pnear
14th November 2004, 04:32
I've been working for the last week to figure out various ways to get DVD content to play on a Media Center Extender. Here are the restrictions:
- content must be 720x480
- must be 4:3 native (no anamorphic)
- video can be MPEG1, MPEG2 or WMV9
- audio can be MPEG or WMV9
- audio cannot be AC3
- audio cannot be WMV9Pro
- video cannot be DIVX or XVID
Before we get into too much detail, I am truly a newbie and everything I know is from this website. From what I've learned so far, the preferable option would be to reuse the MPEG2 on the DVD without transcoding, and convert the AC3 audio to MPEG audio. That should allow for a fairly good rip, minimal quality loss, and fast file conversion. Disk space is not a concern. I haven't been able to figure out a simple way to do this - ideally just a few clicks from DVD to HD archive.
Next best option I've been able to find is to transcode both the video and audio files, plenty of SVCD tools out there that will do it. I've been successful with DVD2toSVCD by changing the output resolution to 720x480. Unfortunately, that takes several hours and results in unnecessary loss of quality.
Third option is to use WMV, as noted in the Zarax tutorials. WMEncoder is less useful that some of the other format tools, for example in automatically picking up the right resolution, right framerate, adding letterbox frames, etc. I've found that TMPGEnc Express 3 is somewhat more user friendly, but an expensive option. Again, you still have the problem of several hours of processing time when I really don't care about reducing file size.
I would really appreciate any insight you could provide. If my options are way off, please feel free to suggest something else. Again, the goal here is to get video playing on the extender as quickly as possible in the highest quality possible. Constraints are listed above.
Thanks,
Pete
- content must be 720x480
- must be 4:3 native (no anamorphic)
- video can be MPEG1, MPEG2 or WMV9
- audio can be MPEG or WMV9
- audio cannot be AC3
- audio cannot be WMV9Pro
- video cannot be DIVX or XVID
Before we get into too much detail, I am truly a newbie and everything I know is from this website. From what I've learned so far, the preferable option would be to reuse the MPEG2 on the DVD without transcoding, and convert the AC3 audio to MPEG audio. That should allow for a fairly good rip, minimal quality loss, and fast file conversion. Disk space is not a concern. I haven't been able to figure out a simple way to do this - ideally just a few clicks from DVD to HD archive.
Next best option I've been able to find is to transcode both the video and audio files, plenty of SVCD tools out there that will do it. I've been successful with DVD2toSVCD by changing the output resolution to 720x480. Unfortunately, that takes several hours and results in unnecessary loss of quality.
Third option is to use WMV, as noted in the Zarax tutorials. WMEncoder is less useful that some of the other format tools, for example in automatically picking up the right resolution, right framerate, adding letterbox frames, etc. I've found that TMPGEnc Express 3 is somewhat more user friendly, but an expensive option. Again, you still have the problem of several hours of processing time when I really don't care about reducing file size.
I would really appreciate any insight you could provide. If my options are way off, please feel free to suggest something else. Again, the goal here is to get video playing on the extender as quickly as possible in the highest quality possible. Constraints are listed above.
Thanks,
Pete