How do I get DVDs to MPEG2?

[TofuDawg]

All right, I want to create a movie collection of my DVDs that I can view through my MVP. But I just simply don't understand all of this converting stuff. Can someone point me in the direction of a free tool to convert my DVDs to MPEG2? And SIMPLE instructions on how to do it. I heard DIKO was good, but I can't figure the thing out. Please help me before I go nuts. :eek:

[pBS]

check out the XDVD plugin on the wiki page..it does just that and in realtime,you can watch the video within seconds of starting the transcoding..
it should work for regular dvd viewing out of the box,you'll need Video Lan Client [VLC] to do the transcoding,i modify it to use mencoder,but they give similar quality results..when it's done,you'll have a dvd.mpg you can archive where you want and burn back to dvd later if you want without conversion..
i believe the Video Archive plugin can do this also but this is a nice easy solution if that's all you want..[it does other stuff too]
http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Plugin/XDvd

[Jeff]

There is also a dvd2mpeg plug-in built into the video archive plug-in. The wiki site includes instructions for the other programs needed to set it up.

Jeff

[sabrewulf165]

Do any of you know how to get a 720x480 MPEG to play back on a 4:3 TV without cropping (in 4:3 mode) or stretching (in 16:9 mode)?

To the original poster, I would say good luck. Playing my backed up DVDs over the MVP is practically the only reason I bought it, and in spite of much googling and posting on this forum, I am still unable to solve the simple problem of getting the MVP to playback the files without excessive overscan/cropping. Nor have I been able to get XDVD to work, though many others claim it does.

As far as converting to MPEG... DVD video is already MPEG-2 format natively, so if you want the best quality, I recommend simply demuxing the original video and audio streams and only re-encode the audio (since the MVP can't play AC3 audio), without touching the video. Then you can mux them back together and have a very high quality file in much less time than it would take to re-encode the whole thing.

[Jeff]

Do any of you know how to get a 720x480 MPEG to play back on a 4:3 TV without cropping (in 4:3 mode) or stretching (in 16:9 mode)?

As far as converting to MPEG... DVD video is already MPEG-2 format natively, so if you want the best quality, I recommend simply demuxing the original video and audio streams and only re-encode the audio (since the MVP can't play AC3 audio), without touching the video. Then you can mux them back together and have a very high quality file in much less time than it would take to re-encode the whole thing.

This is what the dvd 2 mpeg plug-in does. It demuxes, converts the audio, and remuxes. I only use GBPVR with the MVP and have not had any problems with with cropping or stretching.

Jeff

[UncleBulgaria]

Hi,

You can also use VLC (http://www.videolan.org) to transcode the dvds into mpeg-2 format and you can also change the bitrate if you so wish too.

I have put another post on this subject here.

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...#post80619

Rgds
UncB

[Pioneer4x4]

This is what the dvd 2 mpeg plug-in does. It demuxes, converts the audio, and remuxes. I only use GBPVR with the MVP and have not had any problems with with cropping or stretching.

Jeff

Jeff,
I have a DVD that was playing poorly on my DVD Player, so I used DVD2MPEG so I can watch it via MVP. It is a widescreen DVD, and when playing the mpeg back via gbpvr&mvp, it was 'zoomed' in so that there was not any blank above and below,m ,and the sides were cut off. I did not do any other troubleshooting. ANd haven't watched it since, but would like to find out what it might be for future use.

BTW it was "Because of Winn Dixie" if that means anything.