DVD Ripper MPG support and some other ??

[pawnslinger]

For several years now, my project has been to build a media server that contains all my movies... so that they can be easily watched by the family. There have been many false starts, but along the way to this goal, I have discovered DVDFab... it is the best program that I have found for doing the initial conversion from disc to computer (both DVD and Blu-ray). Kudos to the authors!

But, as always, there are some questions. Is there a way to convert, in DVD Ripper or Blu-ray Ripper, directly to MPEG2? If so, how do I do it. Presently, my current method involves 2 steps, first I convert using DVDFab to an MKV file, then using another program, do the final conversion to MPEG2-PS. This seems like a lot of extra time, and I would like to find a direct to MPEG2-PS solution, but any program that I have found that could do that are NOT as good as DVDFab.

Next, is there anyway to have DVDFab embed the subpicture into the MKV file? That would be really nice if I could find a way to do that -- instead of just burning the subpicture into the video itself. In this way, multiple subpicture streams could be included in the MKV (if I understand correctly how MKV files work).

Thanks for any help.

[signals]

In DVD Ripper, you can use the "VOB Passthrough" profile. It will strip the DVD-Video characteristics and produce a VOB file that will usually play without problems on anything that will play MPEG2. You can change the file suffix to .mpg if necessary.

For Blu-ray, you will probably need to reencode if you want MPEG2 output since few BDs are authored that way any longer.

[pawnslinger]

I thought of using the VOB option, but as you say, it would work only with DVDs, and my collection is fairly mixed... lots of both kinds of discs. Also, would the VOB option allow me to resize the video? The crop and resize options are one of the very best things about DVDFab -- I would hate to give up that functionality. Also, I like to re-encode the audio, because many many problems with DLNA are audio based (in my experience). Re-doing the audio seems to clear-up a lot of those issues (most of my renderers are either PS3 or Sony Blu-ray players).

[signals]

No you can't resize or crop the video with Passthrough. The tradeoff is that it is very fast, much faster than re-encoding. It is just a way to keep the original video quality quickly if you can put up with the large file size. Same for the remux profile in BD Ripper. You can also make .ts files or VOBs. There are many options. Sounds like you would be better off meeting your goals with one of the MKV profiles if your players will tolerate them.

[pawnslinger]

No you can't resize or crop the video with Passthrough. The tradeoff is that it is very fast, much faster than re-encoding. It is just a way to keep the original video quality quickly if you can put up with the large file size. Same for the remux profile in BD Ripper. You can also make .ts files or VOBs. There are many options. Sounds like you would be better off meeting your goals with one of the MKV profiles if your players will tolerate them.

In my latest work flow, I am using the mkv.remux profile to create MKV from blu-ray sources, then transcode to "MPEG-PS HD" in another program, using a standard mpeg2 video codec with an ac3 audio codec. In this process, I usually cut down the bitrates to around 4000k to 5000k for the video and 256k for the audio (5.1). The resultant .mpg files play very cleanly and smoothly on all my clients, from iPads up to PS3 and blu-ray players. In my home network, everything is wireless, so I must keep the bitrates under control.

For DVDs I do something very similar, but use an mkv.audiocopy profile to create the MKV, then process the transcode in the same manner as for blu-rays.