[Webbo_1979]

Hello all,

I have recently purchased an Apple TV 2 which my friend is going to flash and add XBMC. I am wanting to play all my Blu ray and DVD's on the system. Having very little knowledge on these things I wanted sone advice on how I create the best audio and visual copies of my collection. Iv been told that if I make a copy of my films I will lose a lot of the quality. I hope this is not the case. My questions are as follows:

1. What program do you recommend for PC to create perfect digital copies for use in Apple TV 2

2. What format is best for converting DVD and BLU RAY into?

3. If I have a film like Avatar which has subtitles in only on certain parts will these be included when I convert?

4. Will I lose quality when converting? I want the file to be as close to source as possible.

Many thanks in advance

[bircoe]

1. Handbrake is by far the most simplest package for ripping DVD's not sure if it can handle Blurays as I'm a Linux user and use a Win 7 Virtual Machine to rip my Blurays.

2. for ATV2 the best container I've found is MKV, using h264 for video and AC3/DTS for audio codecs, MP4 is also fine however there can be *issues* with channel mapping with the AAC audio track.

3. When I ripped my Avatar Bluray I spent about an hour ripping the sub track and converting it to include only the forced content, so no it won't happen automaticly.

4. Yes, however you can limit it by being smart, first up throw out the convention of making 700mb movie rips, storage is so cheap (and huge) these days that size is irrelevant, for DVD's you will get great results aiming for 1.2-1.4gb with h264, you'll barely if at all notice a difference. Bluray is another story, for transparent quality in 1080p you can get away with 6-8gb file size, 720p you can get down to 4gb while still looking great.

[RosevilleHT]

It is my understanding that you can keep DVDs in their native MPEG2 format, and the ATV2 will play them fine, since the bitrate is low (SD Content). BR is a different story, and converting to 720p/h264 is the only way to go.

[hagfish16]

Not quite the *only* way to go. I use handbrake but with the "high" profile to keep br's at 1080p. This keeps a nicer resolution for other htpcs and future atv's but also still plays perfectly fine on the atv2 since the bitrate is decreased.

[Starstream]

3. If I have a film like Avatar which has subtitles in only on certain parts will these be included when I convert?

Some movies include a separate subtitle track that includes the English text for these movies and some other movies have the forced subtitles as part of the video stream itself so nothing needs to be done.

If your ripping a DVD to an .iso image (still broken currently on ATV) then you don't have to worry about anything as the DVD is played as is.

If ripping to another format then there are a few things you can do
1. Rip the DVD using MakeMKV this keeps the original video and audio intact within an MKV container, no compression or conversion.
2. Play the video in a media player like VLC at a point where you know the forced subs appear then cycle through the subtitles to identify the correct forced subtitle track.
3. Run the MKV file through MKVmerge eliminating the other subtitle tracks leaving only the forced subs. You can play this MPEG-2/MKV file on the ATV2 with no further work needed.
4. (Optional) run the new MKV file through Handbrake for x264 compression and on the subtitles page, tick the box for burned in and select the subs then click on add. This will burn the subs into the video stream during the encoding process.

Steps 1-3 can apply to DVD's but you have to do step 4 with Blu-ray's as Blu-ray discs need to be converted into x264/MKV in order to be playable on the ATV2. Not entirely sure if Handbrake handles burning in Blu-ray subtitles which are a different format from the subs in DVD's you may have to use another x264 encoder like Staxrip for instance (which actually passes through any subtitles to the new video/container so you don't have to burn the subs into the video stream if you don't want to).

[bircoe]

BR is a different story, and converting to 720p/h264 is the only way to go.

ATV2 plays 1080p quite well, as long as the files average bitrate is within the ATV2's capabilities it will be fine!

[Webbo_1979]

Thanks Guys for all your responses you have really helped me.

Just a few things I did not quite understand:

Have I read it correctly that Apple TV2 can now output 1080p content? I was told it can only handle 720p.

And What is H264 please?

Also on a side issue can you guys recommend a usb blu ray drive for me to rip my blu rays to my lap top?

Many thanks

[bircoe]

All these answers can be found in the XBMC faq and google...

Have I read it correctly that Apple TV2 can now output 1080p content? I was told it can only handle 720p.

Well, sort of, at this point in time the ATV2 hardware only outputs 720p, however XBMC is quiet capable of decoding and displaying 1080p, albeit downsized to the output resolution of 1280x720.

And What is H264 please?

h264 is a modern video encoder, similar to xvid/divx however much more advanced and capable of much higher compression while retaining very good video quality, it is the standard encoder used for Bluray.

