DVD compatible containers?

[ricnews]

Not sure where to post this so picked this forum...

I have a Western Digital WD TV box which is able to play ripped DVDs but not very well. There's no support for menus, and very limited support for chapters and titles.

I was wondering if there is any video container format such as mkv that would preserve most of the features of a DVD but is also compatible with the native DVD video and audio codecs so that re-encoding is not necessary. I.E. can I convert a DVD into a MKV, preserving the original mpeg and AC3 video and audio plus menus, multiple audio streams, etc.? Or is there another container that would let me do that?

If the answer is yes, are there any easy 1-click tools that will take a DVD or TS_Video folder and do the conversion for me?

Thanks!

[BigDid]

Hi,

Is it this product? http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8993217&type=product&id=1218008588808

If so, there is a firmware update available (1.01) that seems useful for compatibility; go to WD home page for it.

VOB (and MKV) are listed as compatible input so I believe trial and error will make you progress.

For MKV the app MakeMKV seems to have good result:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=144611
http://www.makemkv.com/

Did

[ricnews]

Yes, that's the product. I have the latest firmware update. It will play DVDs and VOB files but doesn't preserve the menus and doesn't seem to do a good job of preserving chapters. If you have the DVD in a folder you have to find the first VOB file of the main movie otherwise you'll just end up playing the menu video or something. I believe that if you save it as an .iso it works better and will just play each VOB in sequence. If you have multiple titles on the DVD it seems to treat each title as a chapter so you can skip using the remote but there's no way to select a title from a menu and the internal chapters in each title don't seem to be preserved.

I'm hoping there will be another firmware update soon that will add true DVD navigation support. But since there's no way of knowing when or if that will happen I'd like to find a better solution now.

Thanks for the link. I"ll check it out. I'm not quite clear on whether MKV can contain mpeg2 and AC3 files or if transcoding is necessary. Nor am I clear on whether it can support DVD-like navigation menus. If not, I'd still be happy if there's an easy way to convert each title on a DVD to a mks file, with chapter marks intact. But I'd prefer not to have to transcode.

Thanks!

[RunningSkittle]

...
Thanks for the link. I"ll check it out. I'm not quite clear on whether MKV can contain mpeg2 and AC3 files or if transcoding is necessary. Nor am I clear on whether it can support DVD-like navigation menus. If not, I'd still be happy if there's an easy way to convert each title on a DVD to a mks file, with chapter marks intact. But I'd prefer not to have to transcode.

Thanks!
Yes mkv supports mpeg2 and AC3, but it does not support menus *yet*

[ricnews]

Thanks. Sounds like it might be a good solution then. I don't mind splitting each title into its own file. Although once menus are supported that will be really useful.