Video Converters

December 15, 2008 12:37 AM

Video Conversion to store DVDs on computer (PC) and play them on xbox 360, iphone etc - what's the best program to do so?

From what I've read online, it seems that DVD Shrink is a good program to rip DVDs to a hard drive in combination with AnyDVD. This enables the storage of VOB files which can act as a basis for converting files to iphone, Xbox 360 etc. I then have the following questions.

1. DVD Shrink recommends keeping file sizes under 1GB - therefore it will create multiple VOB files. Thus what is the best program to join VOB files together? Alternatively is it better to create multiple WMV files and then join them together? If so, what is the best program for this?
2. According to this article, WMV files seem to be best for xbox 360 since this will enable files to be both streamed and played from an external hard-drive (see FAQ #10) What is the best program to achieve this? Programs I've seen so far include (mostly from this article). Bonus points if they join files as mentioned in Qu 1.

a) Handbrake
b) Format Factory
c) Super
d) Mediacoder
e) Videora

Any help gratefully appreciated!

posted by Mave_80 to computers & internet (6 comments total)

1) If you're intending on keeping 'backups' of the DVD structure - movie, menus, featurettes, interviews, etc - then keep the .VOB files under 1GB. This goes regardless of whether you're making a straight backup, or a backup shrunk to fit (e.g. using DVDShrink) on a 4.7GB DVD-R. The DVD structure requires .VOB files to be <= 1024MB, and you will run into problems if you try to burn a .VOB > 1GB to a DVD-R for playback on a DVD player, so you may as well keep them at the correct size. Personally, I'd just rip them without shrinking e.g. with DVD Decrypter.

2) Dunno about the .wmv encoding abilities (my preferences in the non-Windows world lie towards MPEG-2 & MPEG-4), but Handbrake & Videora are OK for format conversion, and both can read the structure of the DVD from the .IFO files & 'join' the .VOBs during conversion to produce a single movie file. Steer away from SUPER® - it has its place, and I've recommended it before for particular purposes, but it's a screwed-up fugly piece of junk with the worst UI ever. Handbrake probably has the edge in ease-of-use and quality at the moment (is Videora even under active development still?), but they both use basically the same encoding tools behind the scenes.
posted by Pinback at 1:03 AM on December 15, 2008

Vobs by their own definition max out at 1GB. Any program that is due to rip a dvd should be abilt to see what's going on and span those VOB's correctly.

You might consider ripping to DivX (a varient on the MPEG4 that handbrake creates.) Either use Xbox media center or an article like this to play those files.
posted by filmgeek at 5:01 AM on December 15, 2008

Mediacoder and Super both suck horribly and violate the licenses of programs they incorporate. Videora is supposedly pretty good. Handbrake is slow as hell on Windows.

DVD Decrypter can rip a DVD program chain (e.g., the main movie) as a single VOB >1 GB for transcoding purposes and is how I would recommend doing it or re-processing (not transcoding) an AnyDVD or DVDFab rip.

The Xbox 360 will play H.264 encodes up to High Profile @ Level 4.1; the iPhone, unsurprisingly, will play only the crippled "baseline" profile up to Level 3. Given the considerable advantages of Level 4.1, if you're encoding for both, I would recommend making two separate encodes. The Xbox 360 will also play most Windows Media files but there isn't a good free consumer solution for WMV encoding because Microsoft insists on making Windows Media Encoder 9 the most inaccessible piece of crap to hit the market - worse, the Xbox 360 will play anamorphic MP4 files but not anamorphic WMV files, as if Microsoft didn't control both the format and the player.

With all that said, my recommendation for H.264 encoding on Windows would be MeGUI, for a variety of reasons. First, it comes with pre-configured encoding profiles for both the Xbox 360 and the iPhone and anything within the bounds of NTSC standard definition content you encode using them will play on either. Secondly, MeGUI uses both DGIndex and Avisynth to check the interlacing of DVD content and provides a preview for you to do so, making it very easy to eliminate combing and duplicated frames - making your encode look better and making the source more compressible. The use of Avisynth means that MeGUI can encode ANYTHING you can play on your computer, which gives it a considerable advantage over Handbrake (which uses the wonderful, but incomplete, ffmpeg). Finally, you can preview any filtering you do to the source before encoding to make sure your aspect ratio is absolutely correct, that cropping was done properly, etc. In your case, if encoding for both the Xbox 360 and the iPhone, you can configure your source and filters and then change only the encoding settings while queueing up both to be encoded. The support forums at Doom9.org are excellent for any questions you have, as that is probably the best site on the internet for video encoding.

Both the iPhone and the Xbox 360 can also play MPEG-4 ASP (DivX, XviD, etc.) content but as always there's a catch: the iPhone is limited to MP4 containers and the crippled "Simple" subset of the ASP features. In all practicality, throw most existing ASP files at the Xbox and you're fine but the iPhone won't support them. What a mess.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 7:51 AM on December 15, 2008 [2 favorites]

I can really add much to what Inspector.Gadget said, but I just figured I'd mention that I've had extremely good luck with using DVDFab. They don't make it real clear on the site, but the basic functionality is free (including ripping only the main movie) but you'll have to pay to do the more advanced stuff. For some reason DVD Decrypter hasn't worked real well for me and DVDFab has ripped everything I've thrown at it. FWIW, I've used Videora to encode for my iPhone and I've been happy with it. Haven't tried MeGUI yet, so I'll give that a try next time based on IG's recommendation.

I'll also second the notion that, if you care about optimal quality on the respective devices, you'll probably end up needing to encode two versions. There just isn't enough overlap between the 360 and the iPhone.
posted by jluce50 at 8:28 AM on December 15, 2008

Doh! Meant to say I can't really add much...
posted by jluce50 at 11:22 AM on December 15, 2008

I don't mess with the VOB's directly; I rip to ISO.

I'm in the middle of ripping the best of my DVD collection for my iPod Touch (2nd Gen) and I'm using DVDFab and Handbrake with great success. If it's a TV show, I just rip the disc then explore the disc structure with VLC (e.g. Episode 1 is Title 1, Chapter 1; Episode 2 is Title 4, Chapter 1) and then convert episodes in sequence. Most modern TV shows seem to require deinterlacing and that slows down the conversion a bit.

For movies, I use DVDFab to selectively rip "just the movie" and Handbrake to convert. Videora used to be great for a simple front-end to transcode the format but as of Handbrake 0.93 that's not necessary anymore.

Big props to the Handbrake devs for treating Linux like a first class citizen; the GUI is now included by default.

I'll triple the encode-twice if you care about quality. I've decided I do not. I have the Blu-Ray and/or DVD and will watch it if I want quality over convenience.
posted by PolarHermit at 3:13 PM on December 15, 2008