[mythtv-users] video formats

[Nick Rout]

On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 11:28 AM, Christopher Kerr
<mythtv at theseekerr.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 10:15 PM, Tim Coote <tim+mythtv.org at coote.org> wrote:
>> Hullo
>>
>> I've got a separated mythtv frontend/backend based on a couple of acer revo
>> boxes + fedora 12 standard packages (mythtv 0.23). These devices don't have
>> dvd drives, so I'm ripping on macs and pulling the files into the startup
>> directory for mythvideo.  For some dvds I can just copy across the VIDEO_TS
>> directory and all's well (once I installed the libdvdcss package, which was
>> non-trivial to work out as a necessary component). For others this doesn't
>> seem to work, so I'm ripping the dvds to mpeg ts encapsulated video stream
>> using vlc, ignoring the dvd menu and just playing the video. However, when I
>> rip like this, I get a 6GB file (clumsy to move around the house) and the
>> forward / backward arrows just crash the internal video player.
>>
>> Should I be using a different encoding and/or encapsulation?  Or is this a
>> known bug (I've seen something that may relate to left/right arrow in video
>> playback.
>>
>> It would help me if I understood how to pull out small segments of a dvd, to
>> run tests on, if that's possible, so that I don't spend a couple of hours
>> ripping/transferring before I realise that I've got the wrong format. Is it
>> possible to pull of bits of a dvd - I cannot seem to just transcode the VOB
>> files, for instance, as these do not play back reliably.
>
> I think most of us are now using MakeMKV - just google it, it's a free
> tool which can take a title from a DVD, ISO or VIDEO_TS folder and
> remux it into an MKV which works perfectly in the internal player.

Nice product but closed source and when they get out of beta I suspect
you will have to pay for it. It may or may not be worth it.

It must check home too as periodically I get a message "this version
is out of date, you must update" or words to that effect.

As far as just ripping a dvd, try:

mplayer dvd://n -dumpstream -dumpfile mydvd.vob

where n is the title you want to rip.

Then you can use avidemux or handbrake to transcode if desired. I
prefer h264 in a mkv, it comes out much much smaller.