Best format for dvd video on pandora?

[Pleng]

I have maxed out my HDDs with DVDs
I'm sure a few of you here have experience in encoding DVDs. I recently began encoding my DVD collection, to save space, but notice each movie I have encoded gradually looses sinc. What could be going wrong?

I used to have awful problems with encoding video in real-time on an old PC. Sometimes sync would end up 3-5 seconds out! It shouldn't be too much of a problem if you're using some form of ripping software. I use Jesterware DVD Ripper (commercial, but not pricey). I did find that some movies slipped like a couple of tenths of a second towards the end, giving that 'foreign movie being dubbed badly' look! I found an option within the advanced video settings called 'Don't Skip Frames'. This appears to have fixed the issue. Perhaps your ripping software has a similar option somewhere?

 

[MagicPants]

I have maxed out my HDDs with DVDs
I'm sure a few of you here have experience in encoding DVDs. I recently began encoding my DVD collection, to save space, but notice each movie I have encoded gradually looses sinc. What could be going wrong?

I used to have awful problems with encoding video in real-time on an old PC. Sometimes sync would end up 3-5 seconds out! It shouldn't be too much of a problem if you're using some form of ripping software. I use Jesterware DVD Ripper (commercial, but not pricey). I did find that some movies slipped like a couple of tenths of a second towards the end, giving that 'foreign movie being dubbed badly' look! I found an option within the advanced video settings called 'Don't Skip Frames'. This appears to have fixed the issue. Perhaps your ripping software has a similar option somewhere?

A few months ago I tried about a dozen shareware/freeware encoders trying to find one that synced correctly. At the time I was using MagicDVD ripper which synced perfectly but didn't have options to crop 2.35 to 16:9. The two that worked well were Handbrake which is free and DVDFab which is $30. To me the $30 for DVDFab is well worth it because it has a nice gui and encodes about 3 times faster than handbrake (my time is worth $30 to me).

A fun fact I learned doing this is that there are 3 types of H264. Base, Main, and High. Base is for embedded devices. Main is for regular media players, but has been supplanted by High which is for professional video. Another fun fact is that the PSP and iPod don't use the same type of H264 so you can't play the same video on both.

 

[ish420]

Thanx for the input guys. I figured out the program I was using[AVS Converter] was the problem. I am now using Nero Recode and have created some great encodes. I am currently encoding in AVC mode which I've read may create problems for playback with Pandora. But I guess we will have to wait and see.
Again, thanx for the input.

 

[eksasol]

I haven't done much ripping and encoding in my time so I would like to know, if it's possible to rip and encode dvd movies so that they're still divided in chapters? And does mplayer support subtitles?

OGM container format is very popular with the multi-audio/subtitles and chapter stuff, you might want to give it a try (or mkv too). I don't use them, but I know there are some free DVD to OGM softwares.

My simple way would be to use DVD Decrypter to split the movies by chapters (or create seperate chapter info files), then bacth encode the chapter, but that would leave a bunch of splitted file.

Also whenever I have a question about video conversion or need some free softwares to do something, I almost always find the answer at videohelp.com in their guides section.

 

[pstudio]

I haven't done much ripping and encoding in my time so I would like to know, if it's possible to rip and encode dvd movies so that they're still divided in chapters? And does mplayer support subtitles?

OGM container format is very popular with the multi-audio/subtitles and chapter stuff, you might want to give it a try (or mkv too). I don't use them, but I know there are some free DVD to OGM softwares.

My simple way would be to use DVD Decrypter to split the movies by chapters (or create seperate chapter info files), then bacth encode the chapter, but that would leave a bunch of splitted file.

Also whenever I have a question about video conversion or need some free softwares to do something, I almost always find the answer at videohelp.com in their guides section.

Thanks, I'll look into it

 

[Middo]

Thanks all for the input and advise. I have experiments with the XviD format, as suggested by CHIP I think, and have found a program called DVD2XviD that rips the DVD from the disc and creates an AVI file in XviD format. It must be primarilly designed for preparing for burning to CD as the options are for 1 CD 700mb or 1400mb for 2 CDs. There is an autoselect also. It worked great and prepared a file ready for viewing on the PANDORA, hopefully. The quality on the small screen will be very sufficient I think. downside, the process, although fully automatic from DVD insertion to AVI ready for upload, was very slow. over an hour actually. My DVDShrink only takes 20 mins or so, but that is not as compressed and in ISO format, not mp4 or AVI etc. Any better software arround that does the above, automatic, but faster??

 

[Chip]

I haven't done much ripping and encoding in my time so I would like to know, if it's possible to rip and encode dvd movies so that they're still divided in chapters? And does mplayer support subtitles?

OGM container format is very popular with the multi-audio/subtitles and chapter stuff, you might want to give it a try (or mkv too). I don't use them, but I know there are some free DVD to OGM softwares.

Handbrake to the rescue. Handbrake is probably the best and easiest free encoding program available. In addition to being both simple and powerful, it also supports OGM and MKV containers (container comparison) with chapter support, as well as dual audio and selectable subtitle tracks. I do all my DVD-to-whatever encoding with Handbrake.


Middo: DVDShrink is faster because it's not encoding into an MPEG4 codec, it's transcoding in MPEG2. MPEG2 is very easy to encode and decode, but it does not have the greatest compression ratio. DivX/Xvid are harder to encode and take a lot longer because of it, but the compression ratio is much better. Between having to decode the source and encode it into the target format, even very fast processors can't do much more than 2x real time. If you're doing a 2-pass encode (which you should), then your encode will take almost as long as watching the movie. That's just the nature of the beast.

 

[Middo]

Middo: DVDShrink is faster because it's not encoding into an MPEG4 codec, it's transcoding in MPEG2. MPEG2 is very easy to encode and decode, but it does not have the greatest compression ratio. DivX/Xvid are harder to encode and take a lot longer because of it, but the compression ratio is much better. Between having to decode the source and encode it into the target format, even very fast processors can't do much more than 2x real time. If you're doing a 2-pass encode (which you should), then your encode will take almost as long as watching the movie. That's just the nature of the beast.[/quote]

Thanks Chip, that explains alot. It did take arround the same time as actually watching it. I am currently trying another one with Handbrake now. Many thanks!

 

[javaJake]

Handbrake to the rescue. Handbrake is probably the best and easiest free encoding program available. In addition to being both simple and powerful, it also supports OGM and MKV containers (container comparison) with chapter support, as well as dual audio and selectable subtitle tracks. I do all my DVD-to-whatever encoding with Handbrake.

If you run it on a dual-core processor, this thing will chew up DVD's like nobody's business. I forgot all about HandBrake, too. I think I'll end up using this.

 

[ish420]

I've been using NERO RECODE 2 for my backups but recently tried Handbrake and I must say HB is a very easy, very configurable and very good. I like the fact that you got many containers to choose from and encodes using either the xvid or h.264 codec. I tried using autogk for xvid backups but found it rather troublesome. Handbrake has made it so much easier to create xvid backups of my DVDs. I have stopped using NeroRecode 2 and switched to Handbrake. I recommend it for easy DVD backups to get ready for Pandora. Just, whatever you decide to use, do two pass encodes. It's totally worth the extra time.

P.S. Handbrake has solved my slight syncing problem.

P.P.S. Thanks Chip. I actually used it after you recommended it. :wink: