That's what I had thought but I'm concerned that I'll rip my entire collection and then when I buy an extender in a few months, they won't work because elsewhere I have read that extenders cannot access Video_TS ripped DVDs. I don't have an extender currently so wanted to check with others who might have experience themselves. If Video_TS ripped DVDs can be accessed by extenders, please let me know! If not, I am assuming I will need to use a different format. As you say, I'm not particularly bothered about file size but I want to keep the quality and the 5.1 sound.
So my question really is: Are my Video_TS files okay or do I need to convert my existing rips to a format (e.g. WMV) and rip the rest of my DVDs in this format?
Thanks,
Brian
But the website also says (edited for bevity):
"In general, "My Movies" support the same movie formats as Media Center does. These movie formats include ripped DVD's in VIDEO_TS folder format, Media Center recorded TV titles, and all video formats with the required codec’s installed. Notice that only some of these video formats are supported by Media Center extenders.
Media Center extenders only supports a limited type of video formats (MPEG, MPEG2 and WMV, but not DVDs), which "My Movies" also detects. This means that you can be prompted "Could not find any compatible video files in the folder" when you try to play your movie title, or you can get a playback error on the extender. This is not because there is anything wrong with your movie title, but simply because the playback of this movie title is not supported on the extender."
This implies to me that DVDs, ripped or otherwise, are not payable on extenders, irrespective of whether you use MyMovies or just the Vista-built-in My DVDs function. Therefore it seems the choice is MPEG, MPEG2 or WMV unless you transcode which isn't ideal. Is this conclusion correct?
Wow ... deja vu. I've just gone through this entire activity of ripping my DVD collection to a 2TB NAS as well, and then streaming them over the network to the 360 extender, so let me share my thoughts as to what your options are.
First step ... get your original DVD into lossless archive format on the hard drive (the VIDEO_TS folder). Rip the DVD to hard drive using either DVD Decrypter, AnyDVD, or DVDFab. Personally, I used DVD Decrypter all the way, even on Vista, and she worked like a charm.
Next ... avoid shrinking. More often than not, you'll hear responses to this type of question with "oh yeah, use DVD Decrypter/DVD Shrink". Back in the day, when dual-layer drives weren't readily accessible to the consumer market, DVDShrink helped you take the content from a commercial dual-layer 8.5GB disc and shrink it down to the single-layer 4.5GB format for burning and future playback on your own disc media. In general, however, you should avoid the use of a post-rip shrink program. Keep your original DVD in pure lossless format, for how much ever disk space they consume. Note that older DVDs will on average take 4.5GB of space (since they were published on the original single-layer discs) while most newer ones will consume 8.5GB (now published on the dual-layer disc format). Also note that the only real reason you'd ever want to use something like DVDShrink is when converting from the archived format into a more portable type (WMV, DVR-MS, Divx/Xvid, etc.) and you have a disk that needs special attention (English subtitles, multiple episodes on one disc -- think television series, etc.).
So now you've got your lossless archive without shrinkage ... now what?
Well, running Media Center in standalone host mode (i.e. not extended) is easy. Use My Movies (www.mymovies.name), point to your DVD catalog on the NAS, and let it do the rest.
Running in extended mode is a little more involved, since you can't stream pure VOBs (the core of what makes up a DVD) over the network for technical and legal reasons. So to overcome this limitation, there are 2 paths you can take. Either have an inline transcoder convert and stream on-the-fly as a background service in Windows (e.g. Transcode 360), or do your own VOB-to-whatever format conversion offline (e.g. VOB2MPG, etc.), and then play that compatible format under Media Center. Both have their pros and cons.
The benefit to Transcode 360 is that you have one and only one format (the original lossless archive). There's no need to have a second type of format (WMV, etc.) since the transcoder handles this at run-time (using a temporary buffer to convert to MPEG-2). This frees you up from having to do the offline conversion yourself, and keeps your disk relatively "light" in terms of its used space -- that is, you only consume extra disk space for the secondary format when you need it, and then when you're done with the movie, that disk space is reclaimed.
The big downside to Transcode 360 is that there is no Rewind/FF at all, since it's transcoding on the fly. Now at first I thought this would be no big deal at all, but once I got down to actually watching a transcoded movie, I realized it was. You want to stop the movie half-way and go out, go to bed, etc., and come back to it. With transcoding, you can't really do that. You'd have to stop/pause the movie, leave the 360 on, and then come back to it when you want ... because if you stopped and turned off your machine, you'd have to go back through the process of watching it again just to get to that point.
One downside to Transcode 360 is that you need a fairly beefy machine to handle the run-time transcoding ... an underpowered machine will leave you with glitches in the video stream, or audio and video streams that are out-of-sync with each other (as a baseline, I've got a 3.2GHz P4 with 4GB of RAM doing the transcoding for me, and it works without a problem, although I'm sure there are other people here doing the same thing with far less hardware).
