Ripping my Knight Rider box sets to the pc.

[dgacampbell]

As per title, I have spent the last 3 days ripping my Knight Rider DVD collection to my computer.
Two reasons for this, I use my PC as a media center , music, movies even tv lol. (most of the time)
I had recently dug out the knight rider dvds to play, and noticed some of them starting to degrade around the edges.
I have these dvds from each season became available, so they are some age and have got some use.
What a slow job, has anyone else undertaken this task?
Anyway I now have 57.7GB Knight Rider folder lol. All nice H.264 files.
Sadly there where 2 episodes did not make it, as the dvd was to far gone, oddly the season 4 box set was in the worst condition, the newest set and the least played set.........strange.
The 2 episodes damaged are "Knight behind bars" and "Knight song".
Frustrating now I have to buy another boxset for 2 episodes to complete the collection again......... such is life!

[GuestGuest]

I do the same, I have my pc as my htpc, we've been doing this for years and I'd never go back to set-top boxes and discs. We just have lots of hard drives and everything is packed away out of sight.

I have all of the knight rider dvd's ripped to my hard drives but i ripped them complete (the whole disc not compressed etc.) and the folder is at least 100gig plus off the top of my head.

BTW, I i have all of the NTSC retails, plus the PAL Universal Playback issues plus a few ofthe Columbia House issues on there.

As for disc rot, I haven't had that with my set so maybe you jus got unlicky there, I have had it before though many years ago with some MGM DVD's that had to be returned due to a manufacturing error.

Hope this helps.

BTW, my DVD's are over on the merchandise thread in Model and Collectables.

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[dgacampbell]

Nice one, I was going to do that like you had done, until a friend had informed me that the h.264 is lossless compression codec. So I gave it a try.
It is the universal playback sets I have.
The theory being NTSC isn't as good a format........ Question do you find the pal copies any better? Are the NTSC copies as grainy?
You have some Nice stuff there!
I had the anuals as well, and A big metal kitt car, My mother took it off me when I was around 10 or 11 telling me I was to old to be playing with it. I have never forgivin her for that lol. Unfortunately they are long gone.

[Admin]

What programme did you use to rip them off? I was planning to do the same with some of mine DVDs.

[dgacampbell]

Hmmm I use Slysoft Anydvd to do away with the copyright gubbins. (21 day trial)
And then Handbrake to actually copy the movie or episodes. (free)

Sorry I cant post direct links.

[GuestGuest]

NTSC v PAL...

Well I want to see them in their native formats, speeds and resolutions...
I can't stand PAL speedup as it makes the episodes paly at not only the wrong speed but also the wrong pitch too.

As for the prints, the NTSC episodes are all 720x480 and I can't see any noticeable difference to the PAL versions. ALso my understanding is that the PAL versions were created from the NTSC masters which would make sense in my mind.

As for differences in other prints...well, the PAL 'best of Volume 2' has the Season 4 episodes with their original Stereo soundtracks...the season sets have downmixed all of the episodes to mono for some strange reason.

The Columbia House VHS's and DVD's have inferior prints to the newer sets but they do not suffer with the awful cropping (Season 2 onwards on the Universal Season DVD's) and the songs are intact that were substiuted on later sets.

Reviews of the NTSC sets can be found over at KRO...follow the links for other sets...

U.S. NTSC Season 1

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There is also a thread on the mono sound issue and the cropping which can be found here also...

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[GuestGuest]

Yep Slysoft AnyDVD will rip them to your hard drive. From here you can use any software player to play them from folder or .iso etc.

[dgacampbell]

It would be interesting to see them in NTSC, to see/hear the difference.

[GuestGuest]

There is a program called 'Reclock' (by slysoft also) that you can use as a filter with programs like Media Player Classic etc.

It enables you to slowdown the audio in PAL videos by approx 3%....it's worth downloading as sometimes I find tv shows and films but I can only get them in PAL as NTSC versions are not avaialble...I can then at least slow them back to their native pitch.

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[hoffman95]

You are all crooks!!!!!


Only joking I'd do the same if I had enough room on my pc.

[GuestGuest]

You are all crooks!!!!!


Only joking I'd do the same if I had enough room on my pc.

Ha ha...I just can't stand having all the boxes lying around lol...

