Exact copy of a DVD to a container playable in itunes

[jamsponge]

Hi,

This is my first post, I know a bit about video but don't really have experience. I would like to know if I can convert home movies I have on DVD to one file. I would like this be an exact copy with no recoding. I think it is called a direct stream copy. Space is not an issue for me. Recoding takes lots of time and I just want one file. Instead of having lots of vob files I would like all this mpeg 2 data to be put into a container like mp4 as I believe mpeg 2 can be contained in a quicktime container (according to wikipedia). I could then load this into itunes an be able to play it using front row.

Any help appreciated

Thanks

Thanks

[minidv2dvd]

try for yourself. use vob2mpg to convert the vobs to mpeg-2. beware though, mpeg-2 doesn't support menus, subtitles, or more than one audio stream. so your best bet is to rip the dvd to main movie with 1 audio stream only.

mpeg-2 is not related to mp4. you will need to re-encode to mp4 if you wish it in that format, and i don't think you can put mpeg-2 into a .mov container and have it work, but go ahead and try. maybe you'll surprise me.

[jamsponge]

Thanks for the response.

I have used vob2mpg, and produced one mpeg2 file and then tried to dump it into an mp4 container using MP4Box command line. The video imports fine but the audio is not supported. I have realised though that it would be impossible to play the file natively in itunes or front row (without saving a reference file in quicktime and dropping it into itunes) as itunes (i think) only allows imports of H.264 videos as the ipod has a decoder for this (and not mpeg 2).

Just as a reference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_14

under Data streams it says 'Almost any kind of data can be embedded in MPEG-4 Part 14 files'

so I don't know why the audio doesn't work.

Thanks

[minidv2dvd]

hehe... calling a pig by any other name can't change it to a chicken. the only way to make an actual .mp4 is to encode the video to the spec. take the time and re-encode the videos to h264. if you don't have an encoder you might try using the mpeg-2 from vob2mpg as the source to feed into megui, at a high enough bitrate the quality won't suffer much.

[jamsponge]

Agreed. What is the fastest possible way to encode to H.264 video format in an mp4 container? I really don't want to wait hours for the conversion. Im looking for a 15 minute conversion max. The size of the file is not an issue, I just want the best quality in the fastest time.

Thanks

[Baldrick]

Max 15 minutes? Not possible if you are converting a full movie to dvd resolution(480p) and you don't have a monster computer (or maybe a graphic card with hardware cuda h264 encoding).

Most free h264 are based on x264 like handbrake, xvid4psp, fairuse wizard. Use one pass or constant quality for fastest encoding and lower the resolution for faster encoding.