i,m setting up 8 server pcs for my network + a mediacenter pc ( threded earlier) a torrent box pc & a client pc (to tie everything together) heres the breakdown 6 cheap older pcs no monitor/kb-m(auto load & convert to mpg/divx then load to the mediacenter or nas box. project pc ( for sw testing /programming : later 2nd mediacenter. server pc, master unit ( used for all files on the network)no monitor/kb-m gaming pc (onlyone not in the network connected to the server pc & test pc, no monitor , set to tv w- controller nas box (no os just attached hdds for storage & torrent box ( torrent dldng that,s it)no monitor/kb-m simply put i,ll soon be able to do everything i need from the network on the client pc :remote acess lotta work, but it,s the only way to do what i need i have 6000 dvds to load & convert no i am not a geek or a pc wiz, just testing a thery, as said before trying to automate loading & converting alot of dvds . auto download stuff & setup a pc to run the whole thing. any ideas. or is this tooo futuristic?
Not too difficult, just time consuming. Do yourself a favor and get a good router, 3com or better. I would recomend getting a cheaper 10/100 1-4port router, and combine it with a decent gigabit switch. You can use various remote desktop apps to do the job, windows even comes with one that works OK on a local network.
you,re right already got a 8port router & nas/external storage 2tb x2 usb2.0. + the client /viewer pc. ------------------------------------------------------------------ the systems are real old : srvrs 1-6 pentium 3/celeron 350-550mghz 256-512mb max ram 32mb vid(won,t need it headless. 7.8gb hddx6 (1 for each dvdrom x2 for each win srver 2003 client sw the only thing theese are used for is loading dvds to hdd & converting to mpeg /divx then loading to nas storage ------------------------------------------------- next is torrentbox :celleron 1.1ghz 1gb max ram 128mb vid (won,t need it ) 160gb hddx2 ubuntu linux srvr :w- auto torrent dld when completed loaded to nas box dvdrom :for loading os & programs ------------------------------------------- the last spot is for my media server. that,s another story the systems & os sw is ready, nas box will be here soon learning the process on the torrentbox. tieing it all together is the tricky part. remote desktop apps :searching now.
A few notes: 7.8GB hard drives might not be big enough to rip one DVD at a time, let alone 2 at a time, as a large DVD is 8.5GB and a small windows install is 1GB. Since you are also using the systems to convert the MPEG2 movies to MPEG4, you will spend more than the time to rip a DVD on compressing each DVD. With this in mind, there is little use for more than one DVD drive per system, even if you did have large enough hard drives. The torrent box and the client PC should both have good hardware NICs...3Com, Intel, or better. Onboard network adapters (even intel) tend to have issues with lots of connections open at once. If you want to play games online, I would also recomend a good NIC for the gaming system. If you want big storage space from a cheap NAS box that only supports one or two hard drives, you can do it with hardware port multipliers...these will allow you to connect 5-100 drives (or more) to a single port. Just make sure the NAS box supports large drives, as many of these boxes will not work with drives over 2TB, and some won't even support drives over 1TB. Also, don't trust claims of "48bit drive support"...companies like adaptec use this claim to hide the fact that their chips do not support 1.5TB and larger drives. 48Bit does support drives over 2TB, but most compaines that make the 48bit claim do not support drives over 1TB due to parts of the chips being less than 32bit. Tying them all together will actualy be the easy part...with the possible exception of running wires through walls. The remote desktop client built into Windows will do the job just fine if all the systems have Windows installed. There are also lots of freeware RD softwares that will work with Linux systems. May I ask what your theory is? Does it have something to do with overloading your electrical outlets?
Just passing thru. I would stick to onboard NIC's unless they either fail, or in case they don't handle lots of connections (not seen a NIC that can't handle loads of connections yet), but have had the odd onboard NIC die, in which case that's when you can just buy a plug-in NIC to replace the dead one.
