[mythtv-users] Transcode entire DVD (menus, etc) to MPEG4?

[Scott Nicholson]

> I'm curious what player you use on your myth box to play the DVD games and
> similar fancy features on the kid's DVDs. I've had terrible compatibility
> problems with most non-simple menu DVDs and Xine. It's good at basic menu
> structures most of the time, but doesn't handle everything my hardware
> player
> can.

... I don't even have my Myth box built yet -- I'm thinking future
functionality here.

I haven't looked too much into it, but I'm surprised to hear that Xine
doesn't do well with DVD games and the like. I expected that it was fairly
well advanced (but then, I haven't ever tried such DVDs on a Windows
software player either -- maybe they're not any better?)

At the moment, the kids just use our $35 KOSS DVD Player.

> In general, no. The menus, languages, subtitles, games, etc. are all built
> and contained specifically in the structure of the DVD. That structure
> does not support DivX, XVid or MPEG4. You can extract and transcode
> elements from a DVD structure, but to keep all the features you ware
> asking for basically requires you to keep the entire DVD structure for
> your intended purposes.

I realize that the menu structure and footage would need to be ripped as
well.

This seems like such an obviously cool thing that I'm surprised nobody has
put together something like this. I'm not a programmer (I know my way around
PHP, but I have very little practical C/C++ experience) but it seems like it
shouldn't be too hard to add this sort of functionality to an MPEG4
player...

The DVD format is well documented, right? So it would just be a matter of
transcoding the video files, copying the menu structures, then implementing
the menus by calling the transcoded MPEG4 files instead of the .VOB mpeg2
footage...

> Not that I'm aware of. Although, in my experience, I can usually shrink a
> DVD about 50% without significant image degradation. My needs are
> different from yours though. I rip my DVDs to my server storage, but only
> the movie itself.
> If I want to use the special features, I'm willing to pop the DVD into the
> player. :)

Sounds like maybe that's what I'll have to do, too... either that or pony up
for a handful of hard drives.

Maybe I can find enough MAME and SNES games to keep the kids busy, and
they'll forget all about the DVD ones.

Thanks for the feedback!
Scott

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.593 / Virus Database: 376 - Release Date: 2/20/2004