DVD-Video to MPEG-4 ripping/transcoding?

[violatr]

correct me if i'm wrong.. but the xbox media centre is based on mplayer?

if thats right..does that mean mencoder could/would be available as well?

if so.. couldn't a script or something be added to support dvd to divx conversions?

i'm not sure if anyone has suggested this before, like i said "just an idea" :)

[Nogood5]

i think this has been suggested before.

so you would like to convert a dvd movie to an xvid divx format? i hope you have a better pc at home (if at all) then your xbox because the xbox is simple not powerful enough to encode a movie. it will probably take a whole day...

you are better off using

http://www.autogk.net/web/
an excellent and very easy to use tool

[Kudos]

i have a far more powerful and valuable pc than my xbox, i would much prefer to tie up my xbox for a day than my pc for a couple of hours, i would think there are a lot of people out there who would agree

[violatr]

i have a few pcs to work from, but lets face it i'd rather use them for other things like playing some games, or serving the games.

it couldn't be too hard ( please correct me if i'm wrong :) ) to add something into the existing xbox media centre application to convert the contents of the dvd to a file on the xbox hdd in mpeg-4 (divx) format.

i use mplayer under linux on a regular basis and love it, it works flawlessly :) it would be good to extend this ability across to my xbox, and like kudos said, i'm sure there would be other users in this situation.

[Mpegman]

violatr, i agree totally! a friend of mine and i have been discussing the features we would like added to xbmc, and that is high on our list. but, i think that the encoding part could wait.

why don't they write a dvd ripper first (like dvd decrypter) that will make one vob file of the main movie files on the dvd. some imdb tags would be nice as well. that way, you can keep the dvd movie as is.

the application i see for myself, is using this to rip movies to my smb share on the network. how sweet!

basically, this would be emulating the features of the kaleidescape server. http://www.kaleidescape.com/

please email or pm me if anyone is interested in adding this as a module to xbmc. because i would be willing to help write this piece of software (i have an xdk setup).

:saint:

mpegman

[staverton]

i was thinking exactly the same thing, that if mplayer libs were already used then porting mencoder would be easy. *

combined with a graphical vob reader and libdecss, users could just select the vob they wanted to encode, (based on its length), and hit 'encode' and the vob would be read off the dvd, unencrypted and encoded on the fly, ala mencoder.

then off the xbox could go, i wouldn't be bothered if it took a day or two.

[Casper1786]

i know how u guyz arn't big video buffs, but maybe there's some open source programs that can rip and transcode dvds, prefrably somthin with many options as i like fintuning the shit, like i wouldn't call myself a video buff yet cause i've only played with video editing in my spare time for the last 2 years, and i'm still learning lots of things.

i'd put mce on my machine 2 do this, but then i can't store my games on my hdd and no xbmc witch is 10 times easyer 2 setup then mce! but i think mce used code from mythtv or somthing, witch makes me think it's opensource, i don't know but maybe you guyz could use some of the same code.

but for most users who don't know much about dvd ripping it could be nice for a simple mode, with auto croping(cutting off the black area) 2 save space. also would be good 2 have many audio options, such as bitrates and formats. i myself would like 2 be able 2 rip the 5.1 audio stream and keep it for surround sound, and for those without surround sound they could save space by demuxing it into a 2 channel mp3 format in various bitrates, i suggest no lower then 128bit, others such as 160, 192, 224, and 320 could be choosable.

video format that it stores in, well that could go a few ways, with avi you'd need the source code for a codec, only good opensource codec i can think of is xvid, witch isn't much differnt from divx, read about it in the glossery on afterdawn (http://www.afterdawn.com), also other details on video editing is stored there. good source of information, they also have lots of usful applications there, most are freeware and some opensource.

basicly this is a feature that i and many others could really get into using. i know if i could code shit like u guyz, i would so be there 2 help

[Gamester17]

@casper1786, please always read the faq and search the forum before posting (both are forum rules). merning into existing suggestion thread.

[C-Quel]

now that would be special :thumbsup:

[Gamester17]

fyi; feature requests on sourceforge.net tracker: http://sourceforge.net/tracker....=964933 (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=87054&atid=581841&func=detail&aid=964933)

[Supplicium]

you can rip dvds (the .vobs and .ifo) files using dvd2xbox. so all you would need is a .vob to divx/xvid script/app w/e.

[FrightfoO]

i had tried dvd2xbox in the past and found it inadequate for the purpose of ripping dvd-video (for ripping games it's fine). dvd2xbox is unable to verify whether the audio/video (vob etc) files are erroneous or not (i.e. have glitches). wiso states:

dvd2xbox has only basic video rip capabilities. it just uses a port of libdvdcss to decrypt the movies to store it on disc. i doubt that it checks it afterwards.

dvd decrypter on the other hand has the ability to verify that the files have all been ripped correctly.

edit -- link to where wiso (http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=354633&st=0&p=2310609&#entry2310609entry2310609) talks about it.

