Handbrake & external DVD drive minor issue-bug?

[FirebirdTN]

The short version:

When I use handbrake to convert my TV shows on DVD, it always cuts the last episode short by about 10 minutes give or take. Now I am almost positive it is only doing this when encoding from my external USB drive.

Longer version:

My primary computer is an older "desktop replacement" dockable laptop. I want to place a good share of my dvd collection on my NAS for convenience, so I started at it. However, not wanting to prematurely burn up my laptop's internal DVD drive, I figured I would buy an external "throw away" drive and cross my fingers that it works in Linux Mint 17.2 (and it does!!!), but noticed ever since using it, it always cuts that last episode short. I can go back, and encode just that one episode by itself, and it completes fine. Although my external usb drive is a throw-away, I did pick one with good ratings and reviews. Its a Samsung SE-218GN.

Any thoughts on a fix? As you can see, I have a work around. And I do not know that much about video encoding-I am using hb at its default settings, and coincidentally enough-the defaults provide an output that is small enough, yet good enough quality (to my eyes), and best yet-works on all my video renderers on my network.

Thanks,

-Alan

[kwisher]

For a test, try creating an ISO disk image of one of your DVD's with Brasero, K3B, or your preferred way. Load the ISO into Handbrake and do the encode as you would with the physical DVD. I do this if I am doing multiple DVD's as you can then que multiple ISO images at one time in Handbrake.

[FirebirdTN]

Thanks for the tip! I will give it a try, since I have lots of DVDs to encode anyway. I did not know you could do that with an .ISO.

I use Brasero for burning discs, so I will give that a shot. (I know lots of folks don't like Brasero, but it has worked fine for my purposes so far).

-Alan

PS On exhaustive research of the issue (only found two instances loosely related) it seems its probably more of an issue of external devices (USB?) than it is the software.

[FirebirdTN]

That worked, although terribly slow! And all the episodes that I converted matched down to the byte, except the last episode, which completed fine.

I tried it again kind of a different way without creating an .iso and so far it *seems* to work fine. I will keep trying different things, but so far what I was doing that ended up with the last episode cut short was:

I used the DVD itself as a source in handbrake, with the output file going directly to a subfolder of the root share of the mounted NAS.

What I tried that seemed to work:

I used the DVD itself as a source in handbrake, with the output file going to a local folder on the hard drive. Then moved the resulting files to the NAS.

I'll keep at it, but so far so good writing the output to the local drive.

-Alan

[kwisher]

That's very strange that you say it's slower using the iso as it should be faster than a optical drive.

[FirebirdTN]

That's very strange that you say it's slower using the iso as it should be faster than a optical drive.

Its been a few days since I have been at it, but IIRC the it spent quite a long time on "obtaining key for DVD" or something along those lines.

Also, the drive never sped up when making the ISO..it seemed to spin at a constant speed the entire time (conversely when using the DVD as a source in handbrake the drive seemed to spin up faster as it progressed through the disk).

-Alan

[kwisher]

I was referring to the actual handbrake ripping process should be faster since it is reading the iso from hard disk instead of a slower optical drive. Yes the entire process would be slower as you are adding the iso creation into the mix but the advantage would be you can que up multiple iso's and walk away and not have to feed the optical media one disk at a time.