DVD's on MVP

[fvfv]

I could not wait to try it at home, so I downloaded mplayer (which brings mencoder), and gave it a try.

The result was pretty impressive, Excelent quality video, Subtitles overlayed with a very good font size and color.

The only weird thing is that it produced 23 FPS instead of 29 FPS.

But it played fine on gbpvr and wmp. I have to try it tonight on the MVP.

Compared to the VLC command line MPG, for the same movie, the size was almost half. VLC produced a 2.4 gig file for 1.39 hour of video,. Mencoder produced a 1.1 Gig with the same quality. I guess the 23 FPS makes that much of a difference.

[Fatawan]

So, I have scrolled through this entire thread, but the info is so incremental, I thought I would ask a question to get a "latest and greatest" answer. If I have the machine below, running GBPVR, a PVR 150, and a MediaMVP, what exactly do I need to download/install to allow me to watch a DVD over the MVP?

Thanks for all your work!

[BigT4187]

So, I have scrolled through this entire thread, but the info is so incremental, I thought I would ask a question to get a "latest and greatest" answer. If I have the machine below, running GBPVR, a PVR 150, and a MediaMVP, what exactly do I need to download/install to allow me to watch a DVD over the MVP?

Thanks for all your work!

I would agree with this statement. I just finished reading the whole thread, too. Would anyone care to post an up to date description on what to do?

[Lucas_24]

you can either rip the DVD and convert the sound to mpeg, or you can use XDVD whcih transcodes on the fly

[fvfv]

In a nutshell:

Insert the DVD on your DVD ROM.

use dvddecrypter or dvdshrink to Rip the dvd into folders (VIDEO_TS And AUDIO_TS). If you do not want any menus, on DVDSHRINK use Re-Author and select the main title only.

Onto the MVP:

Using XDVD plugin, select the main movie folder (Do not go into VIDEO_TS), just the main movie. Select the Title (Usually 1 for the main title), and hit Transcode. This will start creating a single mpg file called dvd.mpg. After hitting the Transcode button,wait about 1 minute to let your GBPVR server build enough of this mpg file so that it can serve it to your MVP.

Now go to the main menu and select Videos, choose dvd.mpg and start watching.

Some problems might or migth not occur, depending on the codecs installed on your GBPVR system:

• You might not be able to do FF or Rew
  
• Your streaming might be too slow for the playback, in which case wait longer than a minute to start play back
  

[Fatawan]

So XDVD will not directly take the DVD info and transcode on the fly to play on the MVP? I must rip first?

I appreciate the summary!

[BigT4187]

Thanks for the quick reply.

[fvfv]

I am sorry. Actually You can put in the DVD on the Player and when you start XDVD, if it sees a dvd in there it will display the title on the bottom and as soon as you hit transcode it will do it on the fly. Come to think about it, I am sure that was precisely the intention of the plugin author.

I like to rip the DVD's so that I can shrink them to 4 Gigs and burn them, but you definetly do not need to rip them first.

[pBS]

yes, Xdvd CAN let you play the dvd just by hitting 'play' button...[if it guesses the right title to play,still sometimes guesses incorrectly but you can select the title before you hit play and it will work]
you have to set it up properly first tho...install xdvd...if you are going to use VLC then you need to d/l and install it first..then check batch files playmvpdvd.bat, playmvpdvdfiles.bat, playmvpdvdiso.bat to make sure the vlc.exe path is correct for your install [i think it defaults to c:\program files\videolan\vlc.exe so if you used defaults to install vlc you should be fine]
then check the skin settings.xml file and adjust,it's in xdvd folder in your skin,if not there, copy folder from blue skin...
once those initial adjustments are done you're in biddness..
just open gbpvr, go to xdvd, make sure it sees the dvd title on the bottom and has slected the right title # for that disc[if not,adjust] then hit play...
you'll see a counter counting up the file size [or time] and then it will automatically play the transcoded file [dvd.mpg] when it's buffered enough...
when encoding subtitles,it can be quite slow, as it has to encode video and audio and subs,but normally without them,it is about 2x realtime so can be played immediately after starting encode..
sometimes with subtitles you have to give it a long time to encode so you won't catch up to it before the end...[adjustable delay in the setttings.xml in skin] and i like mencoder cuz it has more options and is faster and can adjust the volume properly and fixes timestamps excellently...
to use mencoder you'll have to adjust the batch files yourself tho..
[i can give you examples]

FVFV: most dvd's Are 23.97fps...vlc just uses telecine to make the file look like it's 29.97 and requires the decoder to adjust..
the data in both files are the same technically, but one of yours was smaller cuz of the compression from mencoder on video...
[mencoder can do better-than-realtime video encode too,i get 40+fps]
did you use subititles on both encodes? to overlay subs, video always has to be re-encoded...but you can rip dvd's without re-encode video [=perfect quality!] if you don't need subtitles.. [even for mvp, it only needs different audio] but subs have to be re-encoded..

Fatawan: yes,it does it can play the dvd directly, or a rip to a folder of the dvd, or an iso comressed rip,all the same....

hope that clears up a few things..

[pBS]

oh, and don't get the mencoder with sse+ support! it has problems grabbing a whole dvd and cuts them short...[actually can't handle a long mpg,i think it's a ffmpeg codec thing, something about the math]
i have a sse2 system and didn't really notice any speed increase anyways...
just wanted to add a warning,it gave me fits for a while....lol