DVDFab? It sure is!

The Ninja is currently in the process of ripping his entire dvd and hd movie collection to his media server to enable wider streaming of films and also to enable archiving of the physical discs to cold storage. I explored a variety of options for doing this including using the popular

Nero, the ever-excellent Handbrake and digging out old faithful warez like Smartripper and DVDx but really wanted a one-click, drop-the-disc-in solution.

I wanted something to convert to h264 mp4 and also to retain the 5.1 surround sound effect rather than downgrade to just stereo mp3. I finally settled on my old version of DVDFab (v.6) and began to rip to away (but to be honest wasn’t really happy with the output results) but that was before receiving the offer to upgrade to the latest edition (v8.0.8.5) and wow what a difference that made!!!!

Optimised for Nvidia’s CUDA architecture that is designed to boost read times through the gpu, the latest editions of DVDFab offer awesome upgrades in processing speed. The difference was incredible as I saw transcoding times drop from approximately 1hr 15minutes to under 30minutes for the main movie of a dvd. At this rate I’ll blow through the conversion process for my two hundred or so movies in a matter of days rather than weeks or months.

The benefit for me of DVDFab is its ability to directly read from the disc rather than have to copy the TS folders to the hard drive first before transcoding. As a result of its simplicity, efficacy and quality of output I would have to say that DVDFab is a must-own product now for any home movie fan…

Linux...taking over the world

I do find it most amusing that Linux, the open source operating system invented by Linus Torvalds back in 1991, is now so prevalent in our everyday lives.

Long perceived as the poor relative to Microsoft’s Windows operating system and Apple’s Mac OS X (although both Mac OS X and Linux are Unix-based). Retailers rarely make Linux-based operating systems available as an option for new computer purchases preferring either a Windows variant or in Apple’s case only offering their own flavour of software.

Despite being free, Linux has long been perceived as the domain of geeks, accessible only by those inclined towards delving deeply in to the inner workings of a computer but the long extorted adage of ‘blessed are the geeks for they shall inherit the earth!’ seems destined to come true if indeed the current trends continue.

Google is at the forefront of the Linux cavalry charge with their insanely popular Android mobile device operating system. Now the world’s leading mobile OS, Android has seen explosive growth since its launch just over 2 years ago, driven by its free unit cost to manufacturers and Google’s marketing clout that enables Android devices to integrate so closely with their highly popular web-based services.

Google are also leading Android’s assault on the desktop environment with the development of its Chrome OS, a Linux based operating system designed around Google’s Chrome web browser designed to provide web access and services delivered solely through the web. Offline support is provided via HTML5 to ensure the device doesn’t cease to function when offline.

Canonical have been the most ardent of supporters of Linux with their iterations of Ubuntu, probably the most popular desktop Linux OS. It offers rock solid performance and a beautiful minimalist environment as well as increasing hardware support for no cost. It has risen in popularity as it works well on low-powered netbooks which have become increasingly prevalent lately.

Beyond the computing environment, numerous consumer devices run some form of the Linux system including set-top boxes, televisions, gaming consoles, networking equipment, network storage devices, media players. Its pervasiveness is increasing all the time and with an increasing amount of computing done via mobile or handheld devices, Linux, through Android’s popularity in particular, seems set to emerge as the world’s leading computing platform after all.

A win for the little guy…