Looking for Advice Before I Begin Large Conversion Project

[jtrain]

My setup:

Xbox 360 (running as media extender) downstairs hooked up to 42" LCD


PC Upstairs running Vista Ultimate. Acts as file store for all pictures and music


My current setup works great for all my pictures and music. The next phase involves movies. I have literally hundreds of DVD's that I would like to rip to my PC upstairs and stream to the 360 downstairs. I am very wary to start this project as it will take a huge amount of time, and I want to make sure I start with something that I'll be happy with when I'm done. I'm not a videophile/audiophile but I do want good quality video and 5.1 sound. File size isn't too much of a concern, but obviously the smaller the better. The biggest issues are file format compatibility with MCE and the Xbox, indistinguishable video quality from the orginal DVD (or very close) , 5.1 sound and a format that will around for a while (so I don't have to go through another big conversion anytime soon).

So, in summary, my questions is:

If you were me and you were going to start converting hundreds of DVD's to a digital format to stream to a Xbox360, how would you go about it? What format would you use? There is no immediate need to start this project, so is there anything "right around the corner" that I should wait for?

Thanks in advance!!!

[SimonP]

Why not just rip them to hard disk and use My Movies (http://www.mymovies.dk) which integrates into Media Center. You may need DVDdecrypter to rip some of them - I'd use it for all, personally.

Disk space is the only issue, I have 29 miscellaneous DVDs on my server and they take up about 170GB.

[jtrain]

So you don't use any compression at all? (I assume you meant 170GB, not MB) If I had a handful of DVD's, that might work, but I have hundreds. The hard drive capacity just doesn't exist yet to reasonably fit even a fraction of what I have.

I've tried Handbrake, and the H.264 compression was great. DVD's were about 2GB each, and looked very good. Then I noticed the sound was severely lacking and found out that the XB360 limits H.264 to 2-channel stereo sound. Any you can only play these videos through the 360 dashboard and not the Media Center. Yuck.

I've used MyMovies before, and it really seems like a nice piece of software. The issue was the format. If I want to use it, I'm pretty much limited to WMV files. If I'm wrong on this, please let me know!

There are quite a few DVD-WMV converters out there, but I was never happy with the result. The video was noticeably degraded at even a modest compression rate. Don't know if it was the product I was using or the format that was to blame. I haven't tried this recently so maybe I should investigate further.

[bits]

I have 200+ DVDs on HDD as well as many recorded video shows. IMO there is no video format that will not cause PQ loss, none! For the simple scenes you will not notice the problems but for the fast action stuff and panning shots...you will see issues.

I would add HDD space rather than convert. You can easily add 1-3 HDDs to almost any PC internally and you can add a few more via USB or you can either build a server or purchase one.

Unfortunately you are hooked into Microsoft, Xbox and Vistaster so maybe your only choice is to convert. IMO you would have had more choices had you gone with network media players like Ziova or network media extender like the SageTV HD Media Extender. Players like these will provide native play back of a much wider variety of video formats including ISO and VOB.

Should you decide to convert I suggest WMV. It is every bit as good as h264 and is most definitely better that DivX. You could use Windows Media Encoder to do the conversion.

[brinkmanship]

I'm in a bit of a rush preparing for market open but I'll provide my two cents. I'm not a gamer but always have been a movie buff. We have DLinks scattered around the house instead of XBox. I use a XP Pro system for central storage - have the Movie software but use it for look up only. Record Sat from several DVR's and one MCE and all gets transferred to the XP.

For storage I purchased a motherboard with eSata, with Silicon Image controller chips. They allow for the next step, Port Multiplier. With a PM, such as Addonics, one can attach multiple external drives per port, in my configuration five per port. I have also added a PCIE 4 port internal esata card. Currently I have 10 750GB disks dedicated to TV/Movie storage. The only negative with such a set-up is that each disks either requires a dedicated external storage device or a rack designed for multiple disks. I personally use individual enclosures so that I can move individual disks to locations outside of my wireless area and attach it via usb to the DLink. Also each external enclosure requires it's own power supply and esata cable. I purposely built an environment to contain external devices.

I use nothing but VideoReDo for for final transfer from VOB to mpeg. The picture quality depends on how the DLink receives the file. First get a quality disk management tool such as diskeeper and set it for maximum defrag not just efficient - makes a big difference - and defrag continually. Do not use the disk for anything other than media. My system has five internal disks for normal operations. Next move the router as far away from the computer and modem as possible and place it as high as possible. The DLinks do a fine job with as many as four wireless locations viewing simultaneously. As mentioned in this link, at times during wireless reception, an action scene will appear blurred especially on large views such as a 62" screen but minimal effects on smaller ones, below 32".

