DVD to WMV converter that does multi-channel audio

[smitbret]

I have a buddy that is insisting on ripping 60 or so DVDs to his HDD so that he can stream them over his network to his Xbox 360. His big hangup is that multi-channel audio be maintained. We have fought with .avi files and converted to Xvid/AC3 passthru using Handbrake and WinX DVD Ripper. We just can't seem to get a file that plays smoothly.

I've decided it might just be best to go to the dark side and convert to .wmv, but every program that I have tried only supports 2-channel audio (Windows Media Encoder, Xilisoft, etc.). What programs out there will do the job for me? Free tools would be nice, of course, but I'll pay for good quality.

[El Heggunte]

AFAIK, Windows Media Encoder does support multichannel output,
as long as you choose the appropriate audio codec (WMA Pro).

Anyway, unless you want to try something like Expression Encoder,
don't forget to encode to WM-Video by using

* 2-pass with unconstrained bitrate *

--- otherwise, quite probably you'll get a festival of duplicated frames

[smitbret]

Hmmm, wonder what I missed with Windows Media Encoder. I guess I will try again.

As a second question, what kind of bitrate does .wmv need to maintain DVD quality? File size won't really be an issue with just these few DVDs, but I still wouldn't mind being efficient.

[mh2360]

Try the latest version (4) of Expression encoder, as I don't think the earlier versions supported WM audio with more than two channels, and TBH it is much better than Windows Media Encoder.

Windows Media Encoding is fully functional in the free version.

[jman98]

There is a better way to do this if your buddy values his time. If he's a cheapskate who cares nothing about his time just as long as he doesn't have to spend an extra penny, this is not for him.

1) Buy a streaming media player like one of the Western Digital models or something similar. They're cheaper and smaller in size than he probably realizes.
2) Rip DVDs to hard drive.
3) Stream.

That's it. No re-encoding. No trying to fit square pegs into a round hole by having to re-encode everything so that the stupid Xbox can handle it.

[mh2360]

If your friend has Vista or Windows 7 Media Center, instead of streaming to the 360's video library, the 360 can be set up as a media extender. You would then be able to stream the ripped .MPG files to the 360.

[yoda313]

AFAIK, Windows Media Encoder does support multichannel output,
as long as you choose the appropriate audio codec (WMA Pro).

Yes that is correct. Wma pro 10 I believe is the one that is needed for 5.1 wma audio. There are guides online for it of course.

Jman 98 does have a point. Investing in an external harddrive and a media player will save a lot of time and angst in converting video.

No trying to fit square pegs into a round hole by having to re-encode everything so that the stupid Xbox can handle it.

The xbox is not stupid. What it is a GAMING CONSOLE first and a Media Player second.

Part of it is Microsoft wants you to buy and rent videos on the zune marketplace on the xbox live marketplace.

-------------------------------------

A side note - the xbox 360 handles divx just fine. You can convert to divx and keep the ac3 track probably more easily than a wmv/wma conversion. I'm not sure if the xbox 360 can handle .dts inside a divx track. It does do dts but I only know it does dts on dvd for sure - it might do dts in divx/xvid just fine but I don't have personal experience to confirm or deny it.

edit - mh2360 has a good point also - a htpc setup with mce works - or stream without mce and use tversity or playon and stream the rip without converting.

edit 2 - to the original poster - why not just use vdubmod and load the dvd there and use the divx or xvid encoder in there and keep the audio track that way? There are also tons of programs that do dvd to xvid or divx with digital audio, you could try experimenting more.

[smitbret]

If your friend has Vista or Windows 7 Media Center, instead of streaming to the 360's video library, the 360 can be set up as a media extender. You would then be able to stream the ripped .MPG files to the 360.

I've explored that, but I don't understand what the difference is. I don't know the Xbox 360 setup. He's streaming stuff from his PC, already. What's the difference between what he's doing now and setting up an extender?

[smitbret]

AFAIK, Windows Media Encoder does support multichannel output,
as long as you choose the appropriate audio codec (WMA Pro).

Yes that is correct. Wma pro 10 I believe is the one that is needed for 5.1 wma audio. There are guides online for it of course.

Jman 98 does have a point. Investing in an external harddrive and a media player will save a lot of time and angst in converting video.

No trying to fit square pegs into a round hole by having to re-encode everything so that the stupid Xbox can handle it.

