Why is my file half the length of the original?

[mikey23]

Ok, I am in the process of converting my dvds to play over my media center network. Quality is more important than size. I ripped using dvddecryptor in ifo mode to one big vob file. I changed the exension to .mp2 It plays fine but I am confused. The length of the movie file when played in media player or another program is half of the original dvd movie.
I brought the file up in TMPEnc and it says its 720x480, 16:9, 9800kps, interlaced 29.97fps

Should it be progressive?
Why is there a difference in length and why does it look the same but playing in half the time?

Thanks for any help

MIke

[yoda313]

MP2 is mpeg audio.

M2v is mpeg video.

You'd be better off using vob2mpeg.

[mikey23]

If mp2 is audio then why is the video playing as well. If I change the extension to m2v, it is not readable by media player.
I am not having trouble viewing the file. The original movie is like 2hrs and 15 min. But when I play the file it is showing about 1 hour and 4 mins. And the movie is not playing in fast motion either, looks normal

Plus If I convert to .mpg wouldn't I lose the 5.1 channel audio

Mike

[yoda313]

No you can multiplex 5.1 with m2v video. Tmpgenc mpeg tools can do this. I have done this with my downconverted hdtv video.

[mikey23]

Ok. But still why is the length of the movie different?

[redwudz]

If you just took the VOB and changed the extension to .mpg or whatever, it's still a VOB. VOBs can contain menus, subtitles, different languages and formating information. They are not a MPEG, though you might get away with the extension name change most of the time. But there may be some side effects, possibly your problem with the wrong playing time error.

[mikey23]

Oh Ok. So that's not normal what I did. I just did that because it was the fastest and I think I saw someone post they did that.

So what is the best way to do what I want to do? The size of the movie file isn't an issue, I want to have good quality and keep the 5.1 channel sound and share this on my media center and extenders.

Any advice?

Thanks for helping someone new to this out.

Mike

[redwudz]

If I had hard drive space to spare, I would just copy the whole DVD, and use a software player like PowerDVD or similar for playback. Then you will have menus, alternate audio tracks, extras and subtitles, if you choose to keep all that. Or use Shrink to save the main movie only with your desired audio. I only use the 5.1 audio, as a non-5.1 audio system will just play it back in stereo with no problem.

But if you want just a MPEG file, VOB2MPG is still a good choice.

My system is set up with a video server computer in the other room. It has 1.6Tb of hard drive space. All the videos are in Xvid, OGM, Divx, WMV and a few other highly compressed formats. I select the videos from my HTPC in the front room and the server transfers them over a gigbit LAN connection, through the HTPC computer to a video projector. This works very well for me. If I want a video in original format, I use a 400 disc DVD changer directly to the projector. Both setups output component video and optical audio to the surround sound amplifier.

[mikey23]

I am using media center edition and have a couple of xbox 360s to stream to. One in bedroom and one in the den. Don't think you could use software player like PowerDVD since media center will be used. I just want the main movie, so if I use DVD shrink what file will the output to so I can use on the media center.

Regarding vob2mpg, will I lose the 5.1 sound since it converts to mpeg1 video?

Sounds like you got a nice setup with plenty of video to go around.

Thanks again for your time

[redwudz]

It's been a while since I used VOB2MPG, so I don't remember exactly, but I think it keeps all the audio formats from the DVD.

Probably a typo, but it would be in MPEG-2 format if you convert the VOBs to MPEG.

I'm not sure about Media Center, but if it will play full DVDs from the hard drive, that may be the way to go.

Shrink would work fairly simply to trim down to just the main movie and keep just the AC3 5.1, if you want to keep it all in DVD format. Most main movies are just a little more than 4.37GB, but you can set the size at custom in Shrink and make the maximum size anything you want. Then no further compression if you want the best quality.

If you are able to play the DVD video from your hard drive with Media Center, you could skip all the VOB2MPG stuff and just use Shrink. (And DVD Fab Decrypter on occasion.) If Media center won't play them from the HD, then you may need to convert to MPEG-2. I can play a DVD from the HD with Zoom player or VLC. All I need to do is select a DVD folder on the hard drive and the DVD starts, just the same as playing a DVD from the DVD drive. PowerDVD works the same way.

Once you run a DVD through Shrink, saving just the main video and the AC3 audio, it wouldn't take up much more space than the VOB2MPG version of the same thing. The VOBs are the only large files on a DVD, the rest of them are relatively small. One side benefit is you could still burn the file to a regular DVD and play it without any modifications.

In my setup, I would rather convert the DVDs to Xvid with a filesize of about 1.5GB. This preserves the quality fairly well, even with a big screen, but it allows me to put more of them on the hard drive.

[mikey23]

Just curious, is your HTPC a specialized pc like a media center pc or just a regular pc with PowerDVD or something similar.

Thanks for your help.

[redwudz]

No, just a regular PC. I looked into Media Center, but I really didn't need the remote control and the rest of it. I have a remote for the HDTV card, but the rest, I just use a monitor and a keyboard with 25 foot cables to the PC.

EDIT: It's a AMD Athlon AM2 3800+ CPU, 1GB of DDR2-800 memory on a ASUS MB with component video output to a HDTV projector.