For the time being I’m talking about movies, mostly on DVD, although at some point I need to digitize old Bar Mitzvah and wedding videos and school plays. But right now my problem is trying to turn my DVD collection into an on-demand video library, and I can’t figure out a good way to do it — H.264 is the best video quality currently available, but the amount of time it takes to compress is insane. The baseline profile works with my Apple TV but the high profile would be a better bet for the future. If I rip in full quality my iPhone can’t play it back, because it is limited to 640×480 and can’t figure out anamorphic. And what should be done about the DVD extras? Why can’t current software handle supplemental audio tracks? And of course Apple TVs and iPhones can’t play them back even if they could be included.

The only solution I can come up with is ripping full DVDs and figuring out how to compress (or re-compress) later. But they take up a huge amount of space and *still* can’t be played back on any of my devices. Stupid.