wow thanks for the info. cant understand it all , yet. 2 dvd rom drives per unit is what i am after. that,s 16 drives total . assuming this will work; cant get any of the pcs to run yet, since everything will run from 1 client pc, kinda like having 8 windows running 2 programs each. = 16 dvds decrypted in only the time to decrypt 1. get the picture. example 1dvd dl =1hr to decrypt what would take 16 hours ? would take 1 hour. this is just an example i figured 2 - 4port routers would work, im just acessing the remote to check status & set locations of files. same for the encoding :that takes long so this what i plan to do. poweron the systems when i get off of work load the discs press decrypt. sitback & surf the web in between time. it only takes 30 min - 1hr for most dvds, then later encode to the format i like, sleep while the systems are working. by the next morning files are done. all remotely. or stackup the dvd isos & batch encode. whatever,s easier. as for the torrent box? scratch that; windows xp :no monitor kb m + bittorrent = torrentbox remote acess only , that,ll be the one i,ll workon later. usb network is the best (in my case) for torrents. setting up remote acess & disabling monitor kb m is nessery, won,t need them due to the client pc acting as the functions needed.
That seems reasonable, but remember that to rip just 2 large DVDs will require 17GB of hard drive space, and more for windows, and still more for the MPEG4 versions that you convert to. You will need even more if you will be doing multiple rip runs (like scanning in 4 sets of 16 dvds each in one day). Not much use for big 500GB drives here, but for 4 sets of 2 dvds per system, you need probably 60GB free space per machine not including space for the OS and the converted movies.
true dual hdds 160gb each is what i,ll use. gotem at a real good deal, if possable i,d like to setup 4 dvd drives& 1 320gb hdd per unit. nic is intergrated into the mombos, bios upgrades is needed, i know. theese old units are real old, outdated someone dumped on me a while back & taking space in my garage squeezing life into them no use to other projects. if they holdout for this project. it,ll be worth the trouble. otherwise plan b: byng new cheap atom boxes. if there was an easier way to recode 6000 dvds to avi/mpeg . it would help. besides if this works i might keep em for other projects
eeh? naah et,s arent interested in earth anyways. if they hold, i,ll keep using them till they die, better than waisting money on new units to use only ounce. besides backups are easy this way, & the 3r,s are always good. REBUILD, REUSE, REFORMAT,. then again, old tech is more relieable, crude, but the parts are cheap. who knows, might be of use in another way,
calculations on sizes are another issue. ex: dvdr 4.4 gb- 4400mb. is typical, dvddl 8.2gb- 8200mb is max converted format depends on the format & quality ex: mpeg mp2 avi mkv(what is that?) mp4 , divx, xvid, wmv, rm, etc. another prob is the real good format & resolution. most dvd recorders are 6-8hr max on 1 sl dvdr, comes out real good too, if theres a way to do this & get that many hours on 1 dvd 550mb per 1hr if the math is right that,ll be 8hours the total of 4400mb. if you could reduce the size of 225mb for 1hr x19 hrs = 4275mb im guessing mpeg1 is the format. blockyness is typical with high compression formats still, if the source is excelent the output file will be still good right? another notions is subtitles: if they can be intergrated into the video , that,ll be great. ( some of my movies are import-w subs)
You should know that if you are ripping to an ISO image, the image is typicaly a bit larger than the DVD ripped...but not by too much. You can also rip the main title dirrectly, this usualy result in a ripped file that is smaller than the orriginal DVD size. The fly in the ointment here is that some DVDs have protection that prevents DVDDecryptor and DVDShrink from copying them. In this case, you have to rip to an image using AnyDVD, then mount the ISO with Daemon tools. Thankfully, I have only run into this a few times. Don't convert to MPEG, the movies start out as a much better MPEG2. DivX and XviD are both forms of MPEG4 (and there are many other forms as well). MPEG4 gives better quality for the size, but anything you do to the video other than a dirrect stream copy will reduce quality at least a little...even if you do it so the final file size is larger than what you started with. AVI and MKV are just containers, they can be made with various different formats (DivX, Xvid, Mpeg, etc). MKV offers the ability to copy the movie to the container without loosing video quality, you can also make an MKV that compresses the movie to a much smaller size with minimal quality loss. MKV also offers the ability to keep alternate audio streams and subtitles. AVI is just one audio with one video. While MKV is better in all technical ways, it does not work with all devices, such as most USB equiped DVD players. If you want to prevent a quality loss, you should leave the movies in MPEG2, but XviD will not hurt quality very much if you use it correctly. Don't waist your time with WMV or RM or DivX...these are all closed-source proprietary formats that offer poor quality/size ratios. Don't try to squeeze down MPEG2...you can get much better quality and size by converting to some form of MPEG4.
