Converting DVD's

[yogiman_uk]

High guys n gals

I have two problems.

1. I am converting all my DVD's to DivX at present using #1 dvd ripper which works great but takes 2/3 hours to convert a film. Can anyone tell me if there is a hardware card/box that will do this quicker?

2. When playing back DivX via MP the movie often goes blocky, is there anything I can do to prevent or at least reduce this?

Thanks for any help!


Yogiman!

[funkstar]

there hardware MPEG-4 encoders that i know of that can take a file and transcode from there, they are all analogue input cards. To speed things up, get a faster processor. I hear the Intel Core3Quad chips are pretty fast

[Paranoid Delusion]

That's one of the effects i had with Divx, so for better picture quality with still low file size, ie 1.3 gb with 5.1 sound gives me DVD quality using Nero Digital (mp4).

Also plays great in MP

[yogiman_uk]

Thanks for the information guys, as always you are a huge help!!

Thanks again!

Yogiman!

[Commodore 64]

Try using staxrip to convert your DVDs. You can encode to Divx, Xvid, x264, and u se any container you want. You can get very high quality encodes with no blocking.

BUt it does take a long time to encode. With my A64 3200+ it takes 10-12 hours for a decent sizedm ovie at high quality settings.

http://www.planetdvb.net/staxrip/

[yogiman_uk]

Thanks for the reply, I apprecaite your making the effort. Although at 10-12 hours and the amount of films I have I figure it would take me around 2 years to completely finish

Seriously is this wonderful world of MediaPortal really telling me that there is no hardware out there that will really speed up this process?

I mean you get hardware MPEG encoders surely it's not unreasonalble to expect to find a Hardware DivX encoder that I can plug into a slot?

Thanks again

Yogiman!

[Bobb25]

Try AutoGK: http://www.autogk.me.uk/

Encodes pretty quickly on my E6600. Might be quicker than any other apps you have tried.

Cheers

[m.standish]

PESONALLY i use Imtoo and on a xp2400,1gb with the correct divx settings im getting filesizes about 800 mb,showing perfectly fine on a 28" CRT, it runs about 20% faster than realtime (ie 100mins vid takes about 80mins to encode). If i drop the quality i can touch 60fps (half playing time to encode but the loss of quality does show!)
If youve got the space why not just rag the whole dvd as .vob's - no quality loss. i wont as i want the small sizes (at present 300 films in 200GB) but its a preference thing i guess

[yogiman_uk]

Originally Posted by m.standish

PESONALLY i use Imtoo and on a xp2400,1gb with the correct divx settings im getting filesizes about 800 mb,showing perfectly fine on a 28" CRT, it runs about 20% faster than realtime (ie 100mins vid takes about 80mins to encode). If i drop the quality i can touch 60fps (half playing time to encode but the loss of quality does show!)
If youve got the space why not just rag the whole dvd as .vob's - no quality loss. i wont as i want the small sizes (at present 300 films in 200GB) but its a preference thing i guess

Hi thanks for the information, yes I have had a look at Imtoo but so far can not make up my mind. I have to say that I am not that impressed with DivX the idea that it's DVD quality is a little misleading on DivX's part it's good but not on fast moving images.

I have also tried nero recode but I have a Packard Bell Medi@TV unit in the living room and it does not like the files for some reason. My last attempt is Intervideo's DVDcopy..... Started it at 9:30 this morning.... 12:35 now on a movie of 2 hours and 50 minutes and it's on 27% whats that all about?

I would love to store my movies in original .VOB format but I am currently on around 400 DVD's and I have roughly 1.4 terrabytes of space but I buy around 10 DVD's a month so it's not going to last long at that rate.

Cheers

Merry xmas


Yogiman!

[VdR]

I use DVD decryptor and can copy two DVDs from two DVD drives at the same time each at 8x speed to the HD on my HP w5520 (dual core).

The limitation is on how fast the DVDs can be read. The very cheap ones can only be read at 2x and that will slow down the other as well.

If you want to compress but stay with mpeg have a look at DVD Shrink. Encoding a DVD however does take a lot more time!

Also check out Ripit4me.

VdR