I want to take my favorite movies and put them on an HDD

[Rjupiter]

I am trying to do, what in my mind stupid seemed simple. I wanted to surprise my mom by taking all her favorite movies and putting them on an HD so she can easily watch them via her 360. The problem is I don't, besides knowing how to rip the DVD with DVDFab, have a real clue what I am doing. I am trying to learn but basically this is not my bag and with what I have to do I don't have a lot of time.

I have been messing around for the last three days trying to get a good quality file that will play via the 360 and look good on her big ass 55" plasma I mean I can get a file encoded and it will play, if I do it right which is rare it seems, via the 360 but it only looks ok on my 22" monitor. If it only looks ok on that I can't imagine it will look all that great on a larger TV.

So I was wondering if someone could help me out, I am bit of an idiot, and need something simple I can follow that will get me a high quality file/movie. I want more quality the anything else file size is not an issue I have a big HD.

I have been ripping my movies in DVFab, highest quality possible and then have tried to encode with that as well as Xvid4PSP and StaxRip and I would be most helpful if someone could made give me a, "point a into slot b" type of run down, basically treat me like a child and show me the exact best setting to do it, so I might give it one more go and not abandon the idea altogether.

I would really appreciate the help, I'm dying here.

[FulciLives]

You said she has a media center PC so are we to assume that the computer is hooked up directly to the 55" plasma (I assume HDTV) TV?

If so then she should be able to play the ripped movies without the need to re-compress them.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Rjupiter]

no, I am sorry she does not have a media center pc, sorry I worded that wrong.

[redwudz]

What format (codec) are you using to create the backups? With Xvid/Divx about a 1 - 1.5GB should be good quality. If your encoder program has a 'quantizer' setting, about '2' would also work. With H.264, it could be about half that size or smaller, depending on the movie length and content.

And Rjupiter, in the future please use a more descriptive subject title in your posts to allow others to search for similar topics. I will change yours this time. From our rules:

Try to choose a subject that describes your topic.
Please do not use topic subjects like Help me!!! or Problems.

Thanks,
Moderator redwudz

[FulciLives]

Well XVID4PSP would be the easiest program to use although I have found that it doesn't always create the D2V project file correctly.

It helps if you create the D2V project file and then load the D2V file into XVID4PSP. Just make sure you use the same version of DGIndex as what XVID4PSP uses.

However it will be extremely time consuming to do all this.

An alternative would be a DVD "jukebox" player. Sony makes a 400 disc DVD player. Load all the discs and write down a list of which disc number is which movie and there you go.

Not cheap (this DVD player goes for around $400.00 although I think that is the MSRP so you might be able to find it slightly cheaper) but easy.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Rjupiter]

uh, ok I really don't understand any of what either of you posted about and well if I had 400$ bucks I would probably not be trying to do this/ Anyways thanks, but seeing as how I don't get what you all mean and I don't think you get what I mean/need I am just going t give up on the idea.

[citanool]

As easy as it gets is to use AutoGK v2.45 + v2.48 update and follow the included Tutorial to get an XviD AVI. The default "Target quality" of 75 should be good, but you may find you want to lower it to 67 or more likely increase to 80.

If you want smaller filesize at similar quality using X264 MP4, I think the easiest would be RipBot264.

[Rjupiter]

I have tried RipBot but could not get it to run on my system, kept giving me an error. I know they fixed that error, came out with a new version however the new version won't even get past the "missing components" windows as it keeps telling me FFDshow is not installed not matter how many times I I try, I have installed and reinstalled it 4 times RipBot still doesn't pick it up.

[citanool]

For RipBot264, dl the newest "SVN builds by clsid" at http://www.ffdshow.info/

Otherwise, give ASXGui or AutoMen a go using a 1pass crf quality setting of 18,20, or 22[lower quality] and a width of 720[WS original?],656,592, or 528[lower quality]

[Rjupiter]

I tried ASXGui, great little program with one problem, my xbox can't see the file. It convert my video great, made and nice looking file with low size, however I can't get my 360 to even see the file, and I am not sure why.

