Tools to re-encode DVDs

[ola]

I've just gotten a TV and plugged my Xbox to it again (after a 2 year break without TV). I'm trying to re-encode my DVDs to be playable on the Xbox.

I can rip the DVDs to my computer as VOB-files but I think I would like to have it in Xvid or something like that? Are there any guides and tools for it? I'm using osx on my desktop computer so preferably for osx

[Oldxboxusa]

Use Handbrake, for me it is the best way.

[neogeo71]

Fair use wizard has always been my favorite tool for PC.

[Oldxboxusa]

thats all fine - for windows users, but i haven't windows now. i'm a mac user. which tool is on this system fine? i have ffmpeg is that good for this? because handbrake is not my favourite tool since mavericks

[spinnersp]

there's some discussion on that here http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... ?f=4&t=697

[Oldxboxusa]

there's some discussion on that here http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... ?f=4&t=697

Not on a Mac i read...

[Dan Dar3]

What's not on Mac, FFmpeg?
https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html

I believe it's used by Handbrake itself for some formats:
https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/Encoders

[bornagainpenguin]

there's some discussion on that here http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... ?f=4&t=697

Not on a Mac i read...

I'd also like to chime in here seeing as I have Macbook as my most powerful machine currently and a need to convert videos to better perform on my xbox now that I've upgraded the hard drive (finally). I found this bash script (OS X has a bash shell in its terminal) but I cannot seem to make it work. As far as I know I do have ffmpeg installed so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. The script runs, complains about line 13 confirms the directory exists and then ends.



If there is a better way (for Macs) I'd love to hear it!

--bornagainpenguin

UPDATE: Added screenshot of error.

[Oldxboxusa]

What's not on Mac, FFmpeg?
https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html

yes this is what i have, but ive got no idea which are the best settings to get good results.

I believe it's used by Handbrake itself for some formats:
https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/Encoders

I don't love it anymore, because i take it a chance on my old 2011 imac, overnight the cpu was so hot that it had become a damage and my imac was death.... Thats my opinion about that f...ing tool.

[Dan Dar3]

@Oldxboxusa
Yep, and hammers should come with a disclaimer, don't hit your fingers.
Look, there's a well known problem: video encoding requires a lot of CPU cycles which increases CPU temperature and crashes systems with poor or failing cooling.
Every system normally has an overheating threshold built-in and should simply shuts down when it reaches that instead of melting.

@bornagainpenguin
Very good, I was going to ask for the actual error. Doesn't look like line # matches your script, but anyways.
"rename" is not a standard Unix command, try changing into "mv" at line 11, or maybe even remove the entire line - i think it's trying to rename the input files to remove spaces, but later is quotes correctly in the commands, so to me that's a bit useless, but you'll find out when testing.

[bornagainpenguin]

@Oldxboxusa
Yep, and hammers should come with a disclaimer, don't hit your fingers.
Look, there's a well known problem: video encoding requires a lot of CPU cycles which increases CPU temperature and crashes systems with poor or failing cooling.
Every system normally has an overheating threshold built-in and should simply shuts down when it reaches that instead of melting.

@bornagainpenguin
Very good, I was going to ask for the actual error. Doesn't look like line # matches your script, but anyways.
"rename" is not a standard Unix command, try changing into "mv" at line 11, or maybe even remove the entire line - i think it's trying to rename the input files to remove spaces, but later is quotes correctly in the commands, so to me that's a bit useless, but you'll find out when testing.

I'll try this after work today and report back on my results. Hopefully it'll be as easy as that and I can get on with converting every thing for the new system...

Thanks for the reply.

[Dan Dar3]

Good, or just take from the script what you actually need - that seems to have been written do convert one or more files in a folder, you open up a command prompt yourself navigate to the files and simply run the command for your one file:

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -i "Rod Stewart ...mp4" -scodec copy -acodec copy -vcodec mpeg4 -b:v 3000k -maxrate 5000k -bufsize 4096k -s 1280x720 -f matroska "Rod Stewart ...mkv"

It's only rocket science until your first test flight

[Oldxboxusa]

there's some discussion on that here http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... ?f=4&t=697

Not on a Mac i read...