The xbox is not stupid. What it is a GAMING CONSOLE first and a Media Player second.

Part of it is Microsoft wants you to buy and rent videos on the zune marketplace on the xbox live marketplace.

-------------------------------------

A side note - the xbox 360 handles divx just fine. You can convert to divx and keep the ac3 track probably more easily than a wmv/wma conversion. I'm not sure if the xbox 360 can handle .dts inside a divx track. It does do dts but I only know it does dts on dvd for sure - it might do dts in divx/xvid just fine but I don't have personal experience to confirm or deny it.

edit - mh2360 has a good point also - a htpc setup with mce works - or stream without mce and use tversity or playon and stream the rip without converting.

edit 2 - to the original poster - why not just use vdubmod and load the dvd there and use the divx or xvid encoder in there and keep the audio track that way? There are also tons of programs that do dvd to xvid or divx with digital audio, you could try experimenting more.

We've been using Handbrake v0.9.3 to encode to Xvid and keep the AC3 on passthru. For some reason the resulting .avi files refuse to play smoothly when we stream them. It's not a network/bandwidth problem because we are able to stream HD .mp4 files without a problem. We've used the built-in service, Tversity and PS3 Media Server, all with the same results. I believe Tversity worked, but only if we transcoded everything, including downsampling the audio to 2.0..... so, what's the point? So, I think I'll just give up on .avi.

He is obsessed with using the Xbox 360. He's got a 1TB external that he wants to house everything on. I told him to just get a PS3 or WD Live. He wouldn't even consider it.

I just tried the newest version of Windows Media Encoder and the option for multi-channel was there. It's converting A Scanner Darkly as I write this. So, in lieu of my lack of knowledge about a media extender, I think we'll just convert to .wmv and cross our fingers.

And no, the Xbox 360 is not stupid, it's just a terrible media streamer. Although I think the exact words "This thing is so stupid" have come out of my mouth.

[mh2360]

We've been using Handbrake v0.9.3 to encode to Xvid and keep the AC3 on passthru. For some reason the resulting .avi files refuse to play smoothly when we stream them.

It's well known that the Xbox 360's MPEG-4 Visual (XviD/DivX) decoder doesn't handle high bit rates very well when streaming. I have found that even moderate bit rate spikes can cause freezing and skipping. Streaming other formats such as MPEG-2, WMV or H.264 at much higher bit rates is always perfectly fine.

Microsoft recommend that you keep the bit rate below 5000k for Xvid and DivX, which is sometimes hard to do if you use CQ encoding.

[yoda313]

What's the difference between what he's doing now and setting up an extender?

First you have to a version of Windows with Media Center on it. Starting with Vista and later the PREMIUM versions of windows has media center already included. XP has to be a certain type of XP that says media center for it to be media center.

The EXTENDER part means you can use the windows media center interface on your xbox 360. You set up the xbox 360 to find your media center pc. it gives you a code and you enter that into the mce interface on your pc. The two talk to each other and then you can use the two together.

MCE is htpc type interface. You can watch and record tv and watch video files with it. However it has the same restrictions the xbox has. There are plugins to allow other file types to be used but I believe a bunch have restrictions on what works on extenders - some only work locally on the pc itself not while streaming to another pc.

I told him to just get a PS3 or WD Live. He wouldn't even consider it.

You will have many similar limitations on the ps3. It might be "a little better" than the xbox 360 in terms of media types it handles. Obviously it does bluray discs and AVCHD. But it will have similar restrictions and general pickiness about what it likes and doesn't like.

The wd live or any of its brothers would be far superior in terms of codec support and ease of use in regards to media playback.

I believe Tversity worked, but only if we transcoded everything, including downsampling the audio to 2.0..... so, what's the point?

There has to be a way to stream 5.1. I'm sure its possible even on a 360. I would keep investigating that path. That would probably be best if you could just rip to iso and play the original rip that way (sans menu of course).

[smitbret]

What's the difference between what he's doing now and setting up an extender?

First you have to a version of Windows with Media Center on it. Starting with Vista and later the PREMIUM versions of windows has media center already included. XP has to be a certain type of XP that says media center for it to be media center.

The EXTENDER part means you can use the windows media center interface on your xbox 360. You set up the xbox 360 to find your media center pc. it gives you a code and you enter that into the mce interface on your pc. The two talk to each other and then you can use the two together.

