Streaming DVD's to 360 Guide - 4 Steps Full DVD Quality!

yes its custom size:1953.

duh i found this solution for 'new Disney DVD releases' at clubdcfreaks. before you rip DVD, reconfigure DVD decrypter. open DVD decrypter, click on tools-->settings--> I/0 tab, set SOFTWARE READ ERROR RETRIES to 0, check IGNORE READ ERRORS

also if you want to keep the resolution width of the video at 720, in autogk click on advanced settings button--> in the output resolution settings choose fixed width=720.

 

hey mac thanks for the help but that setting the read errors to 0 didn't work, I've tried it on finding nemo also and that also starts about 1 minute in, I think when I did finsing nemo, and ratatouille before, they worked before I selected only one cell, but then the audio was bad, do you think it has something to do with the cells?

 

i read in clubcdfreaks forum that disney's new dvds are using a stronger encryption. try this program, RipIt4Me (download here)...hope this one works for you. when you start the program, use wizard, in ripping settings use movie only.

 

hey just letting you know I used rip it for me with finding nemo and did the preview in autogk, everything looks good, I am converting at 1953 it will be under 2 gigs, when selecting the file it did look different though, their were 2 IFO files, video ts, and video ts 01, both of them started from the beginning but the audio was off for video ts, so I'll let you know how it comes out, but so far so good, thanks alot.

 

I bit the bullet and bought a Vista PC with Media Center on it. I was able to convert my dvd into a VOB file using DVD shrink and then changed the extesion to .MPG. It played great only I have a 16:9 DLP widescreen so the movie shows up as a smaller box inside me screen. How can I stretch this video as the display options don't seem to work. I tried the remote and the controller and couldn't find out how to view the movie full screen. Also i noticed than the vob to mpg trick doesn't work with 5.1 surround only 2.0 stereo. Because when i selected the 5.1 audio stream on Shrink there was no audio when I played it but when i selected both the 5.1 and the 2.0 steams the 360 played the movie with stereo sound only. Can anybody provide some insight or solutions to these two problems?

 

wish i had a vista machine. but if you are saying that you can't get the right aspect ratio and only stereo sound you may want to try converting your DVDs into avi format using autogk...you get the same aspect ratio, and you get 5.1 surround. it uses windows media player 11 to stream to the xbox 360.

heres an avi sample (download here 15mb) you can try. stream it to your xbox 360 using windows media player 11 (enable library sharing and set xbox 360 to allow)

 

Once you start playing the movie, streaming it to the 360, you can use the 360 controller to change the aspect ration.

 

I was using wmp 11 to stream from my old xp box. worked like a charm on my avis. But i got a vista machine so that I can user media center and the 360 as an extender so that i could have a nice looking cover art and movie catalog to show up on the tv. the problem is that vista media center doesn't allow streaming of avi/divx files to the 360

When I stream the .mpg file it shows as a sd file on the big screen and the controller doesn't let me stretch the video. Actually none of the play/pause/display options even show up when I press the top button on the 360 controller.

 

hey alg...i read that the media center can only play mp2 and wmv. mp2 can only play stereo so your best bet for 5.1 audio is wmv with wmv pro 9 audio (for the 5.1).

i found guide for DVD to wmv (click here) post #43 by simba

copy-paste

 

Hey Mac. Thanks for the info. I don't want to go the wmv route beacuse it took approx 20 hrs to convert a DVD to a 1.2 Gb files. I think I am going to go your route using autogk at size 1953 to get a 2 gig file that plays 5.1 surround. I found a program called transcode 360 that will allow you to transcode any avi to play on the 360 using media center. Problem solved. Of course the ideal situation would have been to rip to .VOB and rename to .MPG to keep the DVD quality but as we know now it only plays it in 2.0 Stereo and I would much prefer better sound over better video quality any day.

 

yeah autogk is faster, it takes 2-3 hours. And yes, 5.1 audio is a must. if you want to improve the video quality you can try this if you already haven't --- go to advanced settings(of auto gk) in step 4, change the output resolution settings to FIXED WIDTH and set to 720.

i am converting all my DVDs to avi now. Its great not having to swap discs on the 360. I can keep my cod 4 in the tray at all times hehe

MS should come up with a better and faster way to convert to wmv with 5.1, if i find it i'll post.

 

FIXED WIDTH and set to 720. Will this make the avi a 720x480 resolution like DVDs? Is this the best quality? and is 1953 still the best custom setting to use for error free viewing?

 

hey im glad you brought this up because i just took some screen shots of several DVDs playing on vlc player and all of them were 853x480...i will try changing my output resolution settings to fixed width set to 853...i will convert a DVD now and post screenshots of both the DVD and avi

and yes custom output size=1953 will fix the jittering and pausing problems with the video playback. after some trial and error i noticed that files above 2 gb had those playback problems

 

hey I'm curious if vlc will work for the converting vob. to mpg. files method, I noticed it said mpg1. and this would save a ton of time and hassle, anybody familiar with this program, for reference I'm talking about an xp computer with service pack2. thanks

 

i wish it were that easy duh. the thing is only media center or vista can stream mpg...media player 11 can only do xvid, mp4, wmv, h.264

i think alg tried streaming the mpg to the 360 using vista but couldnt change the screen size and only got stereo. the OP had success with some DVDs but others had problems.

hey alg maybe if you rip the DVD using DVD decrypter IFO mode or using RipIt4me, then rename the vob to mpg after the rip, maybe the file will stream properly. give it a try if you read this.

update: finished the conversion using fixed width set to 848.

heres the VLC screenshot of the avi file 848 x 352(without black bars)


heres the VLC screenshot of the DVD file 853 x 355(without black bars)


guys it looks very good. I tried playing 3 DVDs on VLC player and all the screenshots have a width of 853...i'll try other DVDs to see if they all are 853 wide.

For now,if you want your videos to be as close to DVD quality, before you start the conversion, check the width of the movie by playing it in vlc player then taking a screenshot...the screenshot will tell you the width. use this width when you choose fixed width in the output resolution settings of autogk.



update 2: i went through some more DVDs and the Simpson's DVD width is 1024 x 576. the best thing to do is take a screenshot of the movie playing in the VLC player and check the resolution width first...then use that value for the fixed width

 

The reason the 360 doesn't play .mpg files in 5.1 is that, by default, it plays only the .x80 stream which on most discs, is the 2.0 stereo stream. So if you rip the 5.1 channel, which is the.x81 stream, the xbox produces no sounds. I found a work around using video redo tvsuite, 15 day trial version. You can change the setting to always make the AC3 5.1 channel to be the default .x80 stream which can be played on the 360. So what you do is rip the dvd with 5.1,to get the .vob file. Instead of renaming it to .mpg, you open it with video redo tvsuite and click on fix quick stream and 15 minutes later you have a .mpg file in DVD quality with 5.1 surround sound. Of course thse files are about 5-6 gigs big so I will only convert my special action/music concert DVD videos this way and convert the rest of my library in 2gig avi using Mac's method to conserve disc space.

 

thats good to know alg, i will check out video redo tvsuite. great to hear autogk conversion works for you.

 

Hey Mac,

I dl'ed the Video Redo trial. Where is the option to make the AC3 5.1 channel to be the default .x80 stream?

 

hey I was curious if the video redo program will work with xp, and if it does do you have to set it up like you would tversity, or do you use windows media player 11. thanks