Another downside to Transcode 360 is that it doesn't handle subtitles, multiple episodes, and language tracks that well (for me, at least ... mileage may vary with others here). I have movies that failed the subtitle issue (The Protector), discs that had multiple episodes on them that weren't properly selected (Rome, Entourage), and movies picked up with the wrong language track (Espanol on The Departed). So realize that with T360, you're giving up a lot of the freedom you get in offline processing to allow you more control over those things.
That being said, your only other option here is to go with offline processing, and convert the original DVD format into a compatible type of video playback stream for use on the 360 (and yes, you can still use My Movies to catalog and index these other format types). I often liken this to the classic problem you have on the music side of things. Often times you'll want to have your CD collection in pure lossless format (e.g. WAV or FLAC), but you'll end up needing to have that in a more portable and compact format (e.g. MP3, WMA, AAC, etc.) for the end device (e.g. iPod, Zune, etc.). So what you do here is keep an archived copy of all your discs in their lossless format, then run a series of tools over those files to make them more portable and create a second, more compact copy. With DVDs, it's no different, and frankly, I'm finding this is really the way to go. Note that I'm suggesting you create one archive that contains the original DVD in its entirety, and a second archive that has those files converted into another, more portable format.
There are two big cons to doing offline processing and conversion to another format -- disk space and time. Having two archives (the original and the portable) takes up considerably more disk space, and performing theconversion physically takes time. Most people would rather not have to do that, but finding the right tool can help (some even offer command-line options for batch scripting).
The big pro to doing this, however, is that you get full control over the end result. You can select what goes in and out (subtitles, multiple episodes, etc.), and you can select the format. And not only do you get all of that, but since you have the conversion done before run-time, you can then FF/Rew through the movie.
So what format should you convert to? One that the 360 offers native playback for (WMV, WMV-HD, DVR-MS, MPEG-1, MPEG-2). Personally, my initial tests of this used MPEG-2 as the end format, but I soon realized that there were limitations in its FF/Rewind capabilities. Others on TGB here will recommend WMV or DVR-MS (wrapping the MPEG-2) to get around those problems, and now that I've seen that, I tend to agree. So at this point I'd recommend the WMV or even DVR-MS format.
So where does that leave us?
Give T360 a try just to see what it's pros and cons are yourself. There's nothing better than first-hand experience here, and a lot of this stuff will make more sense once you've seen it in action.
In the end, though, I will recommend that you rip your entire archive to its original lossless format, and then create a more portable secondary copy in a different format offline, using WMV or DVR-MS as the end result.
As a final note, I find that this offline conversion exercise works wonderfully for what I want and need out of my DVDs, but for smaller videos (e.g. television episodes, etc), I simply use Transcode 360 for them.
Give it a shot and figure out what works best for you.
Hey drTh20dog... nice write up. What are you using to convert to .wmv and/or DVR-MS? And do your conversion retain AC3 surround?
Thanks
G
Good question.
I've just started the process of converting VOB-to-WMV (having gone the MPEG-2 route earlier), and so far I've boiled it down to 2 products ... RiverPast Video Cleaner (http://www.riverpast.com/en/support/tutorials/convert/vob/wmv.php) and YasaSoft Video Converter (http://www.yasasoft.com/tutorials/vobtowmv.htm).
Personally, the RiverPast software looks more complete and well-rounded, but it comes with a higher price tag than Yasa's stuff.
I've trolled through the TGB here, but haven't been able to find something that people clamor over.
Perhaps it's worth another post ...
Steve
I recently ripped a dvd using DVD Decrypter into a video_ts folder. When I launch WMC on my Vista Ultimate machine, under the "TV + Movies" tab it doesn't show the dvd. Do I have to place the video_ts folder someplace specific? Using the "library settings" tab I told WMC to watch the folder that contains the video_ts folder, but still I get nothing. Can someone tell me what I am doing incorrectly?
thanks!
drTh20dog: Good question. I've just started the process of converting VOB-to-WMV (having gone the MPEG-2 route earlier), and so far I've boiled it down to 2 products ... RiverPast Video Cleaner (http://www.riverpast.com/en/support/tutorials/convert/vob/wmv.php) and YasaSoft Video Converter (http://www.yasasoft.com/tutorials/vobtowmv.htm). Personally, the RiverPast software looks more complete and well-rounded, but it comes with a higher price tag than Yasa's stuff. I've trolled through the TGB here, but haven't been able to find something that people clamor over. Perhaps it's worth another post ... Steve
You could try www.dvd-wmv.com Seems to work alright plus its free.
Personally I use mpeg2. I just rip the main movie only. I like to be able just select the movie and it starts like video on demand. I may convert some of them to dvr-ms as soon as My Movies fully supports this. However, using the chapter skip back and forward is enough for me. I just changed the interval to 2 mins forward, and 30 seconds back.
Steve - what did you conclude regarding these programs - which do you think is best?
Personally I prefer to wrap everything (video, audio, subtitles) in an mkv container, that way I get subtitle easily, and usually I encode the video in x264 format. Nice and small for dvd movies.
VIDEO_TS format uses a lot of disc space...
/Henrik
WebGuide (http://asciiexpress.com) Media Center add on DVD Streaming
Handbrake (http://handbrake.fr/?article=download) DVD to anything converter