We have 8 External Hard Drives all loaded up, most of the DVD's are packed away in banana boxes in cupboards and it just makes watching things so much easier - especially if you have kids that love shiny plastic discs lol

It's great for things like this also, working on the internet, KR on one side of the screen, taking screengrabs, writing pieces and reviews etc. or even just working on here while the kids watch Spongebob on the other side...multi-tasking!

BTW the DVD on the right of my screen is the Columbia House DVD of the Pilot which I've just got. The picture quality is pretty lousy compared to the Universal set but I just want to see if there are any other noticeable differences. None at the moment and I don't think that there are tbh going by what I have read and seen so far.

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[dgacampbell]

Thanks RE. reclock, will go get that and try it.
Slysoft do some great software, I have used anydvd for years as I am short on patience and hate sitting through all the copyright rubbish before you can watch anything on dvd bluray etc.
Just play movie or whatever straight away.

A word of warning to anyone doing this, dont rely on a hard drive for your only copy, they do on occassion go bad.
I recently had a 1.5TB drive fail, with all my music collected over the years and a load of high def movies.
I was lucky enough and was able to get all my music off it, but lost quite a few movies.
The music I had backed up at my mothers on my old pc anyway as it was most important to me.

[dgacampbell]

lol agreed Steve, I do the same !

[dgacampbell]

TBH the picture on the dvds is pretty bad on a lot of episodes, Its a wonder universal wouldn't let them be cleaned up and released.

[GuestGuest]

Well if you think they are bad you should see the Columbia House DVD's!

They have a very 'old' look about them, as if CH had very old poorly telecined low-res prints to work with. They are totally different prints to the Universal releases.

Universal on the left - Columbia House on the right

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[Kitt]

Never bothered with trying to rip them cause the audio tends to go out of sync 50% of the time.

[dgacampbell]

So I see!

Its funny, I dont remember the picture being as bad when watching on the old crt televisions, they where able to get away with a much lower standerd all those years ago.

At the same time I have seen many an old film transfered to High def with great results, which leads me to believe the original film must be in pretty poor condition if thats the best they could do with it.

[dgacampbell]

Kitt, depends what software you use
Nero is a classic for that, also rediculously slow too.
What have you been using for ripping?
I have checked through all my rips over the last 3 days, all perfect.

[GuestGuest]

Never bothered with trying to rip them cause the audio tends to go out of sync 50% of the time.

Sorry to hear that you have had sync issues. I've never had that problem in ten years of ripping and storing on hard drives, though I do not re-encode anything - everything it kept 'as-is', all folders and files intact.

The only problem I have is running out of usbs and storage space...though as drives are getting bigger I've been replacing my 1tbs to 2-3tb's.

[HalloweenKnight]

Columbia House version looks like a washed out VHS quality
This remindes me I should back up my VHS tapes which have original music and sound effects intact in those 3rd & 4th Season episodes, should've done it already when the recordings were new.
Just the other day I watched one tape which is now approaching 8 years old and the colours had started to wash away like those Columbia House screenshots.

For example Lost Knight is much more enjoyable in the VHS recording when all sound effects are intact. I've got another recordings of this episode from TV but they are cut versions for commercials, only one full episode recorded.

It still pisses me off that they cut those sound effects off in the DVD releases, it is much more noticeable than the altered music which also bothers me. They should've make the DVD's perfect with sfx & original music for them being better than the VHS recordings!

[GuestGuest]

Columbia House version looks like a washed out VHS quality
This remindes me I should back up my VHS tapes which have original music and sound effects intact in those 3rd & 4th Season episode...cut those sound effects off in the DVD releases, it is much more noticeable than the altered music which also bothers me.

Yeah I agree, they do look like poor VHS copies, I suppose if i get hold of one of the CH VHS releases I would bet money that they look identical.

I'd love to get hold of a complete set of NTSC NBC original broadcast tapes or failing that, a set of Thames (or U.K.) episodes - the PAL speedup can always be corrected.

As for the sound effects, yep, totally bizarre considering how long it took to get KR to DVD by Universal. They should have taken a leaf out of Time Life, great DVD collections of 'The Six Million Dollar Man' and 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' etc. Expensive but good value I think.

The thing that bugs me most is the cropping issue, the pictures are so cropped when you compare them against the CH and previous Playback releases...such a shame. I'll put some grabs up later.

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