[enron29]

Originally Posted by JayKay335i

Fuck AVI and fuck converting. The metroska video format is pretty widely recognized. You can stream MKVs with on the fly conversion over the ps3 w/ ps3mediaserver. I stream 15gig mkv files, OTF conversion, 5.1 surround to a 40" without any problems off a crappy couple year old dual core.

Have you had any issues using this procedure at all or is it pretty seamless. Is this with recent blu ray DVDs too?

[GTiceman]

I have a 10TB+ server that shares ISO to my HTPC I built ... BD, HD-DVD, and DVD

[AjzRide]

Dear god this thread is full of mis-information.

The PS3 is very picky about one kinds of video and audio codecs it will support over streaming. For example a BD disk can be encoded with a VC1 codec, which will play fine off of the disc, but if you rip it to your computer, it will not stream, you must convert it to an h264 codec because the PS3 will not accept VC1 via DNLA.

This brings us to the topic of codecs versus containers. .mkv .avi .divx are all file containers. a .mkv file can hold a video that is encoded as .h264 or .vc1 .mpeg .mpeg2 etc. Same thing with audio, the sound could be in AC3, DTS, DTS-HD, Dolby True-HD.. etc etc etc.

The PS3 also has issues with different codecs in certain containers. For example an m2ts file will support DTS, but to use a .mkv file you must convert the DTS to AC3.

What programs like PS3MEDIASERVER and TVERSITY (and some hardware devices such as the WD box) do is that they attempt to serve the file as it sits on your hard drive the PS3, if the PS3 rejects it due to an incompatible codec or container, they will attempt to change the offending item (audio codec, video codec, or container) on the fly as they serve it to the PS3. Depending on the resolution and frame rate of the video, along with the type of change being made, this could be very CPU intensive. The best practice is to try and always have your files in a format that the PS3 will accept, so that there is never any encoding to be done, and therefore never any CPU loading required.

Most BD rips that are available as torrents use a .mkv container with AC3 audio and h264 video. In this format, the video may or may not be encoded to reduce size or quality, but the audio has defenitley been down mixed (or more appropriately extracted) from the HiDef audio source to a standard DVD quality audio file

I used a PS3 as my media server for 2 years before it got hit by lightening and I swapped to a Popcorn hour.

The only way to get true BD quality audio to the PS3 over streaming is to convert audio to a linear PCM file. This is basically a RAW WAV file, which will preserve all of the hiDef goodness of the track. The only way the PS3 will accept this file is in the .m2ts container, which by the way is what is on a BD disk, a bunch of .m2ts files.

I had the best results getting true-BD quality by the following method.

Rip the DVD to hard drive using AnyDVD HD or similar program.

Extract the video (.h264 or .vc1) to a file using eac3to.
If the file is h264 you don't have to do anything, if it is vc1, you will need an encoder program ( <10% are vc1)
Extract and convert the DTS-HD or Dolby-TrueHD file to a linear pcm file using Eac3to

Mux the video file (.h264) and audio file (.lpcm) into a .m2ts container and stream to the PS3.

If your BD had a .h264 video file, which it probably did, then you have not done any encoding to your video file, and it will be pure BD quality. Likewise you have not really done any converting of the audio, other than breaking out into a RAW file, which is like unzipping a file in windows.

I know that is a lot to take in, but once you get the hang of it, it is rather simple, and I can convert a BD with less than 5 minutes of keyboard time, and less than an hour for the total process.

[enron29]

Originally Posted by AjzRide

Extract the video (.h264 or .vc1) to a file using eac3to.
If the file is h264 you don't have to do anything, if it is vc1, you will need an encoder program ( <10% are vc1)
Extract and convert the DTS-HD or Dolby-TrueHD file to a linear pcm file using Eac3to

Mux the video file (.h264) and audio file (.lpcm) into a .m2ts container and stream to the PS3.

If your BD had a .h264 video file, which it probably did, then you have not done any encoding to your video file, and it will be pure BD quality. Likewise you have not really done any converting of the audio, other than breaking out into a RAW file, which is like unzipping a file in windows.

I know that is a lot to take in, but once you get the hang of it, it is rather simple, and I can convert a BD with less than 5 minutes of keyboard time, and less than an hour for the total process.

So I'm assuming eac3to is a free program, right? Now I get confused when you say to mux the video and audio file into a .m2ts container. Is this done with a separate program? If so, what do I use? Thanks.

[solefald]

http://handbrake.fr will rip anything. or at least anything i've ever thrown at it.
but honestly, most of the time its faster to download a movie than go through the troubles of ripping it

[enron29]

Originally Posted by solefald

http://handbrake.fr will rip anything. or at least anything i've ever thrown at it.
but honestly, most of the time its faster to download a movie than go through the troubles of ripping it

What exactly do you guys mean when you say downloading the movies?

[solefald]

Originally Posted by enron29

What exactly do you guys mean when you say downloading the movies?

bittorrent

since you already own a hard copy on a DVD/Blue-Ray, i wound not even think twice about downloading a digital copy from bittorrent.

