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Best process to get DVD to play on Xbox360, with 5.1 sound (gotta use .avi container)

S

scootermaster

Platinum Member
I know handbrake and Mac the ripper. But what formats and program flows should I use? Just something to rip my DVDs and allow iTunes to see them so they can be streamed to my Xbox 360 for display on my big TV. Space isn't an issue, and I'd like to preserve as much video quality as possible.

Thanks!

Edit: I've gotten this to work with both Mpeg4 and AVI containers, but I haven't been able to get 5.1 sound. There are some tutorials out there for how to do this, but they're all for Windows or Visualhub, neither of which I have.

Can Handbrake do this? It doesn't seem to by default.

 
Is time an issue?

Basically, this is what I've found gives me the best quality with the smallest amount of space, and great quality for TV viewing. These are also small enough, that you should be able to stream them wirelessly with ease.

I rip via MacTheRipper.
Then use Handbrake with the following settings:

Settings Pane 1
Settings Pane 2
Settings Pane 3
Settings Pane 4


This method usually takes 2-3 hours per TV episode on my laptop in my sig.

Hope that helps..
 
Yes.. but I found that this gave me better quality/lower filesizes.. if you don't mind higher filesizes.. which I know you said you didn't scootermaster.. then technically you can use the Xbox360 option.
 
Originally posted by: randomlinh
ummm... you can't use itunes to stream to xbox can you?
Click to expand...

Connect360 will do it under a Mac, and I believe Tversity will do it with a PC. I'm not sure how else to get media from a computer to an Xbox. If you have better ideas, I'm all ears.

Also, is it quicker to do a rip with mactheripper, and then encode with handbrake, or is it best to just let handbrake do it all? I guess one advantage is I can rip a bunch of movies, and then encode them overnight or something.

 
Originally posted by: scootermaster
Originally posted by: randomlinh
ummm... you can't use itunes to stream to xbox can you?
Click to expand...

Connect360 will do it under a Mac, and I believe Tversity will do it with a PC. I'm not sure how else to get media from a computer to an Xbox. If you have better ideas, I'm all ears.

Also, is it quicker to do a rip with mactheripper, and then encode with handbrake, or is it best to just let handbrake do it all? I guess one advantage is I can rip a bunch of movies, and then encode them overnight or something.
Click to expand...

yeah, that advantage is a big one. The other one is if handbrake pukes for some reason, it's faster to restart (no need to re-rip).

As fro Connect360, yeah, I'm familiar with that, but your OP seemed to imply you wanted itunes to see the videos so it could be streamed to the 360. I was under the impression Connect360 was independent from any program.
 
Originally posted by: randomlinh
Originally posted by: scootermaster
Originally posted by: randomlinh
ummm... you can't use itunes to stream to xbox can you?
Click to expand...

Connect360 will do it under a Mac, and I believe Tversity will do it with a PC. I'm not sure how else to get media from a computer to an Xbox. If you have better ideas, I'm all ears.

Also, is it quicker to do a rip with mactheripper, and then encode with handbrake, or is it best to just let handbrake do it all? I guess one advantage is I can rip a bunch of movies, and then encode them overnight or something.
Click to expand...

yeah, that advantage is a big one. The other one is if handbrake pukes for some reason, it's faster to restart (no need to re-rip).

As fro Connect360, yeah, I'm familiar with that, but your OP seemed to imply you wanted itunes to see the videos so it could be streamed to the 360. I was under the impression Connect360 was independent from any program.
Click to expand...

Ah. We're both sort of right. You can share iTunes, which apparently you need to do for music, but you can also share "movies", which as you say, is just anything the Xbox can play. Good to know, thanks for the tip!

So I encoded one to iTunes, and the Xbox choked on it, but then handbraked that to Xbox format, and it worked fine, except for DD/5.1 sound didn't come through. Any ideas there? Is it a function of the encoding, or streaming (does streaming not support 5.1), or the Xbox or?

Also, lord I wish I'd gotten in on the VisualHub thing. Sigh.

Alright. I guess I'm going to go with Mactheripper, and then batch encode. Honestly, it'll probably take awhile to find the right settings because the one I picked, which I thought was "loss-less", didn't look that great on my 50" plasma. Passable, for sure, but not wonderful. Like I said, filesize itself is not an issue, but I guess it does need to be a bitrate that can be streamed wirelessly.
 
Originally posted by: sourceninja
Originally posted by: magnux
Originally posted by: scootermaster
Also, lord I wish I'd gotten in on the VisualHub thing. Sigh.
Click to expand...