I don't know how you guys do it or like doing this stuff. I either get a crappy file that the 360 will see and play, or a great file that the 360 won't see. Man this is annoying.

[citanool]

These XBox 360 Specs show it supports h264 level 4.1 and only 2-channel AAC-LC audio, so did you try the PS3 profiles and select "Downmix Audio..." ?

Hopefully some people with expertise and/or 360's will chime in.

[Rjupiter]

I am going to try it again and see if I can make a go of it. for some reason I am inept that this and it frustrated the crapping hell out of me but I can't give up till I at least get one movie right.

[FulciLives]

XVID4PSP has a "MP4 PS3/XBOX 360" setting.

If you use that and don't change any of the "important" settings then you will get a file that is compatible on the XboX 360 as well as the PS3.

The problem you may run into when playing with settings or using other programs is that it is very easy to make a PS3 capable file but one that won't play on the XboX 360 and this is because the PS3 is a more capable media player and supports H.264 bitrates and audio formats that the XboX 360 cannot properly handle.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Rjupiter]

I went back and tried XVID4PSP and while it took a long time to encode it did do it. the problem is that, with me not touching anything except the which encoding I wanted I went with the Q18 Extreme, the files made by XVID4PSP will not show up on the xbox by either WMP11 or Zune software to stream and I find that this is only a problem with the files made by XVID4PSP. I have used other programs and while they files were seen they did not play, but they were seen.

In order to get the file to show up I had to rename it .avi extension but once I did it showed up and played, peculiar.

anyway if I stick with XVID4PSP what would be the best setting for my DVD? I want to get the best picture possible. Does the Q value effect this? Should I try any of the denoise/sharpen stuff? cause some stuff looked grainy and I don't know if that was the video quality itself, what was on the disk, or the encoding.

[FulciLives]

I went back and tried XVID4PSP and while it took a long time to encode it did do it. the problem is that, with me not touching anything except the which encoding I wanted I went with the Q18 Extreme, the files made by XVID4PSP will not show up on the xbox by either WMP11 or Zune software to stream and I find that this is only a problem with the files made by XVID4PSP. I have used other programs and while they files were seen they did not play, but they were seen.

I suggest you try another UPnP AV MediaServer. The best for MS Windows seems to be TVersity so I would give that a try. I think part of the problem might be the software you are using to do your streaming which is why I am suggesting you try TVersity ...

You might want to read the following ---> CLICK HERE FOR LINK

Also note that you can burn MP4 files onto a DVD as a "data disc" and play that directly on the XboX 360 or you can put files on an external USB 2.0 HDD and plug that into the XboX 360 although you are limited to FAT32 formating which means no single file can be over 4.0GB in size.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Rjupiter]

well I only did the streaming as a test and as stated in the post I do plan of putting them on a HD. I have not had any problem with streaming using either. the problem is the files created by XVID4PSP not being seen. I have used RipBot and ASXGui-2.0.3 and both created files that were picked up by the 360 they just would not play, probably something I did while encoding.

[FulciLives]

Yes but both of the streaming programs you are using for are by Microsoft and both are known for not having 100% support of files that they probably really should be supporting.

Hence the suggestion to use TVersity. This is one program that attempts to allow all files without any of the silly MS BS.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Rjupiter]

what I am saying is that streaming does not matter as I am going to put the movies on a exhd and hook that up to the 360.

[quicken]

Follow this link to this article. I have used it verbatim and it works flawlessly on my xbox360. I stream it to a 50" plasma and it looks great with no audio issues. You have to tweak the settings a little. I think I picked the ps3 auto setting. When I tried the xbox default, it didnt work well.

Sometimes I stream from the hdd and sometimes I use the usb port. It works each time.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/rip_your_movie_dvds_and_watch_them_anywhere

I hope you have a fast processor. The first time I tried to encode one dvd on a p4, i upgraded to a quad core.