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Best tool for encoding DVD files for playback on 360

N

nsafreak

Diamond Member
The title says it all. I'm trying to find a tool that will correctly do the job where other tools I have tried do not work properly. So far I have tried the following tools:

Dr. DivX (latest version): Has a tendency to crash for no explicable reason. Will sometimes generate a file just fine and is the fastest at encoding of the tools I have tried so far. Unfortunately even though I have the 5.1 AC3 track selected for encoding it doesn't seem to encode it in a way that my receiver recognizes as DD 5.1 audio. I get audio just fine, just not DD 5.1

Fair Use Wizard: Takes an extremely long time to encode and the last time I tried it failed to encode the file after an 8 hour encode time. I know I have an older CPU (P4 3.0Ghz) but its not THAT old.

AutoGK: I will have to attempt another encode with this tool as it seems that the Xvid file that it generated the 360 does not support. Will try with the standard Divx codec and see how it turns out however it is also rather slow, this may or may not be because of the codec.

For further reference I am using the latest versions of both the Xvid and Divx codecs so I should be good to go there. Thanks for your help on this one folks.
 
If you mean ISO->AVI/WMV, I highly suggest trying Fair Use Wizard again. It does take a while (typically 4 hours/full movie for me), but it does the job well.

Also, for your note about Dr. Divx - the 360 doesn't stream 5.1 audio unless in some proprietary WMV format. That is why it only shows up as stereo on your receiver.
 
Originally posted by: ducci
If you mean ISO->AVI/WMV, I highly suggest trying Fair Use Wizard again. It does take a while (typically 4 hours/full movie for me), but it does the job well.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it takes about 2-4 hours as well depending on the length of the movie and the quality of the encode (I usually do a compression ratio of 90:1 to 100:1).

I'm running an AMD dual core 2800+ with 2 gigs of RAM.

 
Originally posted by: Queasy
Originally posted by: ducci
If you mean ISO->AVI/WMV, I highly suggest trying Fair Use Wizard again. It does take a while (typically 4 hours/full movie for me), but it does the job well.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it takes about 2-4 hours as well depending on the length of the movie and the quality of the encode (I usually do a compression ratio of 90:1 to 100:1).

I'm running an AMD dual core 2800+ with 2 gigs of RAM.
Click to expand...

can fairuse do DD5.1?
 
Originally posted by: austin316
Originally posted by: Queasy
Originally posted by: ducci
If you mean ISO->AVI/WMV, I highly suggest trying Fair Use Wizard again. It does take a while (typically 4 hours/full movie for me), but it does the job well.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it takes about 2-4 hours as well depending on the length of the movie and the quality of the encode (I usually do a compression ratio of 90:1 to 100:1).

I'm running an AMD dual core 2800+ with 2 gigs of RAM.
Click to expand...

can fairuse do DD5.1?
Click to expand...

I think you can keep the original track, and just mux it w/ the new video.
 
Originally posted by: austin316
Originally posted by: Queasy
Originally posted by: ducci
If you mean ISO->AVI/WMV, I highly suggest trying Fair Use Wizard again. It does take a while (typically 4 hours/full movie for me), but it does the job well.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it takes about 2-4 hours as well depending on the length of the movie and the quality of the encode (I usually do a compression ratio of 90:1 to 100:1).

I'm running an AMD dual core 2800+ with 2 gigs of RAM.
Click to expand...

can fairuse do DD5.1?
Click to expand...

Yep.
 
Originally posted by: Queasy
Originally posted by: ducci
If you mean ISO->AVI/WMV, I highly suggest trying Fair Use Wizard again. It does take a while (typically 4 hours/full movie for me), but it does the job well.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it takes about 2-4 hours as well depending on the length of the movie and the quality of the encode (I usually do a compression ratio of 90:1 to 100:1).

I'm running an AMD dual core 2800+ with 2 gigs of RAM.
Click to expand...