MCE is htpc type interface. You can watch and record tv and watch video files with it. However it has the same restrictions the xbox has. There are plugins to allow other file types to be used but I believe a bunch have restrictions on what works on extenders - some only work locally on the pc itself not while streaming to another pc.

I told him to just get a PS3 or WD Live. He wouldn't even consider it.

You will have many similar limitations on the ps3. It might be "a little better" than the xbox 360 in terms of media types it handles. Obviously it does bluray discs and AVCHD. But it will have similar restrictions and general pickiness about what it likes and doesn't like.

The wd live or any of its brothers would be far superior in terms of codec support and ease of use in regards to media playback.

I believe Tversity worked, but only if we transcoded everything, including downsampling the audio to 2.0..... so, what's the point?

There has to be a way to stream 5.1. I'm sure its possible even on a 360. I would keep investigating that path. That would probably be best if you could just rip to iso and play the original rip that way (sans menu of course).

I use a PS3 as my media streamer and it is light years better than the 360. If it accepted .mkv it would be perfect, hence my suggestion for a WD Live. He wants one box to do it all, though.

I just converted a movie to .wmv with Windows Media Encoder, but ended up with no sound. VLC says it's there, but there's nothing on playback. I'm about to the point of just making 2-channel .mp4 and just telling him that it's multi-channel. He'd probably never know the difference.

[mh2360]

I use a PS3 as my media streamer and it is light years better than the 360. If it accepted .mkv it would be perfect, hence my suggestion for a WD Live. He wants one box to do it all, though.

I just converted a movie to .wmv with Windows Media Encoder, but ended up with no sound. VLC says it's there, but there's nothing on playback. I'm about to the point of just making 2-channel .mp4 and just telling him that it's multi-channel. He'd probably never know the difference.

You tried to the WMV with 5.1 audio on your PS3? I'm pretty sure the PS3 doesn't support WMA Pro.

Unless your friend has his Xbox 360 connected to 5.1 receiver, it's unlikely that he will be able to tell the difference between the original audio and a 2 channel Dolby Surround downmix.

[yoda313]

I use a PS3 as my media streamer and it is light years better than the 360. If it accepted .mkv it would be perfect,

You might be able to remux your mkvs to mp4 or m2ts. Whats inside the mkvs? If its h264 or divx/xvid videos you can remux them into a mp4 or m2ts file and the ps3 will read it just fine. Winff or tsremuxer would be ideal for it.

Alternatively mkv2vob is also an ideal program for converting mkvs to a format your ps3 will like.

If they are something like flash or realvideo or ogm you will most likely have to reencode those videos as I don't believe the ps3 can play those natively.

-----------

edit - and when you say media streamer what do you use to stream to it? Playon or tversity or ps3mediaserver should handle mkvs just fine if you are lan streaming it (wifi streaming video, especially hd video would be shaky at best unless you are using wifi n and have either line of site or repeater stations to reduce signal breakup).

[smitbret]

Thank you for the ideas for .mkv playback. I've been using the PS3 for a couple of years now and I'm comfortable with .mkv conversion. I typically demux and remux to .m2ts with tsMuxer. If I'm pressed for time or have an .mkv that tsMuxer struggles with, I just convert with MKV2VOB.

I've used TVersity for the last couple of years, but recently coughed up the cash for Mezzmo because it just does so much more than other DLNA servers. I don't like to transcode on the fly cuz I hate the idea that I could be degrading the quality. I'm on a 5gHz Wireless N network that works very reliably upstairs to downstairs. It'll carry up to about 85mb/s and is the only thing running on that band, everything else runs on the 2.4gHz band.

Thanks for the tips on .wmv conversion. I discovered that my problem was with the AC3 filter not being installed on my system. The learning curve was a little steep with Windows Media Encoder since it is the least straight forward piece of software I've ever used and I despise the lag when switching between configuration tabs. Dumbest wizard that I've seen in a long time. It wasn't throwing out an error when converting, it just wouldn't encode an audio track and I was left with a nice video only .wmv file. When I used Expressions Encoder 4, it picked up on the AC3 issue when I imported the .vob and I was able to resolve it before I wasted the time encoding. The interface was far more professional, too.

