DVD and BR to WTV using Handbrake and ???

[ssterb1]

I've been trying, off and on, for a while to get my DVD rips in the native folder structure (and I have hundreds) to wtv files with burned in forced subtitles, 5.1 audio, and no audio or video glitches when playing back on my Xbox in extender mode.

This is the process that has given me the best results, but with a small problem. Even though it reincodes, I've found that hanbrake seems the easiest when it comes to burning in the forced subtitles, and there are many that swear by it. Using an Xbox 360 settings file that I imported into Handbrake, changing the audio to AC3 passthrough, and selecting to burn in the Foreign audio subtitles, I convert the main movie to an h.264 MKV with AC3 5.1 audio. I then use todvrms to mux the mkv to a wtv file. All plays well on the Xbox for about 15 to 20 minutes. But, after that the video will freeze and the audio will continue. If I hit skip back a few times, I can back up a few seconds before the glitch and then it will play for another 15 to 20 minutes before it does it again.

I also just started ripping blueray movies. I've read that Handbrake can handle them as well, but before I started blindly converting, I'd like to asked those more experienced with blueray to wtv with surround and burned in forced subtitles first.

For those that use Handbrake successfully to get seemless playback on the Xbox while maintaining 5.1 audio and forced subtitles, what settings do you use for DVD's? ...for bluerays? What program do you use to get the mkv file from Handbrake into a wtv and what setting in that program do you use? Do you use the native Media Center Movie Library, My Movies, Media Browser, or other on the Xbox? Do you have any codecs other than the native Windows codec that come with a fresh install of Win7 or 8 that would affect playback on the Xbox?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[newfiend]

Although I have not used this myself I have heard good things about this software. I don't know if it will do all that you are looking to do or not so you will have to investigate, but I hear it makes a very good .WTV file. http://www.videoredo.com/en/index.htm
newfiend~

[foxwood]

Although I have not used this myself I have heard good things about this software. I don't know if it will do all that you are looking to do or not so you will have to investigate, but I hear it makes a very good .WTV file. http://www.videoredo.com/en/index.htm
newfiend~

Handbrake is free, VideoReDo is $100.

[milli260876]

Makemkv is pretty good dunno about subtitles etc tho...

[newfiend]

Handbrake won't encode to .wtv though, I believe he wants the final encode in .wtv I use handbrake all the time to encode to .mp4 and .mkv and it works extremely well. But you need another program to convert to.wtv and videoredo does a good job from what I heard. I would see if they have a trial version you could test out to see if it does what you want.

Sent from my Lumia 920 using Board Express.

[ssterb1]

I already own the h.264 VideoReDo software. I use it to manually cut commercials out of recordings I want to keep, and it does a very good job. However, it doesn't burn DVD forced subtitles into the output video (yet), or so I've found thus far. But, when I try and use it with a file output from Handbrake it has trouble with it or the final WTV is messed up. It's been a while since I tried, so I don't remember exactly what the problem was. All I remember was that it didn't work, but I may just have to try it again.

I use handbrake all the time to encode to .mp4 and .mkv and it works extremely well.

I see from your profile, you have 2 Xbox's. What Handbrake settings do you use?

I'm not married to the wtv file, I just haven't been able to get anything else to work, keeping 5.1 audio and forced subtitles. I'll gladly try mp4 or mkv, as long as it'll play on both the WMC HTPC and the Xbox in extender mode.

Thanks for the help so far.

[newfiend]

The best format's for Xbox (from my limited experimentation) has been .wtv, .mp4 or .m2ts. I recently tried converting a Movie with forced subtitles from .mkv (which most of my videos are contained in) to .m2ts. It worked very well. I had great video quality, AC3 audio in 5.1 and forced subs worked as they should. I tried to convert some TV shows in .mkv (with 5.1 audio) to a .m2ts container with the same program and it down sampled the audio to 2.0 stereo which I wasn't happy with.

The program I used to convert the .mkv to .m2ts is called mkv2vob, a google search will lead you to it. Both of those containers play well on Xbox. You will not get Fast Forward or Rewind capability as you do with .wtv though, but WMC and extenders will play them just fine. There are some settings you need to have correct in mkv2vob for best results. Motz did a tutorial on those here: http://thedigitalmediazone.com/2010/10/ ... h-mkv2vob/
newfiend~

[ssterb1]

Using the "Normal" presets in Handbrake and then selecting AC3 passthrough instead of stereo, I converted several 1 minute radom clips of a DVD that I knew didn't have forced subtitles to mkv with h.264 and AC3 5.1 audio. I then converted them to m2ts using mkv2vob with the configuration detailed in the link above in newfiend's post. All m2ts clips played fine on the htpc in Media Center and on the Xbox extender.

I then converted the entire movie the same way, ending up with a mkv and m2ts. Keeping the mkv off to the side just in case, I added just m2ts to my video library for Media Center and the extender to see. When my wife and I watched the movie on the extender, I noticed part of the way in that the audio / video sync was getting worse as the movie progressed. Before the end of the movie my wife made a comment which told me it wasn't just me. It was a good and very noticeable second off by the end.

When I played the file back on the htpc and skipped to the end, it was out of sync there as well in both Media Center and VLC. This told me the m2ts file was bad. I then did the same check on the htpc with the mkv file I saved and everything's fine. So something about mkv2vob isn't working correctly, which is odd because I thought it was nothing but a container swap (a remux if you will).

I then tried to get the mkv file to play on the Xbox. I installed Haali Media Splitter using default configuration settings so the mkv would play in Media Center on the htpc. But when I try and play it on the Xbox, both in the native video player and in extender mode, the audio sounds fine but the video is very choppy.

I will try and convert the mkv to wtv using videoredo and then try again with todvrms and dvrmstoolbox.

What else could I use to mux the mkv to m2ts? Or, newfiend, you said that the mkv format plays well on the Xbox. What else do I need to install or configure to get the mkv to play well on the Xbox?