I have a lot of movies.
Now for blu ray. I got an external blu ray player/burner, which came with Cyberlink software. Too confusing and it wouldn't work right. I looked for something else, I had tried MKV and Handbrake and I just didn't want to spend that much time trying to figure out the different options. Certainly not frustration free. I ended up trying Leawo blu-ray software to play the blu ray and it seemed to work. So, I figured I'd try their blu ray ripper. It worked, too.
But they didn't work this morning. Frustrated, I did a google search for the error I was getting. And this time the fix was pretty simple. Running as adminstrator fixed the start up problems. I'm ripping the first disk of the Lord of the Rings right now. (And this really sucks because I'd had the trilogy set since 2011 or 2012, never paid attention to it until last year. Included in the set were download codes for everything in the box, that expired in June 2012 - I wasn't in the streaming mode back then, so I never did anything with them. I tried pleading my case with the Warner Brothers folks, but it was a case of you snooze, you lose. Geez. They were only eleven years since the expire date, come on, guys...lol...at least I tried)
The first part of the Two Towers just finished and it looks awesome! Five more to go! (I'm only doing the movies, not the extras.) Next up, the Harry Potter set.
And that was my past week. Geeky, fun stuff. I drink this stuff up.
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