AppleTV & Regular DVDs

[nsxlane]

I would like to back-up my DVDs, and then make them playable on my AppleTV - but I also want to be able to back up only the main movie, and I don't want any loss of quality.

I've tried converting to h.264 with Handbrake on Mac or Megui on Windows, and have not been able to find settings that don't degrade the picture quality (especially in dark scenes or scenes with flickering light).

Considering that 750gb hard drives are pretty cheap these days, I'm fine with just keeping the files their original size if I have to.

I use DVD Decrypter to rip the discs to my hard drive, and have tried software to creat ISO DVDs of only the main movie file (AppleTV can read these with a hack), but the ISO software I've tried has still done some kind of compression.

I have one movie that without the extras is only 3.96GB, so it shouldn't be compressing, but it is, and I lose picture quality when it happens.

Should I be pursuing the ISO route or is there a way I can convert the VOB files to a format playable on the AppleTV without degrading the picture?

Thanks

Lane

[Southstorm]

I don't want any loss of quality.


This isn't possible if your using any "lossy" commpression. x264 can be lossless, but it's very slow and the resulting files would be bigger than your originals! If AppleTV will read ISO's, then I'd use IMGBurn to make the image. It won't add any commpression.

You can also use x264 to do very high quality encodes with the proper settings, and have smaller files. There are many suggested setting to be found all over the forum.

[nsxlane]

Thanks for the suggestion to use IMGBurn. I haven't used it before, and it seems like great software.

I am progressing through, but have now run into a new issue. I've set DVD Decrypter to IFO mode so that I can extract only the main movie (in order to conserve space).

IMGBurn won't accept DVD Decrypter's output as it stands to create an actual DVD because there is no video_ts.ifo when you only select the main movie file.

I did some Googling, and found an app called IfoEdit, which I then used to create a clean set of ifo files to match the reduced # of vob files.

At this point, IMGBurn will let me create the DVD ISO image, but the Iso image doesn't appear playable on DVD Player on my Mac.

I have a full ISO of the entire DVD I created using DVD Decrypter's ISO mode, and that image plays fine, but the version I'm trying to create of the main movie file only isn't working.

Any thoughts on where I might find instructions on going from source DVD to an ISO image of only the main movie file and not all of the unnecessary content?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Lane

[Southstorm]

Try the free version of DVD Shrink instead of DVD Decrypter

[nsxlane]

Thanks for that last tip.

I've been using DVD Decrypter for a couple of years, when I was just ripping DVDs, & then compressing them with other software for handheld devices and had never had the need to take a look at DVD Shrink.

Apparently DVD Shrink creates a new IFO fileset (& an accurate one too, as IFO Edit had not done.

Interestingly enough, DVD Shrink has it's own ability to burn to ISO, but when I used that feature in conjunction with the rebuild option to only extract the main movie file, it didn't actually create an iso, but a collection of individual files. I'm not sure why.

However, when I have DVD Shrink rip the main movie to a folder with Video_TS & Audio_TS, it does this with the aforesaid custom generated IFO files, and then ImgBurn works great - and doesn't compress my files.

Often these ISO files are still larger than what can be burned to a DVD without compression, coming in over the 4.7GB, but ImgBurn creates them anyway, and they run great using the Mac's DVD Player. I just won't be able to burn them back to disk, but I don't care about that.

I've checked all of the reference scenes that had been issues for me in the past, and everything is now picture perfect.

I haven't had a chance to try them out on the Apple TV yet, but that's my next project with the Nito hack. My goal is to run the USB hack on the Apple TV, and hang a 750GB drive off of it and archive the main movie files from all of my old DVDs and store them there. I have a Pioneer Elite 58" Rear Projection TV that has a phenomenal picture with regular DVDs, but I was noticing a lot of pixelization with the re-compression methods.

Following my archival project, I intend to buy all new movies in Blu Ray. I'm wondering how well the ripping/compression methods preserve image quality for these new discs. I will probably never rip movies like Star Wars, because I'll want to see/hear them in all their Blu Ray glory, but for comedies and dramas I think I'll ditch the disc. The Apple TV now supports native 1080p resolution, but you can't buy anything from iTunes encoded that high, so I'd prefer to encode myself at the higher resolution.

How big are Blu Ray movie files ripped to h.264 or mkv at 1080p? Is there a good newbie FAQ for this type of encoding?

Thanks for the tips!!!

[musicman2311]

hi there, please be carefull - you can set appleTV to connect to a 1080p TV via HDMi, but actual movie content, maximum is 720p (1280 x 720 or so). with this said, I have taken a blu ray backup 1080p and re-encoded 2 min sample for appleTV - at least I cannot see any difference really on a 42 inch Plasma. I used visualhub (on mac). The 2 min file with dolby digital is 88 Mbyte

[mousemurder]

this mite be a stupid question but what is the advantage of using h.264 over the original source mpeg-2 (lossless is lossless no matter the container format -- is that correct or am i missing something ?)

most media players handle elemantary mpeg format (i would assume apple-tv is no exception) if it needs to be iso'd, i assume mac has a builtin mkisofs

i dont have a mac, but my other presumptions that mac has other builtin unix programs have been wrong. you can do 'which mkisofs' to see if it exists.

[dat720]

i guess the reason he decided to encode to h.264 is it's a codec comon on the mac platform, quicktime ipod's etc.....

But your right, if you want lossless and the apple tv can playback mpeg2, then i woul dhave though tthe best method would be to demux the dvd, not reencode it.

Edit: after some research i see that h264 is the best method for playback on apple tv

[dat720]

I will probably never rip movies like Star Wars, because I'll want to see/hear them in all their Blu Ray glory,

Don't worry about that, i have been able to encode HD/BR's down to less than half their original size at the original resolution and cannot notice a drop in quality, on either a 42" Plasma or a 60" Rear Pro, and i'm pretty picky about quality! (the 42" is in my bedroom!!!!)

How big are Blu Ray movie files ripped to h.264 or mkv at 1080p? Is there a good newbie FAQ for this type of encoding?

Here is a directory listing of some of my movies to give you an idea on the size of BR/HD mkv's:

2 Fast 2 Furious.mkv 15.32gb
King Kong.mkv 22.39gb
Meet the Robinsons.mkv 16.31gb
Serenity.mkv 13.96gb
Terminator 2.mkv 20.95gb
Terminator 3.mkv 10.78gb
The Chronicles of Riddick.mkv 16.34gb
The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift.mkv 14.07gb
The Fast and the Furious.mkv 13.93gb
The Fifth Element.mkv 25.08gb

These files were ripped using eac3to simply dumping the video stream to a mkv and reencoding the audio track's to ac3 (for compatibility with some of my devices)

Read This (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=137128), it will get you started with BR/HD to avi/mkv

[Ronin-7]

nsxlane you might want to check out Ripbot (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=127611) for your DVD's as I have found it does a very good job quality wise (especially with movies with dark areas), with it set to CQ mode try a setting of 17 and see how the movie displays on your TV. Don't forget to select the AppleTV profile as well as it defaults to one not compatible with it (maybe the codec hacks make those high profile videos playable, don't know either way)