VisualHub has been resurrected as TranscoderRedux. It's based off the released VisualHub source -- and it's free.
Click to expand...

And as far as I can tell has no releases yet :-(
Click to expand...

No packaged releases (yet), SVN only. It consists of both FilmRedux and PunyVid.
 
Edit: I've gotten this to work with both Mpeg4 and AVI containers, but I haven't been able to get 5.1 sound. There are some tutorials out there for how to do this, but they're all for Windows or Visualhub, neither of which I have.

Can Handbrake do this? It doesn't seem to by default.
 
Originally posted by: SoundTheSurrender
In Handbrake, when you go to the Sound Tab, you can choose 5.1 sound. Did you select that option?
Click to expand...

I selected the 5.1 passthrough. I actually selected 2 (5.1 AC3 passthrough and Dolby Surround AC3 Passthrough). The resulting file didn't play on my Xbox. I'm not sure if it's because I used the wrong encoder (I can't remember if I used Xvid or FFMpeg). Or if it's because you're not allowed to have two audio tracks or what.

But at 40 mins per encode, it might take me awhile to find the right permutation, so I thought if anyone had any experience with this it might be nice to share. But I'll certainly let you know what I come up with!
 
A quick tip.. don't encode the full file. Pick a small segment on a disc that you can encode .. something that's only 2 mins long.. that way you aren't spending hours figuring out what you like best.
 
Originally posted by: Kmax82
A quick tip.. don't encode the full file. Pick a small segment on a disc that you can encode .. something that's only 2 mins long.. that way you aren't spending hours figuring out what you like best.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm not sure how to do that. There are other tracks, but often times special features and whatnot aren't in 5.1, so I wouldn't be learning there. But the good news is, I figured out what's going on, I think, for the most part.

The two 5.1 tracks were the actual audio track and a commentary track. Both I could successfully encode and stream, using the Xvid encoder (I think). The problem was the bitrate was waaaay too high for my wireless link. So now I'm going to try one or two more passes confirming the Xvid thing, trying the FMpeg thing, and then it's only a matter of figuring out which bitrate gives me the best quality but can actually be handled by the wireless link.

When I'm done on this current encode, I'll see about only encode a small portion. I've just been using the same Superbad rip from Mactheripper for all these trials (i.e. the whole DVD rip) so I'll see if I can use a smaller portion.

 
In handbrake, select the main feature, and then change the chapters to soemthing random like 4-7... or just 4-5. short, quick. queue up a bunch of different settings, and be sure to make note of filenames and settings associated. encode, then see what works
 
Originally posted by: randomlinh
In handbrake, select the main feature, and then change the chapters to soemthing random like 4-7... or just 4-5. short, quick. queue up a bunch of different settings, and be sure to make note of filenames and settings associated. encode, then see what works
Click to expand...

Thanks, I did just that.

So far the results aren't good. Some of the bitrates actually encoded chopilly regardless of whether they were streamed or not. This took me awhile to figure out, that when I play them on my PC, the stutters are actually encoded on the video. Not good. I'm running a C2D e7200 2.53 @ 2.85 with 4 Gigs of ram and a WD 640, so I should obviously have enough oomf to encode these things. Is it a bug with handbrake? And I'm not even ripping them off the DVD; all of these runs are from a DVD image (not ISO) on my HD (I guess maybe it'd go faster/better if I was ripping to and from different HDs, but sheesh).

Anyway, I haven't been able to find a bitrate that'll stream 5.1 okay to my Xbox. The bit rate for the audio is around 450, and I don't know what the max theoretical limit is, but down to 600 for the video still stutters. Of course, m4v videos encoded MUCH higher (without 5.1) work just fine. So I have no idea what gives. I was hoping to use this as pseudo "archival" quality of some DVDs, but without dolby surround there's really no point. I might as well just download torrents or something.

Should I just keep going lower on the video bit rate and cross my fingers? Anyone else have any thoughts? Also, is there a difference between the FMpeg and Xvid encoders?

Thanks a ton for your guys' feedback.
 
So I got the FilmRedux source and compiled it with Xcode. But, uh, it won't let me drag and drop (or otherwise add), um, anything.

I read that the AVI audio muxer in Handbrake is weak (and there are no plans to "fix" it) but either ffmpeg directly, or better yet, VisualHub/Filmredux can fix the problem since it has a much more robust audio muxer. Now, since I don't have a copy of VisualHub -- *cough*cough* -- and I can't get FilmRedux to work (will it even work with DVDs/VOBs?) does anyone else have any bright ideas? Like, maybe, some magical way of getting VisualHub? 😀
 
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