No one has yet noticed anything when a disk is directly connected via the usb to the DLink. You can purchase Rosewill enclosures from Newegg either permanent mounts or removable versions or do your own research for external hard disk enclosures. Addonics also has enclosures as well as port multipliers, internal controller cards for additional esata ports and external enclosures also. Addonics also provides PCMCIA esata expansion cards for notebooks which can then take advantage accessing a direct connect to an external disk.

After several years at this I now use only top of the line Western Digital sata drives and they are less expensive than others but I have found them more dependable. Also purchase a data recovery application. I use Stellar Phoenix Windows Data recovery. Absolutely bad technical support but excellent recovery. I had installation problems and had to train them in how to distinguish a 32 from a 64 bit system. Support does not come from the developers.

The storage system is driven by an AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual 6000+ on an Asus Crosshair motherboard with 2GB ram operated by XP Pro 32 bit. I mentioned this because unless I am video editing, no applications are running while people are viewing or I hotswap the drive(s) that the movie is on and they can direct connect it.

Also for movies we don't own the new Netflix box is working out just fine so far.

Ok now that I have written what I have, one of the WD hard drives will fail and an external enclosure will melt.

Good luck building your video database.

[jtrain]

@bits

Thanks for the advice. I don't think I ever used Windows Media Encoder in the past. I'll have to give it a try.

@brink

Sounds like you have quite a setup! Thanks for posting all that info. I'm overly paranoid about hdd failure and as such I won't store data on anything that isn't running in at least a raid 1 setup. I have 500GB of space now, but I could always start my conversion project and upgrade when necessary. Thanks again!

[bits]

@bits

Thanks for the advice. I don't think I ever used Windows Media Encoder in the past. I'll have to give it a try.

@brink

Sounds like you have quite a setup! Thanks for posting all that info. I'm overly paranoid about hdd failure and as such I won't store data on anything that isn't running in at least a raid 1 setup. I have 500GB of space now, but I could always start my conversion project and upgrade when necessary. Thanks again!
IMHO the only video worth backing up is the non-replaceable stuff like family video, photos ect. Just imagine going through all of the work of re-encoding and then losing a drive! I abandoned Raid long ago because of the cost of duplication and because of the complexity. As I said it has its place for non-replaceable stuff but raiding ripped DVDs is a waste of time, money and effort. Again that is my opinion.

If you have a problem with loading mpegs into Windows Media Encoder install DScaler (freeware) and that should fix it. Also, keep in mind that the conversion to wmv is every bit as slow as converting to h264. If you have a quad core then it will be quicker.

I also use TMPGEnc Movie Styler (payware) to convert mpeg to wmv. It will take full advantage of multiple cores and does a nice job. It can also be used to convert to h264.

[jtrain]

IMHO the only video worth backing up is the non-replaceable stuff like family video, photos ect. Just imagine going through all of the work of re-encoding and then losing a drive! I abandoned Raid long ago because of the cost of duplication and because of the complexity. As I said it has its place for non-replaceable stuff but raiding ripped DVDs is a waste of time, money and effort. Again that is my opinion.

If you have a problem with loading mpegs into Windows Media Encoder install DScaler (freeware) and that should fix it. Also, keep in mind that the conversion to wmv is every bit as slow as converting to h264. If you have a quad core then it will be quicker.

I also use TMPGEnc Movie Styler (payware) to convert mpeg to wmv. It will take full advantage of multiple cores and does a nice job. It can also be used to convert to h264.

Well, I'm not really backing up my data because it's irreplaceable, I'm backing up the time I've spent getting it in the format I want. If I'm going to dedicate hours and hours to ripping my entire collection, I'm not leaving it up chance that my hard drives stay alive. Setting up an array really isn't very difficult these days, dunno, maybe it was more of a pain back when you tried it. At any rate, I appreciate the opinion but I think I'll stick w/ my raid setup for now.

It's funny you mention the problems loading files into WM encoder, because I downloaded the trial and was getting an error on import. I'll try out DScaler. Thanks again!

[bits]

Well, I'm not really backing up my data because it's irreplaceable, I'm backing up the time I've spent getting it in the format I want. If I'm going to dedicate hours and hours to ripping my entire collection, I'm not leaving it up chance that my hard drives stay alive. Setting up an array really isn't very difficult these days, dunno, maybe it was more of a pain back when you tried it. At any rate, I appreciate the opinion but I think I'll stick w/ my raid setup for now.