I'd also like to chime in here seeing as I have Macbook as my most powerful machine currently and a need to convert videos to better perform on my xbox now that I've upgraded the hard drive (finally). I found this bash script (OS X has a bash shell in its terminal) but I cannot seem to make it work. As far as I know I do have ffmpeg installed so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. The script runs, complains about line 13 confirms the directory exists and then ends.

If there is a better way (for Macs) I'd love to hear it!

--bornagainpenguin

UPDATE: Added screenshot of error.

Really cool *thumbs up*

[Oldxboxusa]

My Question for this is: how can i made with this command a avi file, i think the xbox can not play mkvs? small mkv file are play fine but bigger (between 1,5 and 2 GB) doesnt work for me.

[Dan Dar3]

MKV like AVI is a container, it's like an envelope. Inside it contains video and audio streams, encoded with a variety of codecs. So just saying it doesn't play MKVs of a certain size doesn't say absolutely anything about the codec, which is mainly the problem - a large container tells that you have a large amount of data, usually video, which probably means either the picture size is large or bitrate is large. Either one or both being large means more data to read, process and decode. When you play the video in a video player on your PC (e.g. VLC) or if you enable debugging on XBMC4Xbox will tell you the audio / video stream codecs, picture size and bitrates, and that'll explain why it's not playing (usually cause it runs out of memory during the process, watch the "M:" column in Q:\xbmc.log, that's amount of free RAM and obviously any ERROR messages).

As to how to change the command line to process AVIs, its just about changing the input file.

[Oldxboxusa]

Ok i understand. But i have Input flies they are in mkv Format. Is it possible this flies Convert smaller in file size?

[bornagainpenguin]

Good, or just take from the script what you actually need - that seems to have been written do convert one or more files in a folder, you open up a command prompt yourself navigate to the files and simply run the command for your one file:

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -i "Rod Stewart ...mp4" -scodec copy -acodec copy -vcodec mpeg4 -b:v 3000k -maxrate 5000k -bufsize 4096k -s 1280x720 -f matroska "Rod Stewart ...mkv"

It's only rocket science until your first test flight

Err, actually that was just my test file. I really have about 500 music videos organized by artist to do. If someone knows how to make it run recursively once it runs at all that'd save me a ton of headache!

Then there's all the movies u need to go through as well...

[Dan Dar3]

@Oldxboxusa
Is your question whether you can convert the file to reduce the file size? Then yes, provided you change a combination or all at the same time: video codec, picture size or bitrate (smaller). Personally, I prefer a good bitrate to a larger picture size - XBMC4Xbox does a decent job at up-scaling content encoded with a healthy bitrate (you can think of that is the amount of "detail data" in a picture, like sand or little stones depending on the size of it, where the picture size is like an iron mesh holding the sand.)

Look, I think you should give Handbrake another go, play with all the parameters in the UI interface and see at the bottom the ffmpeg command line it produces. You can take that out and run it yourself in a shell if you still think that Handbrake did whatever it did to your computer. And I recommend reading the guide as well:
https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/HandBrakeGuide

[Dan Dar3]

@bornagainpenguin
Without going into script programming (which if you want to tackle you can Google and find a few answers on StackOverflow for example), I would recommend Handbrake again, it has a queue system you can use and then even configure to hibernate or shutdown when done.
https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/Queue
http://www.osomac.com/2013/08/08/handbr ... rocessing/

[Oldxboxusa]

@Oldxboxusa
Is your question whether you can convert the file to reduce the file size? Then yes, provided you change a combination or all at the same time: video codec, picture size or bitrate (smaller). Personally, I prefer a good bitrate to a larger picture size - XBMC4Xbox does a decent job at up-scaling content encoded with a healthy bitrate (you can think of that is the amount of "detail data" in a picture, like sand or little stones depending on the size of it, where the picture size is like an iron mesh holding the sand.)

Look, I think you should give Handbrake another go, play with all the parameters in the UI interface and see at the bottom the ffmpeg command line it produces. You can take that out and run it yourself in a shell if you still think that Handbrake did whatever it did to your computer. And I recommend reading the guide as well:
https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/HandBrakeGuide

Ok but never overnight. It was the first time where a PC goes too hot by a tool. By the way macs are not cheap. [SLEEPY FACE]