DVD Ripper Surround sound problems with DVD > mp4

[Gatlinator]

Hello all! Thank you in advance for reading my post and helping me with my problem. My computer experience is at a pretty high level, but I'm new at video conversion. Let me explain my situation, goals, and problems so that maybe someone can help.

Situation:

I have just built a home theater PC with a 1 terabyte hard drive, blu-ray drive, etc and I'm viewing it on a 38 inch RCA LCD TV. My computer is connected with HDMI for video, and Optical audio. I've verified through other software that my Windows 7 and hardware settings are correct for displaying high definition video and I've played DVDs in full Dolby pro logic.

Goals:

I would like to rip my current DVD collection to the 1 TB hard drive and play them on demand through WMP or another video playback option. I want near-to-lossless DVD quality. File size is not a large concern for me. I would like to keep the sizes to around 2-4 GB... It makes no sense that they be larger than the original, right? All of my DVDs are in wide screen format, so I want to preserve that aspect ratio. I want all of my converted video files to play back with 5.1/DTS (whatever the original should happen to be)

Problem:

I have been working with conversion to MP4 just because it seems to be a good medium for support vs quality. Is there a better format? I have used the generic mp4 profile to convert. Video bit rate is set to 2500. Frame rate I have left alone. Most cases it's 23. For the audio, I have tried 5.1 but most of the time only hear sound from one speaker when played. I've tried setting it for Pro Logic and Pro Logic II but the final file only plays back in stereo. Right clicking on the MP4 itself and selecting the Detail tab confirms that the file was only recorded in stereo.

so:

1) Is mp4 the best format for what I'm doing?

2) If so, why are none of my final mp4's reproducing Prologic / 5.1 or any surround sound.

3) What is the correct output resolution. Is it REALLY necessary to have 20+ options? Seriously? I can't find one that exactly matches 16:9 anyway. And why does DVDFab choose a different setting automatically for each DVD I put in?

4) Why should I even be concerned with panning and cropping? If the file I'm converting too matches the original format, and i'm playing it back on a 16:9 screen, what is all this even for?

Thanks for your help. I've been searching Google for weeks and reading one tutorial after another. Nothing is clear and straightforward. Everyone says "use this format" or "I use this program" but there is never enough detail to reproduce their process.

Thanks again
Garrett

[GregiBoy]

I would start with a MKV.H264.Audiocopy profile at 1800, framerate same as source and test with VLC Media Player (Free Download) on your PC.

MKV is by far the container of choice.

Set Crop as Auto and set resolution as 720 x XXX (For PAL DVD's) and choose the Audio track that you want (DD5.1 or DTS)

We can start from there. Resultant file should be <2Gb and good quality.

[Gatlinator]

I would start with a MKV.H264.Audiocopy profile at 1800, framerate same as source and test with VLC Media Player (Free Download) on your PC.

MKV is by far the container of choice.

Set Crop as Auto and set resolution as 720 x XXX (For PAL DVD's) and choose the Audio track that you want (DD5.1 or DTS)

We can start from there. Resultant file should be <2Gb and good quality.

Thanks for your help. I've been trying video formats all day long and still nothing.

I ripped with DVDFab 6 using generic.mkv.h264.aac. Bit rate was 2000, default frame rate, audio is 32kbps Dolby ProLogic II.

I played it in the newest version of VLC and in the settings I even told it to use the s/pdif output and force the detection of DTS/Surround.

Nothing.

The resulting video looks horrible and sounds worse. I'm getting really frustrated. It seems as the I'm the first person who has ever even tried to do this.