It's funny you mention the problems loading files into WM encoder, because I downloaded the trial and was getting an error on import. I'll try out DScaler. Thanks again!
In order to keep decent PQ the most that you can reduce file size is by about half especially if these files are SD and are going to be viewed on a large screen TV. What I am getting at is that even with all of the work to re-encode, and believe me the re-encode will take much more time and work than the rip, you will still need quite a bit of HDD storage. If you Raid your video collection then you will need twice as many HDDs. What I am suggesting you consider is the loss of PQ plus the time to re-encode vs Raid'ing and re-encoding. Raid'ing also imposses restrictions that I personally could not live with. I add HDDs as needed and where ever I can on my network. If I did raid that would not be possible. I guarrantee that your video collection will continue to grow and will soon out grow any Raid configuration that you start with.

BTW if you plan on ever doing Blueray rips then Raid will be prohibitively expensive. Even with re-encoding these files will be 5-10GB in size. Plus what a waste to have spent the money for this super high quality video only to dummy it down which is basically what you are doing with the SD DVDs as well.

[zaphod7501]

Just butting in here with a RAID observation. Don't forget to purchase one or two spare identical RAID controllers. I've seen several situations where the controller died and the RAID became unrecoverable even though the drives were OK, because the old controller was no longer available. Also, if the controller fails, it can destroy the data as it fails.

RAID controllers can be a handy way to add more drives to a PC, but I never use them in a RAID configuration.

[jtrain]

Just a few responses to some points raised in previous posts:

I've ripped quite a few DVD's using DVD shrink, and I try not to go below 60% compression. Burning these ISO's back to a single layer DVD and playing them on my upscaling player on a 42" LCD looks and sounds acceptable to me. Now granted, I don't have 20-20 vision (close though) and I'm not sitting inches away looking for the smallest imperfection either. But this compression rate works for me, and I have a VERY hard time distinguishing the compressed movie from the original.

Along these lines, I have no current plans to start buying blu-ray. A price tag in some cases as much as twice as expensive as standard dvd's along with a marginal increase in quality (again, to my eyes and ears, your opinion may differ) means I won't be jumping on that bandwagon anytime soon.

I have seen many, many hard drives die; all different brands, all different types. I have yet to see a raid controller card die, but I don't doubt it happens. I have a very basic raid 1 array set up at home, mirroring two 500gb drives. I can take one drive out of the array, remove the controller and the other drive, and boot off the 1 drive just fine. All the data is there, and you'd never even know it was once part of a raid array. I tested this just recently as I was troubleshooting another issue.

Raid may not be perfect, and of course you'll need twice as many drives as otherwise, but in my experience it's worth it. All I would need is to fill up a 500gb or 1TB drive with hundreds of movies and watch the thing die. I'd probably start crying!

[bits]

Just a few responses to some points raised in previous posts:

I've ripped quite a few DVD's using DVD shrink, and I try not to go below 60% compression. Burning these ISO's back to a single layer DVD and playing them on my upscaling player on a 42" LCD looks and sounds acceptable to me. Now granted, I don't have 20-20 vision (close though) and I'm not sitting inches away looking for the smallest imperfection either. But this compression rate works for me, and I have a VERY hard time distinguishing the compressed movie from the original.

Along these lines, I have no current plans to start buying blu-ray. A price tag in some cases as much as twice as expensive as standard dvd's along with a marginal increase in quality (again, to my eyes and ears, your opinion may differ) means I won't be jumping on that bandwagon anytime soon.

I have seen many, many hard drives die; all different brands, all different types. I have yet to see a raid controller card die, but I don't doubt it happens. I have a very basic raid 1 array set up at home, mirroring two 500gb drives. I can take one drive out of the array, remove the controller and the other drive, and boot off the 1 drive just fine. All the data is there, and you'd never even know it was once part of a raid array. I tested this just recently as I was troubleshooting another issue.

Raid may not be perfect, and of course you'll need twice as many drives as otherwise, but in my experience it's worth it. All I would need is to fill up a 500gb or 1TB drive with hundreds of movies and watch the thing die. I'd probably start crying!
Why are you shrinking the ripped DVD? So lets get this straight you are shrinking the DVD by 40%, which is a transcode and THEN you plan on reducing file size even further by converting to wmv or h264 another re-encode, you really do not care about PQ! Do you have any idea what to look for in terms of PQ? DO NOT LOOK AT how pretty the picture is, Look at high action scenes and panning shots and you will quickly realize that all your video file size reduction has come at a steep price.

