Converting DVD/Blu-Ray to play on Droid, iPad, & WDTV Live using RipBot264

[jg0001]

Converting DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD to Droid (DroidX, Droid2, etc), iPad, and WDTV Live using RipBot264 (H.264 codec)

I thought I'd share my recent experience converting some DVDs, Blu-Rays, and HD-DVDs to mp4's for playing back on my various devices, with the goal being to ONLY encode a movie ONCE that would work on all devices, while maintaining quality.

END RESULT & SETTINGS (detailed story below that)

All movies de-coded with ANYDVD-HD, but anything that works for the decoding is fine.

Using RipBot264:

0) Select your input file -- RipBot264 is smart, just find any one of the 1GB VOB files on your DVD rip or select the largest .m2ts file in the STREAM subdirectory of your Blu-Ray, or the largest .EVO for HD-DVD -- it will then find and piece together the entire movie

--note to first time RipBot264 users -- the initial movie selection on RipBot264 can take a few minutes to parse; for Blu-Ray sources, you can also end up waiting 10-15 minutes or more once you've selected the movie file for it to be demuxed to the temp directory before you get returned to the settings screen, this is NORMAL; once the file is demuxed, you can re-encode it more than once and not have to repeat this step.

1) Set PROFILE to BASE 3.0 (yes, the lowest one -- this is the only one I could get to ensure A/V sync and smooth playback on the DroidX); the higher profiles very quickly tax the DroidX much more so than adding on even a lot more bitrate

2) For DVD sourced video, do not resize the video at all; DO set RipBot264 to handle the de-interlacing, as needed
For Blu-Ray or HD-DVD video (and anything hi-def), resize to 1280x720p
If you ONLY care about the WDTV Live, you can leave your video as 1920x1080p, but if you do that, you'll want a bitrate of 6144K or higher and you can expect end result files around 6-9GB in size. Any lower bitrate and quality will noticeably suffer when viewed on a TV. This IS worthwhile for WDTV Live only encodes, but not workable for any portable device currently available; I use this setup ONLY for movies I don't mind re-encoding twice (once for TV viewing, once for portable devices).

3) For AUDIO, regardless of source, set to 2.0 AAC, max bitrate offered (nothing over 2.0 works on the Droid)
--if you are only worried about the WDTV Live and iPad, use 5.1 audio at the max bitrate offered

4) On the current version of RipBot264, you can set a "poster" picture; I typically use an image of the movie's box (ripped from Amazon for DVDs or from Blu-Ray.com for BR's) as the 'poster'. These DO show up on the iPad, so it is nice to have them.

5) I prefer 2-pass encoding
-- for DVD sources, 1024K and up is usually where you will start to get very little benefit from higher bitrates; as a rule, I try to do 1536K anyway, as I don't mind a little overkill (if you want, you can drop down to 600K if you want to truly minimize file size without giving up too much quality (as viewed on a tiny handheld screen, anyway))
-- for Blu-Ray sources, I prefer 2048K to 3072K, but keep in mind, for the DROID you need to keep the total file size under 2GB, so for longer movies, you will have to manage this more closely
-- for Blu-Ray, if you don't care about the DROID, then you can go to 6144K on the bitrate; anything else on a 1280x720p is overkill

6) File output type HAS to be .mp4 to ensure playback on all the players; neither the iPad nor the DroidX will do .MKV



DETAILED STORY OF HOW I GOT THERE

Here's what I wanted to accomplish:
(1) convert the files only ONCE to a format that would play on all of my devices, including:
(a) DroidX telephone
(b) iPad tablet
(c) WDTV Live
(2) maintain as much quality as possible such that the resulting playback showed little or no evidence of compression

Now, the kicker here is that the envelope of what's possible on all of these devices is a little different, so I had to first find the different limits of each device, and then find the common denominator that worked for all of them.

This is what I learned:

WDTV Live -- will accept video up to 1920p, mp4 format (amongst many others)
-- gladly accepts and handles 5.1 audio (and above)
-- had no issues whatsoever with large files

iPad -- will accept video up to 720p, mp4 format
-- will take in a 5.1 audio track and downconvert it on the fly
-- will take files of seemingly any size (5 & 6 GB files tested)

DroidX -- will accept video up to 720p, mp4 format
-- will NOT play a file that has more than 2 channel audio (at all!)
-- will NOT play a file that is greater than 2GB in size (at all!) [and mem card has 4GB limit on file size anyway, due to FAT32 format]
-- will accept Profile High 4.0 for playback, but does a poor job of it at higher bitrates (skipping, a/v sync lost, etc)
-- best to use Profile BASE 3.0 to avoid a/v sync issues

Now, I had the iPad before I got the DroidX, so I was merrily making 720p videos and leaving in 5.1 audio to keep surround sound for my wife's WDTV Live setup going. Once I got the DroidX, I found that NONE of the files I made would work. It was only after much trial and error I learned that files over 2GB won't even start to play on it, 5.1 audio encodings also wouldn't even start, etc.

The limitations of the DroidX are disappointing, especially since it has an HDMI out jack that lets you conveniently plug it into a TV/receiver. At the least, I would have liked to keep the audio as 5.1 in the mp4, even knowing the phone would have to downcovert it most of the time (for headphone playback). Also, it is misleading in that while it WILL play Profile 4.0 encoded H264 video, at anything over a 1024K bitrate you will begin to notice a loss of A/V sync and also a lot of frame skipping as it can't keep up with the decoding process. Using Profile 3.0, even with a ridiculously high bitrate (8192K) works fine however. As someone who hates losing A/V sync, I'd rather just use Base 3.0 with a higher bitrate (2048K for Blu-Ray is fine for 1280x720p) and not have to worry about decoding issues.

[jg0001]

Below are the results from my original PROFILE & Bitrate tests for the DROIDX only !

These are specific to the DROIDX, and not to the iPad or WDTV Live:

PROFILE -- VIDEO BITRATE -- RESULT -- DROIDX ONLY

Base 3, ~600-1024K - played smoothly -- this is my minimum setting for DVD sources with no resizing, to MINIMIZE file size
Base 3, 1536K - played smoothly -- this is my recommended setting for DVD sources with no resizing, to MAINTAIN quality
Base 3, 2048K - played smoothly -- this is my recommended setting for Blu-Ray sources resized to 1280x720p
Base 3, 4096K - played smoothly
Base 3, 6144K - played smoothly (near as I could tell) -- maximum setting for Blu-Ray sources resized to 1280x720p, but likely overkill and will easily go over 2GB in total file size for any normal length movie which means the file won't play on the DroidX at all
Base 3, 8192K - played smoothly (near as I could tell)

Main 3, 4096K - had significant stuttering (did finish, but was not really watchable)
Main 3, 6144K - played for a moment, then video froze, eventually error popped up
Main 3, 8192K - played for a moment, then video froze, eventually error popped up

High 4, 1536K - relatively smooth at first, hint of minor frame skipping visible
High 4, 2048K - relatively smooth at first, hint of minor frame skipping visible
High 4, 4096K - had significant stuttering (did finish, but was not really watchable)

DROIDX ONLY

Note: the high bitrates shown above are for stress testing. In actuality, you may encode many movies in 1024K or lower bitrates (especially DVDs). That said, given how quickly (& awful) the DroidX did in losing AV sync on the higher profile encodes, I'd rather not 'wonder' and just stick with Base 3.0. {Yes, I did test the files from those encodes on other devices to be sure the a/v sync and frame skipping was specific to the DroidX. They played fine.}

DROIDX ONLY