Also on a side issue can you guys recommend a usb blu ray drive for me to rip my blu rays to my lap top?

Unless you have many hundreds of gigabytes of storage space on your laptop I wouldn't even bother using a laptop + usb drive for this, for example the main feature on the Avatar BD disc is some 37gb, you then have to recode it to a more sane bitrate because the ATV2 would simply choke on a 30+gb file... from my experience with messing with BD and HDDVD you need a minimum of 50gb free space while working on just 1 movie, sometimes up to 100gb depending on the movie.

Also recoding a BD on a laptop would be an incredibly slow process unless you have a crazy fast crazy expensive laptop, my encoding computer has a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 CPU, Quad Core 2.83ghz, 6mb cache etc... I'm testing encodes on my Terminator Salvation BD (20gb main feature) to find the best quality settings that still playback on an ATV2 and the encode is currently at 3.8% and will be finished in approx 11 hours.

[jazzfanatic]

All these answers can be found in the XBMC faq and google...



Well, sort of, at this point in time the ATV2 hardware only outputs 720p, however XBMC is quiet capable of decoding and displaying 1080p, albeit downsized to the output resolution of 1280x720.



h264 is a modern video encoder, similar to xvid/divx however much more advanced and capable of much higher compression while retaining very good video quality, it is the standard encoder used for Bluray.



Unless you have many hundreds of gigabytes of storage space on your laptop I wouldn't even bother using a laptop + usb drive for this, for example the main feature on the Avatar BD disc is some 37gb, you then have to recode it to a more sane bitrate because the ATV2 would simply choke on a 30+gb file... from my experience with messing with BD and HDDVD you need a minimum of 50gb free space while working on just 1 movie, sometimes up to 100gb depending on the movie.

Also recoding a BD on a laptop would be an incredibly slow process unless you have a crazy fast crazy expensive laptop, my encoding computer has a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 CPU, Quad Core 2.83ghz, 6mb cache etc... I'm testing encodes on my Terminator Salvation BD (20gb main feature) to find the best quality settings that still playback on an ATV2 and the encode is currently at 3.8% and will be finished in approx 11 hours.

11 hours is way too long to encode, I would check your setup. Granted I have a better setup than yours (i7 920, 285 GTX card), but it only takes between 40 min - 1 hour to encode any bluray down to a 6-8 GB 720p h264 file. And this is reading from the bluray on to my drive with encoding in between.

[SandmanCL]

11 hours is way too long to encode, I would check your setup. Granted I have a better setup than yours (i7 920, 285 GTX card), but it only takes between 40 min - 1 hour to encode any bluray down to a 6-8 GB 720p h264 file. And this is reading from the bluray on to my drive with encoding in between.

Can you share your encoding approach please ?

[bircoe]

I'm encoding using x264's slow, or slower profiles to maximize quality, encoding at original resolution just cropped, and I'm a Linux user so no GPU acceleration, just plain old CPU encoding.

When using high profiles like I am and older core 2 hardware that is how long blurays take to encode...

I'd also like to know what your encoding setup is, Core 2 Quad's can barely encode DVD's to h264 in 40 minutes, i really doubt that Core i7's are that much faster... what's that 16x faster?

What resolution are you encoding to, what profile/settings are you using... and what applications are you using to encode?

[Starstream]

I have the same CPU, I'd say encoding taking 11 hours is probably right given the settings bircoe uses.

For comparison Staxrip (x264) with settings below takes about 9 hours
RF20
x264 Film HQ
slower
Resize to 720p

The slower preset is what causes the extra delays if you use the default medium it only takes around 5 hours or less.

[nsviper]

For DVD's, Handbrake all the way.
For BluRays, I use DVDFAB - takes about 2 hours to do a 2 hour film direct to 4.5GB MKV file in h264 format and full surround sound Software is free for 30 days, but its well worth paying for the BDRip functionality - size of file, resolution, sound format etc are all configurable.

[RosevilleHT]

I must be doing something very wrong, or very right. I'm encoding BR's using the default Apple TV2, and downmixing to stereo sound. I set the CR to 21.5, and it takes my [email protected] about 1.2 hours to encode. I'm not sure why it's taking some of you 10+ hours to do the same. I only wish Handbrake was able to use CUDA!

Edit: The files come out around 2.5GB, and look good to me. I don't see any significant artifacting on playback.

[Starstream]

Because other x264 encoders allow higher to extreme quality presets but slow down the encoding process. Handbrake does not expose these options, if you do the movie through Handbrake then it takes much less time.

x264 developers have said GPU encoders are rubbish and there is very little benefit to adding support for such platforms as the hardware is simply not suited to the task.