[enron29]

Ok, got a new issue. I had been ripping my standard Disney DVD's for my daughter to watch on the ipad when traveling in the car. I ripped them using DVDFab using the AppleTV settings to .m4v format (which I believe is the same as .mp4). So everything ripped fine, and I got it into iTunes and transferred to my iPad, but when I play it back, the audio doesn't play. The video plays just fine, but the audio won't play. If I scrub it forward, it starts to play but then repeats like a broken record. Any ideas? Thanks.

[solefald]

Originally Posted by enron29

Ok, got a new issue. I had been ripping my standard Disney DVD's for my daughter to watch on the ipad when traveling in the car. I ripped them using DVDFab using the AppleTV settings to .m4v format (which I believe is the same as .mp4). So everything ripped fine, and I got it into iTunes and transferred to my iPad, but when I play it back, the audio doesn't play. The video plays just fine, but the audio won't play. If I scrub it forward, it starts to play but then repeats like a broken record. Any ideas? Thanks.

Not sure, but you can use Handbrake with iPad presets
http://scottlinkblog.wordpress.com/2...-the-settings/

[enron29]

Originally Posted by solefald

Not sure, but you can use Handbrake with iPad presets
http://scottlinkblog.wordpress.com/2...-the-settings/

Yeah, DVDFab has an iPad preset too. I just thought that using ApplieTV settings might give me better quality, so that I could also watch on TV as well without it looking too poor. And I figured the iPad could do .m4v files. I had an issue with handbrake with my Disney DVD's.

[AjzRide]

Originally Posted by solefald

most of the time its faster to download a movie than go through the troubles of ripping it

To clarify what I said earlier, whether you want to download or rip depends on your goals. The files that you are downloading off of bit-torrents are not straight rips of BD movies, the audio and video have been altered to make them more compatible with a wide range of devices. Usually the video has been cut some to decrease the file size. A standard BD movie movie is about 25 - 40 gigabytes. There is no way you can download a 4 - 8 gigabyte .mkv and keep the same quality as a 40 GB m2ts file from a BD disc.

Now I'm not saying the quality is bad, it is still far superior to DVD and if you are watching this movie on a 40" or smaller screen, you will probably never notice the reduction in quality. If you are watching it on a 40" - 60" screen, you may notice a difference depending on the quality of the TV, the lighting in your room, how close you sit to your TV, and how good your eyesight is. Depending on how good your audio setup is, you may or may not notice the decrease in sound quality.

If you are watching these downloaded movies on a 60+" screen (I have a 96") then you are not going to want to watch those downloaded movies.

OP asked how to rip his movies without losing quality, I have outlined a method for him to handle that.

Originally Posted by solefald

http://handbrake.fr will rip anything. or at least anything i've ever thrown at it.
but honestly

I've not tried in about 18 months, but last time I looked, handbrake could not handle .m2ts files, which are what you are ripping from BD discs.

[AjzRide]

Originally Posted by enron29

Yeah, DVDFab has an iPad preset too. I just thought that using ApplieTV settings might give me better quality, so that I could also watch on TV as well without it looking too poor. And I figured the iPad could do .m4v files. I had an issue with handbrake with my Disney DVD's.

I've had the best luck with handbrake if I rip the DVD to VIDEO_TS folder and remove encryption before I start the conversion.

[AjzRide]

Originally Posted by enron29

So I'm assuming eac3to is a free program, right? Now I get confused when you say to mux the video and audio file into a .m2ts container. Is this done with a separate program? If so, what do I use? Thanks.

eac3to is a free command line tool that you can download from here:

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/eac3to

just copy the .exe into your C:\windows\system32\ folder.

Then navigate to the folder where you ripped the BD disk and execute. Below is a screen grab from when I ripped From Paris With Love. To start with I ripped the entire disk to a folder called FROMPARISWITHLOVE using AnyDVDHD.

[AjzRide]

In the example above, THe first command got information on the disk FROMPARISWITHLOVE, which told me there were 3 titles on the disc, the first one is 1 hour 32 minutes, and the other are short titles, probably bonus features or previews. Occasionally there will be two titles very close in time, this is usually a directors cut or alternate ending.

After I decided I was interested in the first title, I requested information on title 1), which gave me information on all of the tracks. Tracks #2 and #4 are the ones we want, the 1080p video and the DTS Master (DTSHD) audio. The last command rips the two tracks, unedited to a video file and an audio file.

After you have the two files, use TSMuxer:

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/tsMuxeR

to merge them into a .m2ts that will make the PS3 happy.

[cloakster]

Originally Posted by enron29

Alright, another stupid question. My pc is just a simple dell pc. Nothing too great. But I'm not planning on watching blu ray dvds on it, just using it to copy my blu rays. So it doesn't matter if my pc doesn't have a powerful video card or monitor, right?

For Video converting, it is your CPU that matters most. How good of a CPU your computer has will make a big difference in the time it will take to rip and convert the video files.

Read everything AjzRide has been telling you because he is 100% correct in everything he has written. All the programs you need will be free btw, so don't worry about that