COnverting to MP4 for Raspberry Pi playback

[kelemvor]

Howdy,

I've always just converted my DVDs to AVIs via Divx and played them back via my Wii or whatever. However, I'm getting a Raspberry Pi which will run XBMC so I want to convert them to MP4 files instead. Just looking for the best program and settings to use.

I know handbrake seems to be the most popular but I have only used it once or twice so am just looking for recommendations.

One person said to just set things to Constant Bitrate and 19 for quality and let it rip. I'm trying that setting now to use as a test. Are there other settings I should be concerned about?

Also I have one specific questions regarding subtitles. 99% of the time I won't want them. However, certain movies like Lord of the Rings or the new Karate Kid, have sub titles in certain parts where they aren't speaking english so I'd obviously want to see those, just not subtitles for the whole movie. Are those built into the movie or are those actually subtitles and how do I make sure I get them?

Thanks for any advice.

[itsonlyme]

If you have used a recent version of DivX you will find that these play on a Raspberry Pi. For re-encoding the very old ones I have I use VirtualDub and encode to Xvid.

Malcolm

[kelemvor]

I know the AVIs will play, but the Pi was optimized for h.264 videos and the AVIs are of lower quality. I'm looking to rerip my videos (not convert the AVIS) to get higher quality than I have now and in a format that will work best on the Pi.

[jman98]

Divx/Xvid are very processor friendly, so it's a dubious claim that H.264 "works best" on the Pi. Unless they basically broke something in the chip your old AVI files should work just as well. Divx and Xvid are certainly capable of high quality video so if your files are "of lower quality" then that is really a reflection of the job you did on the original encodes rather than a defect in the codec itself. I don't do enough H.264 encoding to feel comfortable answering your specific questions on that.

As far as subtitles go, they can be hardcoded into the videos you mentioned or they can be forced on. Sometimes a special subtitle file will exist that only contains the text for those special situations and is actually mostly empty. In that case you just encode with that specific subtitle file used. I will warn you that Handbrake does not excel at handling subtitles so do not be surprised if you need specific help with movies like the ones you mentioned. Looks like you are using DVDs so that does simplify things over having to deal with BluRays. You'll need to rip all the English subtitles on movies like Karate Kid and check them to see which one has just the special subs you talked about. Again, the subs can be hardcoded, but that is probably not done in those movies you specifically mentioned.