[drakethegreat]

i think that it would be an awesome idea to port a video encoder for the xbox. this project makes more sense as an independent one rather then xbmc but because its media related i figured there would be the right people here who have the knowledge to do it.

currently there is a dvd ripper and xbmc is a decoder so why not have an encoder and finish the job so that people can make personal copies of dvds for their xbox?

[Striker]

xbox isnt very powerfull so it would take a shitload of time to complete

[drakethegreat]

well currently i have a program on windows that does it on the fly as it rips it. how long would it really take and why would it be a huge issue? i would rather my xbox be doing it and it take longer then having to tie up my actual computers with the encoding.

[m360m]

i have used dvd decrypt and dvd shrink on my pc a lot. my only issue is the time it takes to decript and rip back to dvd. on my athlon 1700 total time is about 4-5 hours. that stinks. using dvd2xbox to copy games and movies is actually pretty quick. with movie i really don't like the unconpressed size to just leave them as they are. any option for compressing them right on the xbox and avoid using a pc? ideally if i could get movies down to about 2gb that would be perfect.

so what are you using to back up movies and are you just ripping them right to your xbox without any compression?

cheers.

[Hullebulle]

as you said your athlon 1700 (with more than 64mb of ram i guess) takes up to 4-5 hrs to encode/transcode a dvd video.
so what do you think how much time a 733mhz p3 limited to 64mb ram takes? *:sniffle:

doubt you gonna see a ripping feature in xbmc since there is dvd2xbox doing the vob-copy-job already (its that fast cause it only deccss the vobs and copy em to the hd).

answer to your question:
use dvd2xbox and live with the size of your rips or get a faster pc. :)

[m360m]

dvd2xbox works great and i was not suggesting an official ripper should be added to xbmc. no need for this with dvd2xbox. but a possible compressor would be cool. but with the limitations of the xbox processot i guess this might not be worth the effort.

cheers.

[supersexy]

i was wondering if this is possible or has this already been done and i don't know about it.

[Gamester17]

no, read the whole thread that i merged your post into

[oboulanger]

is there any solution out there or any way mencoder features could be included in xbmc?
xbmc already uses mplayer extensivley, and mencoder is the logical extension.
i would love to be able to rip and encode in one go a dvd using the xbox. i know the xbox isn't the most powerful machine out there but i wouldn't mind letting it run overnight to compress a dvd for me.

any ideas?

[Caldor]

im against the idea. look at how much development has and is continuing to be done on the primary transcoding open source products : avisynth, dgmpgdec, virtualdub etcetc.

besides, do you know how long it takes to do a good quality encode in mpegiv-asp codecs in a feature length film? even the new helium codec from divx with smp support takes a long time.

[elliottlock]

Hi,

I was wondering, With all you clever coders out there. There something i think everyone wants. We all want our home DVD's on a Hard Disk so we can just flick to em and watch em. So, I was wondering. Is anyone out there up to the challenge of making a DVD Transcoder type thing for the XBox.

Here is how i see it.

You load up the program
Insert you Fav DVD
Click vob you want to Copy.
It Copies the DVD into a single AVI/WMV or whatever that can be played on the Xbox and the Xbox 360 (Or atleast just the Xbox)

It would be really cool if i could get all my DVD's on to my Xbox as AVI's or something real easy and tuck my DVD stack away in the loft.

I don't think anyone wants all the extra dvd crap, we just wana be able to scroll through films like Films on demand on Sky or something using our xbox and click and play.

Is this possible?

Cheers,

EL

[jmarshall]

Ofcourse it's possible, it'll just take several days to encode :p

Otherwise, just use DVD2XBOX to rip WITHOUT encoding. Anything else will take forever. Use your PC.

[elliottlock]

Thing is there is no single easy to use program out there that encodes DVD to AVI's or WMV easily.

Also imagine if you could do it on the 360. All the processing power just for that, it would encode it so quick would it not?

[jmarshall]

Then write one. This has nothing whatsoever to do with XBMC, which runs on Xbox 1, obviously underpowered for such a task.

[szsori]

Like JM said, the Xbox will take days to encode a single movie. Just use DVD Decrypter the dump the movie onto your hard drive and AutoGK to encode. Simple enough.

[MartinC]

I remember when MPEG4 was first emerging I would use DivX3 with a K6 500MHz CPU & 64MB of RAM, it took a long while but did do the job.

The fastest CPU's back then were 866MHz PIII's & they were achieving something like 4 hours encoding time for a 90 minute movie.