BTW I have been running HDDs, lots of HDDs for many years and I have had a total of (1) fail and that was in a laptop! Yes HDDs fail and none replaceable data should be backed up but the rest just ain't worth it!

You do realize that you DO NOT HAVE to shrink a ripped DVD....right? Why not rip it as is and THEN re-encode to some other video format??? When DVD Shrink does the transcode it is ripping out video information, yes the video is still watchable but when converting to other video file formats with the intent to reduce files size you should always start with the best video PQ you can get.

Well you have made up your mind so good luck!

[jtrain]

Why are you shrinking the ripped DVD? So lets get this straight you are shrinking the DVD by 40%, which is a transcode and THEN you plan on reducing file size even further by converting to wmv or h264 another re-encode, you really do not care about PQ! Do you have any idea what to look for in terms of PQ? DO NOT LOOK AT how pretty the picture is, Look at high action scenes and panning shots and you will quickly realize that all your video file size reduction has come at a steep price.

BTW I have been running HDDs, lots of HDDs for many years and I have had a total of (1) fail and that was in a laptop! Yes HDDs fail and none replaceable data should be backed up but the rest just ain't worth it!

You do realize that you DO NOT HAVE to shrink a ripped DVD....right? Why not rip it as is and THEN re-encode to some other video format??? When DVD Shrink does the transcode it is ripping out video information, yes the video is still watchable but when converting to other video file formats with the intent to reduce files size you should always start with the best video PQ you can get.

Well you have made up your mind so good luck!

Ha ha, it seems like I'm getting you all riled up! Not my intent, to be sure.

I never said I planned on using DVD shrink, THEN using another program to re-encode...using it to compress a DVD to an ISO and then burning it back to a DVD is just one example I gave to illustrate my tolerance for video compression. It's a personal preference, not unlike a favorite color or taste in music. A know plenty of people that think a 128kbit mp3 sounds just fine, whereas I really notice the difference compared to higher bitrates. It's just one of those things...

Plainly stated, you've been very lucky regarding hard drives. I hope it continues for you!

We've kind of derailed the conversation discussing the merits of raid arrays and data backup, but my initial post was just to get a general idea of what people recommended regarding getting a pile of store-bought dvd's into a good digital format to stream to an Xbox 360 through the media center software. Given my large collection, and my relative tolerance for PQ, I think it's reasonable to include some type of compression in the process.

I'm sorry if I came across in a negative way, and thanks again for your input and advice!

[bits]

Ha ha, it seems like I'm getting you all riled up! Not my intent, to be sure.

I never said I planned on using DVD shrink, THEN using another program to re-encode...using it to compress a DVD to an ISO and then burning it back to a DVD is just one example I gave to illustrate my tolerance for video compression. It's a personal preference, not unlike a favorite color or taste in music. A know plenty of people that think a 128kbit mp3 sounds just fine, whereas I really notice the difference compared to higher bitrates. It's just one of those things...

Plainly stated, you've been very lucky regarding hard drives. I hope it continues for you!

We've kind of derailed the conversation discussing the merits of raid arrays and data backup, but my initial post was just to get a general idea of what people recommended regarding getting a pile of store-bought dvd's into a good digital format to stream to an Xbox 360 through the media center software. Given my large collection, and my relative tolerance for PQ, I think it's reasonable to include some type of compression in the process.

I'm sorry if I came across in a negative way, and thanks again for your input and advice!
Unfortunately I do tend to have strong opinions and since you asked I responded. Four or fives years ago I was about where you are now and I get a little zealous in trying to help. I am not a Microsoft(XBox)/Vistaster fan nor am I a fan of re-encoding video or raiding it, so we are at odds on all points. I too apologize for coming across too strong. To each his own. Good luck with your video endenvers!

BTW I think your experience with HDD is bit on the Unlucky side and I will admit that I have been lucky but not as lucky as may think.

[yaksplat]

I've got 400+ movies encoded in dvr-ms which is basically mpeg-2 so there's no issue with burning them if needed (which tvsuite works great for). With HD space as cheap as it is, $.13/GB, there's no reason to compress files. I've got 4.5TB in my Windows Home Server which serves its content to Vista Media Center and it all works wonderfully.

[SimonP]

RAID 5 is your answer - my 2TB array would be almost impossible to back-up but RAID 5 makes it a lot safer as you can lose one drive without the array going down or getting messed up.

(Sorry, I meant GB above of course and no, I don't compress as MyMovies only uses raw DVD images AFAIK. I have thought about compressing them but I need subtitles and it'd be too much trouble to convert them as well.)