I haven't had a chance to check out the files on the Xbox 360, yet. I also wanted to check out the idea that .avi files aren't intended to be larger than 1953mb. The .avi files we'd previously used were 2GB+ nad had been encoded with DivX instead of Xvid. So I dropped the bitrate to 1800-1850, using Xvid via Handbrake and we'll see if that solves the problem. I'm still not crazy about the noise around edges and fluttering in busy backgrounds that DivX/Xvid seems to create but .wmv seems to struggle badly with straight lines and the encoding times are soooo much longer. I'm sending a flash drive home with him that has .avi and .wmv copies of the same DVD so that he can compare side-by-side. I think I'd still rather go with .avi just because I can set up multiple jobs and let them run while we sleep with Handbrake. So, that just leaves me with a couple of questions:

Is there someplace in Expressions Encoder to set up multiple jobs in a queue and run them when the PC is unattended, like in Handbrake?

Is there a setting that I could use to help with the noise and fluttering in Xvid files?

[smitbret]

OK, so apparently, I can rip the DVD to a single .vob file using DVD Shrink and then either run it through vob2mpg to change it to an .mpg file or just simply change the file extension to .mpg and it should work through WMC without the option to ff/rew. The other option was to run the single .vob file through VideoRedo and convert it to .dvr-ms. The file gets read as a tv recording, but is full quality since there has been transcoding done in the process and ff/rew is fully functional. I'll be trying it out tonight. I'd still be interested in knowing if there are any settings that I can apply to cleanup the Xvid encoded video in .avi files, if anyone has any knowledge they'd like to share. Thanks for the help.

[smitbret]

I use a PS3 as my media streamer and it is light years better than the 360. If it accepted .mkv it would be perfect, hence my suggestion for a WD Live. He wants one box to do it all, though.

I just converted a movie to .wmv with Windows Media Encoder, but ended up with no sound. VLC says it's there, but there's nothing on playback. I'm about to the point of just making 2-channel .mp4 and just telling him that it's multi-channel. He'd probably never know the difference.

You tried to the WMV with 5.1 audio on your PS3? I'm pretty sure the PS3 doesn't support WMA Pro.

Unless your friend has his Xbox 360 connected to 5.1 receiver, it's unlikely that he will be able to tell the difference between the original audio and a 2 channel Dolby Surround downmix.

Yeah, I converted using WMA Pro and playing back the .wmv file on my PS3 yields a file with no identifiable audio track, it just plays the video. Not really an issue. For PS3, I'd just rip to a single .vob and play it back without any transcoding.

Unfortunately, he does have it hooked up to a 5.1 receiver, I don't know that he'd know the difference between that and a Dolby True Logic downsample, thought. It's not a really good setup. Nice to have a clean backup of the DVD, though.

[Cornucopia]

Instead of futzing around with this or that app and various workarounds, you should go back to square one and get it straight from the horse's mouth:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/Multichannel.aspx

My guess is that you haven't been giving WME (which is perfectly capable of Mutlichannel audio on even WM9 - NOT PRO - if given the correct format source) a file with WAVE_FORMAT_EX audio. Sounds like you've been giving it AC3 or DTS directly. WME doesn't know what to do with that. Do what it asks and take the extra step of decoding to multichannel WAV. On a quick hunch, I'd guess Besweet could do this. You'll get a Multichannel WMA. Then using WM Stream Editor, remux into your already-encoded video.

Scott

edit: in fact, you should try the samples given on that page to see how well they work. Would probably save you a lot of trouble and pain if the XBOX won't accept it (but I think it will now).

[smitbret]

Once I installed the AC3 filter, WME and EE4 both recognized and transcoded the AC3 track to WMA 10 Pro.

If I were just doing a couple of DVDs, it might be worth it for WMP compatibilty, but since we're talking 60-70 DVDs and I'm gonna have to teach someone how to do it, simple is simply better. I'd have to demux the .vob, reencode to .wav and then remux to .wmv after I'd alreaedy transcoded the video. Not to mention the 1:40 it takes to transcode from .vob to .wmv on my Phenom 955. He'll be using a lower clock, dual core AMD, so it would probably take 3+ hours for him to accomplish the same task. I'm trying to avoid the .wmv thing if I can.

Our new workflow:

DVD Shrink + AnyDVD = Single .vob -> DVDRedo = Single .mpg

Should have complete compatibility with Windows Media Center and the Xbox 360 as a Media Extender and the video and audio should be untouched.