Hello, I browsed a bit on the forums, and wasn't really sure the best place to post this question, so I just decided to put it here. If this is the wrong place please let me know and i'll remove it. I recently bought one of those Western Digital HD Media drive things where you plug a hard drive into it and it plays the media on the TV. I really like it so far, and it seems to support or play almost everything I throw at it. What I've recently gotton into the habit of doing, is taking all my DVDs and ripping them from the disc to an .ISO...that way if I need to restore a backup, it's ready to go...It works out great because I can play the ISOs with VLC Media Player, and even my WD HD Media player will just play the ISO, with no questions asked, full quality, full speed. (I know ISOs are just images of the disc, but what do the media players actually read when they play them? ISO was obv not listed as one of the supporting formats). The only problem with ripping straight to .iso's is that I can't find a way for them to show up as thumbnails. The WD HD TV Media player I guess only finds thumbnails in the meta information (or something like that ). So I'm wondering what a good format to choose would be. I'm not really interested in compressing anything. I like to be able to have the full quality. I want it to be just one large file if possible. And have the ability to show thumbnails when browsing through them. One format I was looking at was .mp4. All the information I looked at for this was always trying to convert DVDs for use with an IPOD. That's not what i'm looking for. (I'm looking for full resolution, and max quality (same as DVD quality) and with blu-rays, I would like to maintain the high quality as well. Can .mp4s do this? If so how do I go about converting them? I thought maybe VLC could do it...So I went into the wizard, and tried, but there are so many options I'm not sure what they mean, or which ones are best, and what formats are better. If anyone could help me out, maybe let me know what format they convert their DVDs into, or maybe just point me to some correct google search terms or something. That would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, and sorry if the post is a little bit on the noob side. Titus
Hello, i had the same problem and the WD TV Media Player only shows thumbnails in mp4 format, by my experience trying to find the best converter i use DVD Fab, in the generic mode you can output to Apple TV format and adjust resolution, size and all that good stuff so it can out pretty close to the same size as your dvd if not the same size. and then just download some cover art from where ever (amazon is good)and use something like iTunes to display the cover art, hope hat helped.
Well, to be honest, the ISO has too many video files on it for you too choose a preview. I haven't used the WD myself, but I would assume that it doesn't preview the ISOs because they are, of course, DVD images. Your .mp4s and .avis are single video files, so it's easy to preview them, but the WD HD blah blah blah probably wouldn't be able to tell what the "main video" is. So you probably just have to go with looking at the disc name.
I am sorta in the same boat as you. I have ripped all of my collection to ISO (just the main movie) so i can keep the quality. I am also using WD TV HD and cannot view thumbnails. The other reason i use ISO format is because it only takes 5-20 minutes to rip a full movie versus 1-24 hours converting to other formats that wont give you the same quality. ISO is by all means, without a doubt the best choice for quality and time, if space means nothing. i am using "CloneDVD2" which i prefere over all others which i have tried most.
i checked out the video and it apprears to have good quality but hard to tell given the circumstances. i will try it like described and see what i get. wondering how long is the conversion?
I think it would depend how fast your computer is, or how big the movie is your converting, mine only took about an hour to an hour 20 min for each movie, longer than it would be for an iso but being able to view the thumbnails is worth it for me and it cuts the size of the movie down to half the size with pretty much the same quality enabling to fit more movies on your hard drive.
i tried using DVDFAB abd some DVD to APPLE TV converter but the quality is not as good as the ISO. i am not sure how to download the movie poster to get it attached to the movie file???
Yeah, that's one thing i'm sort of scared of. I have a nice big HD-TV, and don't really want to put it to waste, by downgrading all my movies. I also have alot of backed-up movies that are blu-rays, I have no concerns for file size, only quality. I'll have to try out DVDFab and see if it has some quality options or something. To set the "poster" or "thumbnail" of the mp4, I imagine the easiest way would be to open the file in something like Itunes, go to properties, and select an image from there.
i will try that with itunes. as far as what i am using now; it is ANYDVD and CLONEDVD2, WD TV HD with four 1TB WD My Books. i store about 230 movies per book in ISO format. it takes about 5 to 8 minutes to rip to ISO on my system DELL QUAD 2.44. i have yet to rip bluray but will try this weekend. do you about how much space it will take for bluray ISO?
In DVDFab DVD to Apple TV if you want, you can set the size of the MP4 to the exact size of the dvd your backing up and get a better resolution if you choose.
i downloaded DVDFAB to try, i did not see the option for DVD to APPLE TV so i downloaded a converter and converted after DVDFAB. am i missing something? when i converted, i used the highest setting they had, 1200 x 780 i think. anyway, the background was real blocky, you could tell it was digital, not realistic. Please help me step by step if you think im going down the wrong path.
Go to http://www.dvdfab.com/ then download DVDFab Platnium, there should be a download button save it or open from there. After you have open the program you should see full disc, main movie, split and so on, at the bottom there should be a tab that says DVD to mobile, click on generic. After it has read your disc on the bottom right side there should a box that says subpicture, uncheck the boxes, so theres no subtitles. Click next. Now you will see your movie, where it says profile, click it, it will bring down some conversion options scroll to the bottom you will see Apple TV. Click conversion setting at the bottom, in there you will see frame resolution, encodind method and so on. if you would like the movie to be the same size click on the fixed file size button and type in the size you wish, then click Ok, then start.
thanks, i did some reading and found the Apple Tv under customize UI, i added it and am allmost done with my test. not quite like you said but i will see what it does and then try your directions. Well, it just finished but left two different files. the one labeled Apple TV is great quality on my PC. will try on my TV. It also tagged itself with the very first video in the movie which is "LIONGATES" i down loaded a movie poster, now i just need to figure out how to get it to replace the one it defaulted to. ill let you know how it comes out on my big screen.
Hey Jaysue, I have tride DVDFAB several ways now and the quality seems to be ok but i am having problems with the video playing. Once I FF and then hit PLAY again, the video starts jumping around and the way to get it to stop is press STOP and then PLAY again. once you hit FF again, it starts jumping eratically. Have you encountered this? i am guessing that maybe i have a setting wrong! this is all in APPLE TV mode, i am trying H264-MP4 now to see if it works. Also, i have a Thumbnail picture on my computer but when i move to WD TV HD, i lose it??
Yeah i have the same problem with the FF i haven't found an answer for that, and about the picture not showing, i had some trouble at first and i think its size of the picture maybe being to big, this is what i do i found a picture on amazon that the right size, if you look up meet the parents dvd widscreen edition http://www.amazon.com/Meet-Parents-...ef=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1240081919&sr=8-3 (copy past this) click on the picture and save as, and then when u open it in an photo editor, whatever u might use, copy and paste the picture u want onto the meet the parents pic, adjust it so its the same size as meet the parents pic and then save it. it seems to be the right size, its always worked for me.