[pyscho]

You could try using AutoGK - convert to xvid or divx. You can choose the file size for a movie. 700mb would be to low for a good TV so you even go for 1.4Gb or 2.0Gb per movie. But then if you buy some cheap hard drive the - just download the whole dvd in vob format might be better.

Have a look at Movie Collector - http://www.collectorz.com/movie/
It has a media center plug in now. It is an ecellent program to catalogue your movies.

I use a Mediagate instead of an xbox for streming and it works really well on the network.

As for RAID you don't need the speed for streaming vids and there is nothing nastier and a broken raid 0 box :(

[davidc]

Other than an interesting discussion related to the merits of RAID and data storage, is there any advice regarding the file formats, process and/or tips for ripping, saving and converting VOBs using Videoredo? Like Jtrain, I have 160 movies on HDD's (2x1TB drives), currently stored as multiple VOBs. I can batch process the join to get them concatenated back into single VOB files, but how do i batch the conversion of VOBs into DVR-MS files? (Whilst retaining their file names, albeit with a changed extension...) I'm after DVR-MS files for two reasons. 1 the speed of the conversion, (VOB and DVR-MS are both MPG) and 2 it let's me pick them up on the XBOX extender.

Any Advice would be appreciated...

[davidc]

sorted, i had some inconsistencies in my batch file...

[phd]

Use the batch manager and specify DVR-MS as the output.

[londongus]

Hi I'm starting on a similar project - Have a QNAP 209 NAS drive running Twonky, which is visible on the 360. So far So good; this is fine for all the music, but I'm having mixed results when trying to stream video to the 360.

There are 300 dvd's to proces, so obviously I'm not keen on any encoding phase, if possible I'd like to avoid that as it'll add years to the workload.

I've used dvd decryptor followed by Videoredo to generate a .mpg file. In the case of Batman Begins, it's about 6gb. The weirdest thing is that the 360 doesnt even display the file in it's list of videos. AT first I thought it might be a filesize issue (4gb is often mentioned), so I tried again with another film, this time generating a 3.7Gb file. Still no appearance of the file on the list.

I then tried dvd-decryptor followed by autogk to generate a .avi, and this WAS recognised by the 360.

So how has anyone got videoredo generated files to appear on their 360's ????

help!

Thanks,

Londongus

[DanR]

Did you create .dvrms files from VideoReDo?

[londongus]

no, .mpg - seemed to be the default option ....

[DanR]

If you create .dvr-ms files and put them in your recordedTV folder on the MCE server the xbox360 will detect and play them just fine. There's no quality change, just a different wrapper.

[londongus]

but wouldnt the issue be then that video play-back is only restricted to MS hardware (ie Xbox 360) ? I was hoping for a more universal play-back facility, so I'd use the 360 in the living room and a.n.other devices elsewhere in the house.

update: I created a .dvr-ms file, and that wasn't picked up by the 360 either.

[ynost]

I have a similar setup and my xbox 360 plays MPEG's just fine. I use:

Vista MCE with MY Movies installed
Anydvd (running for difficult rips)
TVersity (free & the latest version is brilliant)
Transcode360 (free)
Networking to 2 laptops, 1 xbox & 1 Linksys 2200 to 2 tv's From:
1 Dual core pc with 4 internal drives & 1 usb 750 gig for backups.

3 of the internal drives hold Mpeg movies and my media to be shared (home videos & recorded tv, pictures, itunes music & podcasts. Don't run media shares from a usb drive it's to iffy.

TVersity is my only media sharing program (I don't share via WMP11) & Transcode360 streams everything but the mpegs to MY Movies.

I have all the movie covers, actors & movie director info, all working from within Media centre including music and their album art. Full-time internet connection so I can browse the latest stuff again, from within MCE

With this setup i can stream divx, xvid, mpeg etc. Why do I use Divx & Xvid? because I have trialled different formats for a long time, like you looking for the best option, so I do have some that I stream in those formats but not many. I have converted my old home videos to Dixv, saved heaps of space.

Use Videoredo to make mpeg from vobs by inserting dvd movie, start videoredo and rip directly to mpeg (takes about 20 mins for each movie). Or, use Videoredo to browse disc content select vobs and combine option. There is no need for decrypter, Dvd shrink or anything else in between. Full movie- full quality & Sound.

Yes, hard drives fill quickly but they are cheap and if you keep your original dvd movies on disc safe you can always re-copy them if a drive fails as a last resort. I have had 2 drives fail in 15 years. I dont lose any sleep worrying about potential failures.

This system works, great sound, quality no jitters or jeks- it just works. Everyone worrys too much in this situation, start with 1 drive and trial it for a few days-weeks. You won't look back.