DVDs or video files

Discussions of new films, books, television shows, and media indirectly related to magic and magicians. For example, there may be a book on mnemonics or theatrical technique we should know or at least know about.
Tom Gilbert
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DVDs or video files

Postby Tom Gilbert » September 16th, 2017, 2:30 pm

I'm going to try to clean up my hard drive and copy or convert the video files to DVDs. Would there be any advantage to converting the video files (mpg) to DVD files and then burn them?

Bill Mullins
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Re: DVDs or video files

Postby Bill Mullins » September 16th, 2017, 8:31 pm

I think DVDs are becoming an obsolete medium. At least, the ones you burn on a computer aren't super stable. I'd buy a stand-alone hard drive and copy the files to it ( or get 2 so they are backed up.) Do this every few years as your library grows and storage gets cheaper.



My Blu Ray player will play many video files directly, so I wouldn't convert the files if I were to back them up on DVDs. You can get a Sony player that will do this for $60 or so, maybe less.

If you do decide to convert them, Handbrake is a great free video conversion program, and VLC is a great free video player.

Tom Gilbert
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Re: DVDs or video files

Postby Tom Gilbert » September 16th, 2017, 9:48 pm

Thanks Bill. I do have a back up, but wanted to watch them a little more conveniently, as I usually store the drive away. Makes sense to put a lot more video files on a DVD, than spending time converting and only getting 1, maybe 2 on a disk. I've heard of Handbrake and also Flick, but files it is.

Bill Mullins
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Joined: January 17th, 2008, 12:00 pm
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Re: DVDs or video files

Postby Bill Mullins » September 17th, 2017, 12:43 pm

Tom Gilbert wrote:Thanks Bill. I do have a back up, but wanted to watch them a little more conveniently, as I usually store the drive away.

Well, with two you can hide one as a back up and use one attached to your machine. Or to your network, if you have one (we have a wifi network attached to the cable network to get internet to the various computers, tablets and phones in our house).

To follow up on the blu ray, we end up watching a lot of computer files on our big TV (mostly movies and British/PBS mystery shows). This is very similar to the player we have. It plays .AVI, .MP4, .MKV and other common video file formats. It also plays from a USB port, so it's very simple to copy a file from the computer to a thumb drive and play it on the machine.

We also have a Chromecast, and us it to play things in Chrome and stream them to the TV (the Chrome browser will play several types of video files).

I was not familiar with Flick. May have to give it a try.


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