Hi all,

I've been tinkering with software all day and I'm not getting anywhere. It's driving me nuts.

This is the situation:
I've ripped all my DVD movies to a harddisk, because I want to put all my DVD's on a home server. To preserve the optimal quality, I've not used any form of compression during the ripping process. Everything works as it should really. The reason I didn't use any compression while ripping was because at one time I'm going to install a beamer, and I want to preserve the optimal image quality, so the picture will remain nice if viewed at a 3 meter diameter screen. The result is that now I have 2 (large) disks filled with:

These folders are filled with the usual VOB, BUP and IFO files. I can play these movies no problem by simply clicking the correct VOB file. This also streams without problem over my LAN.

Now today I started to wonder: what if I wanted to DIVX/XVID all these movies now anyway? How would I do this?
I have no problem ripping/encoding the movies straight from DVD. I DO have a problem getting this done now that the movies have already been ripped to HD.

I have not found any encoding software yet with which I can simply select one of the movie folders on the HD, and then hit 'encode to dixv' or something. The ideal solution would be if I could select the entire disk and so every movie would be encoded in batch.

I have bought a DivX license, so that's not the problem..

Does anybody know which software I can use to get this done? I really would prefer NOT having to re-rip every DVD I have...

Thx!

The FairUse Wizard can do this. The only problem I have with the program is that it's very slow. But my machine is quite old.

Handbrake. It asks for a DVD or a folder like you have. Should allow you to batch them all up as well and just let it go.

I would however recommend not using divx/xvid, and instead use h.264/AVC. This will make the movies a bit more portable to other environments for playback.

I would also recommend that, but I hardly think h.264 is more portable. Perhaps in the future, but it seems to me that there are more devices that play DivX/XviD. At least, there are in my home (where an informal count reveals 6:2 in xvid's favor).

Although I guess if you live in an Apple environment, then yes, there are more ways to play h.264 files, but you'd better make sure they're encoded juuust right. I've tried encoding video for my parents' AppleTV a couple dozen times now, using several different programs and various video settings, and none of them work properly. Argh. I apologize, as you can see I'm a little biased against h.264. I still think it's not as common as xvid though. Not yet, at least.

And again, on Windows I have had no luck with Handbrake on two different machines. It looks like a great program if you have a Mac.

I'll give both programs a try, and will let you know which one worked out the best. (for me anyway )

Thanks a lot guys!!!

I was giving the recommendation of H.264 over DivX more on the grounds of supporting the proper MPEG standard. If DivX Inc. shut down tomorrow, the format would likely quickly die soon after. Where as an MPEG supported format is at no risk of dying as there isn't a single company governing it.

I'm not saying that DivX Inc is going anywhere, but I think we have all seen the benefits of sticking to the more supported formats out there in audio (MPEG 1 Layer 3, IE MP3) over proprietary ones. A song I ripped in 1998 still plays on everything I own today. I want my video files to do the same. I have several older video files from 1998 that use Real codecs, or Indeo, and both formats there have pretty much been dead and are more and more difficult to play back. Compare that to an MPEG 1 video I have from the same era that still plays fine.

If I were putting the effort in to rip all my DVDs to a format, I'd want to do it in something that doesn't have me reripping them again down the road.

You could try AutoMKV
Basically you select your input folder,set output folder,select your xvid quality,then queue up a bunch of jobs and let it rip.

I agree, and I do think that h.264 has a brighter future, but I was responding to the term "portable." To me, that means it's a format more widely accepted and usable on a greater variety of devices, which I don't think is the case. That's all I was responding to. All in all, I think it's a better format - better quality and smaller files, right? At the moment, though, I think it's harder to both play and create those files.

One question, though. Isn't the whole point of xvid to address the problem you state in your quote above?

The problem with XVid is that it still tends to be used to write to non MPEG complaint containers, like AVI. While it is based off MPEG 4, it's not the newer part of MPEG 4 that added H.264 either.

I think MPEG4 Part 2 (Divx/Xvid) has already become the MP3 of video. H.264 is its Vorbis, or its AAC: a superior format by every measure, but being superior isn't enough to unseat the de facto standard. It's not a smart move these days (except perhaps for Apple, who make their own rules) to make a video product that doesn't play MPEG4, any more than it is to make an audio product that doesn't play MP3.

It's been however many years since we sounded the charge with Karma, which always treated FLAC and Vorbis as first-class formats alongside MP3, and I still end up transcoding all my FLACs to MP3 for the Soundbridge, the Carbon, the Receiver. And SXSW only comes as MP3.

Peter

This also looks very interesting! But are your sure this will work with an entire video_ts folder? After all, the input is not a file in this case, but multiple files...

I haven't tried Dignan's option, but I can already tell you that Hardbrake works great! It does exactly what I want.

I will encode to Xvid instead of H264 though, because my Freecom media player does not support H264. It plays virtually everything, except codecs with an Apple stamp, like H264 and MOV.

Now all that remains finding out is how I can rip the subtitles from the movie...

The advantage MP3 had is that everyone respected the container format for the most part too, and while there was some wonkiness around VBR for a bit, generally a device that could play MP3s could play the music in the file regardless of ID3v1 or v2 tags and such.

DivX and Xvid, along with Quicktime, and many other encoders technically do use MPEG4 video, but they by default choose to wrap it in an non MPEG (mp4) wrapper, causing playback issues on devices. For example, out of the gate the PS3 would play MPEG4 files just fine, but if you gave it a DivX file (either AVI or DivX container), it just said unsupported video format. Now that Sony paid for a DivX license, it now plays.

Even the base MPEG4 has a ways to go to becoming the MP3 of video. Can Windows Media Player even play back MPEG4 files yet without an external codec? Also, I do see the adoption of H.264 into Flash 9 as helping quite a bit, as it should hopefully get the encoders a bit more friendly.

You can select the VIDEO_TS.IFO file inside the VIDEO_TS folder and it links the vobs.
HERE is a guide.

Very cool! Thanks so much for that link!