Film Format Issues On WDTV Live

[Gintaras]

Just be careful of people like Gintaras that are not able to comprehend the most basic of English conversations.

I do worry about people with fluent english, who can't make right QUOTE on forums...

What's the need to rip DVDs...to convert to .iso?
Is WD that shitty that can not play TS folders with all menus?
Isn't easier just to copy from dvd - TS folder to HDD and to watch it like DVD?
As for conversion and quality - you can't make a blue-ray out of dvd as you can not make a cd out of mp3...
You won't get out of dvd more that 480.... .mkv or not .mkv...

 

[smitbret]

ChefWanting, if you need any help with anything, p.m. me.

 

[ChefWanting]

Thanks I will. Can't seem to do it on my phone tho.

I just discovered the any DVD cloner I bought created a skippy DVD- in fact it was so bad it was unwatchable- so slysofts anydvd will be winging its way to me in due course.

Still waiting on my external hdd, ebuyer seem to have let me down on this one. Ill keep the WDTV player for the time being- just in case.

 

[smitbret]

What's your brand and model of TV? I just wanted to check and see which codecs and containers it supported.

 

[ChefWanting]

It's a LG 37LD490 flat screen. Just a couple of years old so not too shabby

 

[smitbret]

I do worry about people with fluent english, who can't make right QUOTE on forums...

What's the need to rip DVDs...to convert to .iso?
Is WD that shitty that can not play TS folders with all menus?
Isn't easier just to copy from dvd - TS folder to HDD and to watch it like DVD?
As for conversion and quality - you can't make a blue-ray out of dvd as you can not make a cd out of mp3...
You won't get out of dvd more that 480.... .mkv or not .mkv...

Hey dumbass, that was him asking me for clarification. Somehow the forum tagged it as a post by me and not ChefWanting. Feel free to go troll with other basement dwellers at 4Chan and please leave the people with the big boy pants to have big boy conversations.

 

[smitbret]

You may not need the WDTV Live unless you want .iso playback capability.

Checked out the manual for your TV and it has pretty robust support for containers and codecs. The manual indicates the TV natively supports most major containers and codecs. I would try a sample conversion or two and test it out. Seems to cover most of the audio, video and subtitle codecs, too. Before you go spend the $$$ on AnyDVD, try ripping a DVD or two with MakeMKV. It should work with most DVDs and will save you some cash. I haven't used it much outside checking it out by ripping a BR with it, but a lot of people have had really good success with it. It won't re-encode the video so you'll be stuck with movie-only files that are the same size as the movie on the DVD, but HDD space is cheap and original quality won't be compromised. You'd have space for 400-500 movie-only DVD rips on a 2TB HDD. You'd get close to double that if you re encode through Handbrake with a CF setting of 18, but then your looking at 1000 hours+ just to get them all ripped and converted. If there are any Blu-Rays in the mix then re encoding becomes a stronger consideration.

 

[ChefWanting]

Ill have a play around and see what suits me- as soon as I get this goddamn HDD.

It will be a trade off between time versus quality versus space, but as I am a busy chef then what's quickest may work best.

 

[ChefWanting]

Hi guys,

I finally received the My Book and have had a quick play. I've used the MakeMKV beta for converting 3 DVDS and storing straight to the HDD. Works well so far and hasn't been an issue- all files are played.

However- my TV sees the HDD and the files and also recognises the named folders the files come in-as you know the folders have the same name as the movie so its very easy to find.

**Currently the TV has an issue and won't see My Book at all- but thats a different
subject.**

The WD player only sees files- so I have a bunch of files with no movie titles that unless I click and play i don't know what it is- it doesnt recognise the folders these files are in.

Is the quick answer to manually alter the files to the same name as the movie when Ive got it plugged into my PC?

Thanks.

 

[ChefWanting]

After my last post-http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2316314&page=2

I'm thinking ISO files are the quickest and best quality way to go- would you agree? As Im currently burning an ISO image now with that ANY DVD cloner program I bought- I am also hoping it will eliminate the skipping issue I had- as its going straight onto the HDD.

Cheers

 

[smitbret]

Hi guys,

I finally received the My Book and have had a quick play. I've used the MakeMKV beta for converting 3 DVDS and storing straight to the HDD. Works well so far and hasn't been an issue- all files are played.

However- my TV sees the HDD and the files and also recognises the named folders the files come in-as you know the folders have the same name as the movie so its very easy to find.

**Currently the TV has an issue and won't see My Book at all- but thats a different
subject.**

The WD player only sees files- so I have a bunch of files with no movie titles that unless I click and play i don't know what it is- it doesnt recognise the folders these files are in.

Is the quick answer to manually alter the files to the same name as the movie when Ive got it plugged into my PC?

Thanks.

If you are in Folder View, then the WDTV will just see it like you would see it from your Computer's File Tree and it doesn't play folders. Unless you are using some external subtitles there's really no reason to keep the .mkv files in separate folders. I would just rename each .mkv with the movie title.

If you don't want to do that, you can just import the files into the WDTV's Media Library and then rename it by scraping for metadata. You'll need to know the name of each movie as you change the metadata in the Media Library, but once it's done, it will always use the metadata title in Media Library mode. If you ever move the file or change it's name on the HDD then the info will have to be rescraped.

Personally, I just rename my files "<movie title> <year>.<ext>" and then download the appropriate movie poster, saved under the same title name. Like this:

Gladiator (2000).mkv
Gladiator (2000).jpg

I keep all of my grown up movies in one folder and all of my kid movies in another folder.

 

[smitbret]

After my last post-http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2316314&page=2

I'm thinking ISO files are the quickest and best quality way to go- would you agree? As Im currently burning an ISO image now with that ANY DVD cloner program I bought- I am also hoping it will eliminate the skipping issue I had- as its going straight onto the HDD.

Cheers

That will work for DVDs but not so well for BR.

The file will be much larger than an .h264 file encoded in Handbrake at the same quality.

 

[ChefWanting]

Well I'm on top of this I do believe. Now it's just a case of whether I want DVD iso files taking up over 4GB or mp4/mkv files at just under 900mb- I will look at the quality of both and see what I can live with. I'm not onto BR yet, but I'm guessing I need to maximise space if I do.

I'm sold on using the WD player. The get content info has sealed the deal- it's sorting out my films in genre and adding posters by itself- even offering to show trailers from youtube. Pretty damn cool

 

[smitbret]

Well I'm on top of this I do believe. Now it's just a case of whether I want DVD iso files taking up over 4GB or mp4/mkv files at just under 900mb- I will look at the quality of both and see what I can live with. I'm not onto BR yet, but I'm guessing I need to maximise space if I do.

I'm sold on using the WD player. The get content info has sealed the deal- it's sorting out my films in genre and adding posters by itself- even offering to show trailers from youtube. Pretty damn cool

I don't keep many .iso files on my system, but I tend to err on the side of quality. I usually set the CF factor in Handbrake to 16 which is overkill according to most. Occasionally (1 out of 20 times), the resulting .mp4 will rival the size of the original .vob/.mpg file but I can live with that. Most of the rest are somewhere between 1.5GB and 2.5GB. They could almost assuredly be smaller than that, but I freak out at the idea that I have compromised quality just like I love the idea that I could be saving space by converting.

Yeah, the Media Library simplifies it enough that my Wife and 7 year old have no problem navigating.