Well I gave it another shot and I ended up with the same result. At the end Fair Use Wizard gave me the error message that it was unable to encode the DVD because if failed at the audio encode stage. Suggestions?
 
Originally posted by: nsafreak
Originally posted by: Queasy
Originally posted by: ducci
If you mean ISO->AVI/WMV, I highly suggest trying Fair Use Wizard again. It does take a while (typically 4 hours/full movie for me), but it does the job well.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it takes about 2-4 hours as well depending on the length of the movie and the quality of the encode (I usually do a compression ratio of 90:1 to 100:1).

I'm running an AMD dual core 2800+ with 2 gigs of RAM.
Click to expand...

Well I gave it another shot and I ended up with the same result. At the end Fair Use Wizard gave me the error message that it was unable to encode the DVD because if failed at the audio encode stage. Suggestions?
Click to expand...

I got nothing. 🙁 Never had that happen with FairUse Wizard. I've got ffdshow installed with all the goodies that come along with it.
 
Here's how I do it, granted using a spare PC loaded with Windows XP MCE.

Rip DVD to VOB file using DVDShrink, no compression.
Use VideoReDo Plus to run a Quick Stream Fix, which forces the main audio track you selected in DVDShrink to x80 so the Xbox 360 recognizes it. This also turns the VOB file into a MPG in the process.
Host MPG file with MCE and MyMovies.

This method gives me uncompressed dvd rips with full 5.1 DD. It has worked really well so far and I'm hosting 55 movies so far to the Xbox.
 
Originally posted by: Ramma2
Here's how I do it, granted using a spare PC loaded with Windows XP MCE.

Rip DVD to VOB file using DVDShrink, no compression.
Use VideoReDo Plus to run a Quick Stream Fix, which forces the main audio track you selected in DVDShrink to x80 so the Xbox 360 recognizes it. This also turns the VOB file into a MPG in the process.
Host MPG file with MCE and MyMovies.

This method gives me uncompressed dvd rips with full 5.1 DD. It has worked really well so far and I'm hosting 55 movies so far to the Xbox.
Click to expand...

This was pretty much what I did prior to the 360 supporting Xvid. Converting to WMV with 5.1 audio was such a PITA it wasn't worth the effort.
 
Originally posted by: Ramma2
Here's how I do it, granted using a spare PC loaded with Windows XP MCE.

Rip DVD to VOB file using DVDShrink, no compression.
Use VideoReDo Plus to run a Quick Stream Fix, which forces the main audio track you selected in DVDShrink to x80 so the Xbox 360 recognizes it. This also turns the VOB file into a MPG in the process.
Host MPG file with MCE and MyMovies.

This method gives me uncompressed dvd rips with full 5.1 DD. It has worked really well so far and I'm hosting 55 movies so far to the Xbox.
Click to expand...

Well I'm not so sure it would work in my case. I'm not using MCE to share the files I'm using Ubuntu with Ushare so that the 360 sees it as a UPNP device. Would it be possible to share the files that way and have the same result?
 
I'm working on converting all of my DVD's to avi to stream to the 360 to play through the dashboard not the MCE. The best and easiest method I have found is Fairuse and it works well, you are able to get 5.1 AC3 sound. I usually rip the dvd to iso or convert directly to avi from the DVD. I'm using Xvid for the video and AC3 for the audio. I've got an E6600 and it usually takes 2 hours or so to do a two pass encode. The nicest feature of Fairuse is that you can batch encode a few movies at once so I usually get 3 or more ready and then encode them overnight.
 
Well I'm giving handbrake a shot, pretty long encode time but I can try other codecs and see if they work better. For now I'm going with the defaults it has for the 360 profile and seeing what happens.
 
