What would be the most convenient, common, universal format for sharing the contents of a DVD

Some time ago, I uploaded the audio files of the original soundtrack of the game (in three .7Z archives containing lossless .WAV files) after I finally managed to purchase it.

There is also a bonus disc included, a DVD which contains three versions of the intro, some trailers, a documentary on the team and a few slide shows of concept art. What would be the most convenient format to share this? I presume this content is almost unavailable so it’d be a waste not to share it (the game is getting 16 years old now, and I don’t think this CD/DVD set is even for sale somewhere).

Oh btw I should be able to do this with freeware, and it should be as simple as ripping a CD. (It has been quite a while that I ripped the contents of DVDs and I’m completely out of the loop on that.)

Dromedary wrote:
Is this the content from the Ubisoft release a few years back?

As far as I can tell, this is a CD/DVD from 2003; I bought it (sealed!) from someone in Estonia (or Latvia, or Lithuania; I’m not even 100% what the exact country was, but it was one of the Baltic nations).

Thanks guys! I’ll investigate the options sofar.

MakeMKV created 8 .MKV files that I cannot play back: the video lacks; it does play the sound though. I get a message that I miss the codec. While this may be an oddity on behalf of my own PC, I prefer a program that creates files that I can use without having to install codecs (it is a long time ago that I bothered with that, but I still remember what an awful mess this could create. Especially with relation to Freelancer!)

HandBrake does generate .MKV files that I can watch. The odd thing is that it neatly generates 24 files — but some of these are duplicates*, and I don’t mean e.g. alternative versions of the trailer etc. which are indeed on the DVD, but duplicates that aren’t even in the menu. The menu isn’t included in the rip, and neither are there any tites, so it’ll take me some time to sort all the files out, and decide whether I will upload these duplicates… It seems rather pointless, but maybe there are some minor differences that I overlook. Also, when I do include them, I can relieve myself of the burden of figuring out what’s going on

*(There are minor differences in size, so it is not an actual duplicate like a computer would create; it seems more to be the case that the publisher put some videos on the DVD twice.)

TheJkWhoSaysNi wrote:
Alternatively, rip the iso ( https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-create-an-iso-image-file-from-a-dvd-bd-or-cd-2625180 ) and upload that. Then others can just mount the ISO and get the full experience

I personally am completely out of the loop when it comes to mounting ISO images, but I will take it into consideration. If I would put it online, I would also like to link to some good freeware that people could use to mount it. Is there one that you can recommend?

@Junkozane: thanks! But I’m already working with HandBrake which I am getting to like, although I still haven’t found the ideal settings.

Schmackbolzen wrote:
I use Handbrake (www.handbrake.fr), you can use it to encode it with h265 and mkv container. Medium preset should be fine and quality around 15 (try to experiment with short snippets, the lower the number the better image quality you get). Tune should be SSIM. I don’t know whether it can read the dvd titles as source, though. You can enter a time range of what you want to have encoded.

@Schmackbolzen: I am still trying to figure out to rip the videos as lossless as possible, and I would guess that this would be the easiest, but frankly it’s not. This is a luxury problem: I already made a bunch of acceptable rips, and they are so small, storage-wise that I can easily allow them to be less compressed. But I am now doing H.265 MKV 2160p 30 with RF:8 and video dimension actually twice as large as they default to, and the resulting files are still smaller in storage space than the ones that I did on the default H.265 MKV 1080p 30 with RF:22. I can hardly discover any differences in visual quality between them.

I must say btw that the videos on the DVD are not superb at all, quality-wise. Some actually look like Youtube rips. So, maybe I’ll just stick with the H.265 MKV 2160p. Unless you (or anybody else familiar with HandBrake) have an obvious tip.

Maybe I try it with RF on 0… That is supposed to be max quality, and if the storage-size of the files is still acceptablem then why not?

EDIT I figured out that I have to empty the queue and reload the files to have the updated parameters apply to them. No wonder the files kept being the same storage-size. Also, RF:0 probably renders files with a storage-size too inconvenient for sharing (and probably not resulting in a tremendous gain in quality anyway). So, I’ll continue tweaking it

Lady}{Diamond wrote:
Hey MoonHead,

For example, ripping a 480p resolution DVD in 4K doesn’t provide higher quality but just larger files. Gain higher video resolution is not possible this way. Same principle with audio, you can’t obtain high quality WAV file with a bad quality mp3.

Yes, I figured that out Thanks anyway.

I now have it ripped, without messing with the proportions, as .MKV files, at H.265, 2160p 60, with RF set to 15. That rendered a nice trade-off between file size and quality.

Oh BTW, it is online now Don’t expect too much of the Bonus DVD. It is nice, but not life-changing nice.

Thanks for the feedback Schmackbolzen

Schmackbolzen wrote:

You probably should select the source material resolution anyway.

That’s what I did in the uploaded files.

Schmackbolzen wrote:
Also I think it is better to disable deinterlacing under the “Filters” tab. It looks like it applied it to some of the videos (or the source material is really bad). For instance look at the Microsoft logo in “Freelancer_OST_-Bonus_DVD-[H.265_2160p_60_RF15]-03-Trailers-_E3_2002.mkv”. It looks really weird.

Imho it hardly looks better on the DVD; the trailers especially where what shocked me, video-quality-wise. I’ve seen better Freelancer-related cinematics on Youtube tbh. Which is why I suppose this CD+DVD is really from 2003.

I actually think that I’d indeed better upload the .ISO, with the program suggested above. But I’d first like to also know a free and convenient program that can be used the mount the .ISO, so that I can provide a link (I’d hate it too if I’d find some .ISO to download, then having to figure what’d be best to use).

Provided the .ISO isn’t a hugely large file that is… (I actually have no idea).

And, I have some other priorities first now!

Schmackbolzen wrote:
Oh ok, I thought you tried to upscale the resolution since the name implies it.

Does the 2160p imply a resolution? Because, there is also an option to alter the video dimension in pixels, and this is where I first tried to enlarge it, but later stuck to what the program suggested. Which btw was slightly smaller than what it said the source files was - but excacly copying the entries from the source screwed up the aspect ratio, so I stuck to what the program auto-recommended.

The default preset is “1080p 30”, with RF:22, but that generated imho worse quality videos (with larger file sizes!).

Btw thanks for the info on the .ISO. I learned that from Win8 and up, this functionality is already present in the OS, so no need for an external program (but of course many in the Freelancers will still use Win7 so it’s nice to give them that link.

EDIT Attempting to upload the .ISO (3.12 Gb, zipped) takes quite a while, and it failed a couple of times as well. Hopefully this time it’ll work.

EDIT As far as I can tell, it’s up now.