A script with speed optimized filters & XviD parameters could work nicely.

[MartinC]

Just had a look at some old benchmarks & found that a 700MHz Pentium III could encode to DivX5 in 4.4 hours, that's very promising...

[Jezz_X]

Just had a look at some old benchmarks & found that a 700MHz Pentium III could encode to DivX5 in 4.4 hours, that's very promising...

Thats probably real bad quality one pass encode as well

But basically it comes down to unless you going to write the app to do it its not happening the same thing has talked about for years on xbox-scene forums and nobody who knows how to program it wants to because they would rather use a PC

[MartinC]

Thats probably real bad quality one pass encode as well

But basically it comes down to unless you going to write the app to do it its not happening the same thing has talked about for years on xbox-scene forums and nobody who knows how to program it wants to because they would rather use a PC
http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/01/07/the_resurrection/page11.html

Tom's Hardware:

150MB VOB File in 6.6 minutes with DivX5 highest quality.

150MBx40 = 6GB (Size of most DVD movies)

6.6MINx40 = 4.4 hours

The 700MHz PIII system used 256MB of 133MHz RAM, the XBOX has only 64MB but it's running at 200MHz.


With the right filters & encoder parameters this could be lowered even more. And people with upgraded RAM/CPU's would see even more of an improvement.


XviD has come along way & a 1 pass XviD encode can look extremely good.

[Jezz_X]

You kind of missed the main point of my post
But basically it comes down to unless you going to write the app to do it its not happening the same thing has talked about for years on xbox-scene forums and nobody who knows how to program it wants to because they would rather use a PC

But even if you didn't do you want to just have your xbox sitting there doing nothing for 4.4 hours while its encoding a average quality 1 pass encode ? when you PC can probably do a 2 pass encode in 1/2 that atleast

[LisaB]

Well, I have done a *lot* of XviD encoding, and can't help but making a few comments in this thread.

First off, the reason most scene releases are encoded using a lengthy multi-pass encode is because those on the scene are downright obsessed with making sure their AVI's fit exactly on 1 CD. Well, I say - who really gives a hoot? If you are storing your AVI's on hard drives or DVD's, then this is all a waste of time. Furthermore, many of the codec bells and whistles (like the infamous QPEL and GMC) are aimed mostly at squeezing out the last few megabytes of compression...in other words, maintaining quality for a given size. Basically, if you can afford to give your encode a bit more bitrate, then you can achieve the same result with much less time/processing power.

I haven't done a multi-pass encode in a *long* time. It's much better to do a single-pass constant quality encode. I'll typically use constant quantizer of 2.5. Most encodes will end up somewhere *between* 700 mb and 1.4 Gb. If your video is really noisy, then you'll need to do some noise filtering (i.e., smoothing) to keep the bitrate reasonable, and maybe even have to up the quantizer setting to 3.5 or even 4. The one codec feature that does really make a big difference in bitrate is the use of B-frames, so I would recommend using B-frames even if your processing power is low.

(Oh, how I long for the days when the major xvid scene players finally start encoding for quality and not for size, and stop chopping their encodes into CD-sized pieces!:D)

(Oh, and I should also mention that if you don't do stupid things like using QPEL, then you can encode to higher framesizes and still have your video play back smoothly on slower processors...like the xbox)

All this being said, I agree with others here that there is not much point to making your poor little xbox do such a thing. But, then again, I preferring doing my encodes completely manual with DGIndex and AVISynth and VDubMod.

[ultrabrutal]

Lisa, maybe you can contribute to this guide?
http://xbmc.org/wiki/index.php?title=HOW-TO:_Create_HD_XviD_movies_from_Transport_Streams

:nod:

[MacGyver]

Why not just use Fairuse 2.6 and set it to "Idle Mode".
It decrypts, and transcodes to any mp4/divx/xvid/h.264 format you want.
I load it up with about 5 DVDs, then "Process all files" It's perfect every time, and so easy my little daughter can use it. It's like really only about 5 mouse clicks.

A long time ago I thought it would have been a good idea, but really, a 733mhz with 64mb would take FOREVER, just try fairuse, I've used about 500+ times perfectly.
In idle mode, it well, uses only idle cycles. nuff said :P

That was the first and only program endorsement you'll hear about from me.

[superkopite]

Hi boys and girls

I have been using xbmc for years now. This thing is just the best media centre I have ever used. Everyday i add something new that just blows me away!

What I really want is a facility to rip a dvd to the HD and convert it to DIVX in one easy swoop without having to go through my pc. Is this possible?

Once again maximum props guys

James

[sipart]

a search of this forum would answer all your questions ;-) this kind of question is discussed in length going back many years