some converting questions

[scarlac]

My DVD collection is coming to big to fit in my livingroom, so I decided to rip all of them and stream them to my TV. The problem now, I don't have a HD-TV yet. I wil buy one in the very near future, something like 3 monts or so.

Every movie has a different resolution and has most of the time 2 black borders on the top and the bottom. I think the DVD-resolution is 720x576. I could cut those black borders, but I'm affraid that some movies will be stretched on my new TV. Is there some solution to this, or is there some standard resolution we should use. I'd like to have the maximum resolution of the DVD, 720 width. I don't look to the space, more than space enough since I bought a NAS of 4TB especially for my movies.

What program do I have to use to obtain the best encoding quality and fastest.

I also saw that all those programs convert the sound in mp3, is that sound still in 5.1 or is it converted to stereo.

Thanks for the advice.

[hech54]

With 4TB....why "convert" at all?

[scarlac]

Héhé, yeah, had the same reaction of another friend. Because I have more than 1000 DVD's and I'd like to convert them with the best quality. Which will be, I suppose, something like 2Gb for each movie. I also want to keep some space for all my upcoming new movies, especially HD.

[guns1inger]

How do you intend to play them back form the NAS ?

Any decent player will simply add back any bars that you crop off to ensure that the video plays back correctly. However you will also have to resize in most cases, and then re-encode. All of this will risk a reduction in quality.

You also have to understand that Fastest and Quality rarely go together> if you are going to go to the trouble of ripping all of these DVDs and converting them, you should be going for quality first. If you want speed, don't convert. Just do a movie only rip of the DVDs and keep that instead.

You can keep 5.1 audio (AC3) by using the right software, however the details of exactly what to use and how to convert still hinge on the first question I asked - how will you be playing these back ?

I would suggest Fair Use Wizard or Handbrake as the best tools, and H264 for the best quality video, however this is lso far slower than Divx/Xvid.

If you are happy with the quality that Divx/Xvid provides then I would suggest AutoGK, as it is faster than FUW or Handbrake.

[scarlac]

You're right, quality and speed don't match together. Quality is what I want.

I will play my movies from my laptop, which is already connected to the TV I have for the moment. Even on my upcoming HDTV, I still will use my laptop. I like the idea to be able to check my mails and to surf around the web using this laptop. I already use this laptop for my music, which is a huge collection too. The sound is connected with an SPDIF-cable. I also use that laptop for playig DVD's. Of course when I will use Blu-ray discs I will have the use a separate Blu-ray-player.

[guns1inger]

Does your laptop have HDMI output ?

I would look at Fair Use Wizard (the free version) and encode to H264 with AC3 audio. Don't crush the crap out the videos. Consider Constant Quality encoding, which will allocate the appropriate bitrate for the quality level you choose.

[scarlac]

I don't have HDMI on that laptop.
What do you mean with, 'don't crush the crap out', leaving the black borders as they are.

Ok, I just installed fairuse wizard and handbrake. I will check both.

[scarlac]

In fairuse wizard i have following compression codecs: xvid, divx, x264. The other ones are faded to grey. I suppose it's x264 I have to take.

What about the quantizer, how much do I have to take.

[guns1inger]

The quantizer sets the level of quality. For H264, 21 is good, 18 is better, 16 and less is close to the original. The smaller the number, the bigger the file.

When say don't crush the crap out of the videos I mean don't over compress them. All these people that post here saying that they want to get their feature length videos down to 700MB are basically crushing all the quality and life out of them.

[scarlac]

ok, good to know. That's what I don't want to do. I really want to keep max quality.

And what about the border, do I remove them. If I remove them, won't that give stretching-problems when viewing the movie on any HD-TV.

[guns1inger]

It shouldn't cause stretching problems. If you use your laptop then the video will look however your player presents it. I don't know about you, but when I play videos back on my monitor, they aren't stretched - the player just adds bars as necessary to preserve the aspect ratio. The same should happen for you. That said, they use very little bitrate, so you could keep them (I would crop them).

Edit : I wish I could type . . . . . . .

[scarlac]

ok sounds good to me.

Thanks alot for your help. I really appreciate.

[scarlac]

I'm making some tests in fairuse wizard and I'm having some ratio problems.

When I'm encoding it, my movie is stretched. I tested with cropping the black borders and without.

When I play the movie with mediaplayer I get following movie-properties:
- video size: 768x352
- aspect ratio: 20:11 actual, 4:3 displayed

Looks odd. For the tests I'm running, I asked a resolution 640x352 and I get a 768x352

[scarlac]

Strange, when I'm using divx or xvid, instead of x264, my movie looks perfect.

Somebody knows how it comes