Well I didn't get handbrake to encode a video that the 360 would recognize (not sure why it wouldn't even though my PC played it fine) but I was able to finally get Fair Use Wizard to work. I did it by not using the preset profile as it seemed to be the source of the problem. One annoyance though, it still doesn't encode the audio so that it is recognized as DD 5.1. I'm not quite sure if its because I chose to use mp3 to encode it or if its something else. I'll give AC3 a shot and see if that works at all. Also is there a way to edit the custom profiles it has setup or create one of your own? I looked through its configuration file and I didn't see any information about the custom profiles in there at all, nor do I see any other configuration files in its program files folder. Lastly would you recommend using its built in internal codecs or the external ones that I have installed (divx 6.8, xvid (whatever the latest is) and h.264)?
 
Originally posted by: nsafreak
Well I didn't get handbrake to encode a video that the 360 would recognize (not sure why it wouldn't even though my PC played it fine) but I was able to finally get Fair Use Wizard to work. I did it by not using the preset profile as it seemed to be the source of the problem. One annoyance though, it still doesn't encode the audio so that it is recognized as DD 5.1. I'm not quite sure if its because I chose to use mp3 to encode it or if its something else. I'll give AC3 a shot and see if that works at all. Also is there a way to edit the custom profiles it has setup or create one of your own? I looked through its configuration file and I didn't see any information about the custom profiles in there at all, nor do I see any other configuration files in its program files folder. Lastly would you recommend using its built in internal codecs or the external ones that I have installed (divx 6.8, xvid (whatever the latest is) and h.264)?
Click to expand...

As I've said before, the 360 does not stream DD 5.1 - it will output it as Stereo. If you mean that you aren't getting multi-channel audio on your PC, then you just need to change how it is being encoded. But if the file has 6-channel AC3 audio and your 360 is only showing Stereo, it is because that is all it can do (outside of the proprietary WMV multi-channel audio).
 
Originally posted by: ducci
Originally posted by: nsafreak
Well I didn't get handbrake to encode a video that the 360 would recognize (not sure why it wouldn't even though my PC played it fine) but I was able to finally get Fair Use Wizard to work. I did it by not using the preset profile as it seemed to be the source of the problem. One annoyance though, it still doesn't encode the audio so that it is recognized as DD 5.1. I'm not quite sure if its because I chose to use mp3 to encode it or if its something else. I'll give AC3 a shot and see if that works at all. Also is there a way to edit the custom profiles it has setup or create one of your own? I looked through its configuration file and I didn't see any information about the custom profiles in there at all, nor do I see any other configuration files in its program files folder. Lastly would you recommend using its built in internal codecs or the external ones that I have installed (divx 6.8, xvid (whatever the latest is) and h.264)?
Click to expand...

As I've said before, the 360 does not stream DD 5.1 - it will output it as Stereo. If you mean that you aren't getting multi-channel audio on your PC, then you just need to change how it is being encoded. But if the file has 6-channel AC3 audio and your 360 is only showing Stereo, it is because that is all it can do (outside of the proprietary WMV multi-channel audio).
Click to expand...

Ugh, so are you saying that the only way to get the 360 to recognize multi position audio when streaming is to use WMV proprietary audio? I suppose I can deal with that as long as the video quality is decent and my receiver recognizes it as multi position audio. Right now my receiver just sees the 2 position audio and switches over to Logic 7 mode (proprietary audio decoder from Harmon Kardon) and starts playing. If I encoded it in this manner would the receiver recognize it as Dolby Digital?
 
AC3 is not DD 5.1? XviD files with AC3 will stream fine to my Xbox 360, complete 5.1 output too. I can take a picture/video if you don't believe me.
 
Originally posted by: cvrefugee
AC3 is not DD 5.1? XviD files with AC3 will stream fine to my Xbox 360, complete 5.1 output too. I can take a picture/video if you don't believe me.
Click to expand...

Well I've been doing Divx with AC3 and it was not being recognized as DD 5.1 by my receiver (Harmon Kardon AVR-230 for reference) so perhaps I'll give xvid a shot.
 
Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy
Handbrake.
Click to expand...

Handbrake does a superb job producing videos, unfortunately my 360 does not recognize them even if I use the 360 profile. Why this is I'm not sure but if you have any ideas let me know.
 
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