2009-02-10, 07:54
My brother and I are independently putting together our video collections right now so our home theaters will rock in the coming years.
I should mention first that I've attempted to use Boxee and Plex. My attempts to use those forks ended shortly after they began simply because I couldn't seem to get past scraping. I finally tried out XBMC a couple weeks ago and I think I'm in love. The documentation is far better and the release is more stable and fully-featured than the others. I just wanted to say that it's amazing work all around.
I need help on video formats though. I'm converting my library using Handbrake from Video_TS folders into H.264 .MP4s encoded at 1000 kbps (High quality iPod compatible).
The issue for me is that I want a video library that will play on my Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and on my Mac. It appears that my best solution is the MP4s, although it disappoints me to lose the 5.1 audio and I feel like I could push the video quality a little bit further. I'd forgo support for my iPod/iPhone if I could get a single video file that contained 5.1 audio and works on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.
Does anybody have any suggestions on a video quality/format to use?
So that's me. My brother, on the other hand, is dead-set on not doing any re-encoding so there's no video quality loss at all and he can keep the 5.1 audio. To do this, he's stripping out the VOBs from his DVDs without doing any re-encoding. I'm not sure what software he's using for this, but the resulting files are original VOBs but don't reside in Video_TS folders.
I doubt anybody else out there is formatting their stuff this way, but it's working for him.
I trying to get him on the XBMC bandwagon and helped him scrape a test video yesterday. It was as follows:
Folder: Apollo 13 (2005)
Inside: Apollo 13 (2005) Part 1.vob, Apollo 13 (2005) Part 2.vob
This didn't work. It scraped the files, but he got the Mac OX X beach ball of death when he tried to play it.
Will there be support for VOBs in this way?
I should mention first that I've attempted to use Boxee and Plex. My attempts to use those forks ended shortly after they began simply because I couldn't seem to get past scraping. I finally tried out XBMC a couple weeks ago and I think I'm in love. The documentation is far better and the release is more stable and fully-featured than the others. I just wanted to say that it's amazing work all around.
I need help on video formats though. I'm converting my library using Handbrake from Video_TS folders into H.264 .MP4s encoded at 1000 kbps (High quality iPod compatible).
The issue for me is that I want a video library that will play on my Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and on my Mac. It appears that my best solution is the MP4s, although it disappoints me to lose the 5.1 audio and I feel like I could push the video quality a little bit further. I'd forgo support for my iPod/iPhone if I could get a single video file that contained 5.1 audio and works on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.
Does anybody have any suggestions on a video quality/format to use?
So that's me. My brother, on the other hand, is dead-set on not doing any re-encoding so there's no video quality loss at all and he can keep the 5.1 audio. To do this, he's stripping out the VOBs from his DVDs without doing any re-encoding. I'm not sure what software he's using for this, but the resulting files are original VOBs but don't reside in Video_TS folders.
I doubt anybody else out there is formatting their stuff this way, but it's working for him.
I trying to get him on the XBMC bandwagon and helped him scrape a test video yesterday. It was as follows:
Folder: Apollo 13 (2005)
Inside: Apollo 13 (2005) Part 1.vob, Apollo 13 (2005) Part 2.vob
This didn't work. It scraped the files, but he got the Mac OX X beach ball of death when he tried to play it.
Will there be support for VOBs in this way?