Media Library Digitizing Test – Total novice here, so there is probably an easier and quicker way than how I am doing it at this point. Still not sure if I will go to digital movies & series since it seems to require lots of time. Movies have been easy so far, but next test will involve digitizing a series like Game of Thrones or Justified or maybe Dark Winds since it is short. Series requires its name plus season plus multiple disks (1, 2, etc.) – so that test may be too much trouble…I just dunno. Total costs at this point are about $80 for Blu-ray drive and EaseFab software.

Using Wbacon external Blu-ray burner drive and EaseFab LosslessCopy software:

• Wolverine Blu-ray took 30 min 29 sec to digitize on a Data M.2 NVMe drive @ 15.6 GB size & MP4 format.

• Using HandBrake reducing software took 25 min 10 sec to reduce from 15.9 GB to 2.74 GB size.

Two other tests on different type of drives took 48 min 36 sec on one, and over that on the other—I ended that test when it went over 48 min. Went much faster using the M.2 NVMe drive on my ‘Rose’ test computer, which I use for all kinds of testings rather than main computer. ‘Rose’ has an Intel® i9-10900K CPU, descent GPU, 32GB of ram, so is no slouch, and will be used to digitize if I decide to go that way.

Tests have helped me decide to go for a 2 TB or 4 TB HDD main storage drive over the much more expensive SSDs and M.2 NVMe in those sizes. Have been digitizing and reducing on the ‘Rose’ Data drive and/or the user Videos folder, and then moving the final MP4 file to a USB 3.0 SATA Bay External Hard Drive Docking Station with a test HDD.

If all goes well with the TV series testing, then I will decide whether or not to go digital… 🙂