@DarkAthena Transcoding video and/or audio is typically done to make that media smaller and/or more portable. Usually while remaining high enough quality to be mistaken for the originals.

I sometimes do this for my my collection of Blu-ray Discs and DVDs.

However, professional media studios do this all the time as well. For example, Netflix transcodes all the movies and TV shows you watch into many different distribution formats.

Does that answer your question?

@mayintoronto

@DarkAthena Technically, no. Ripping is not transcoding.

Ripping typically means that the underlying video and audio formats are unchanged. Ripping just changes the container which holds them.

Ripping can often solve *some* portability problems, but not all of them.

To put it another way, ripping is a lossless change in format while transcoding is "lossy," i.e. information is lost in that process.

Does that make sense?

@mayintoronto